Turf them both.

The lines have been drawn, the options made clear. Canadians can support a prime minister who promised to work civilly and co-operatively with the opposition at a time of economic trouble but who couldn't restrain his nasty, partisan, vindictive nature and so sparked the current crisis.

Or they can get behind one of the weakest leaders in modern political history, a lame duck who led his party to catastrophic defeat, a man who threatened to bring down the Conservative government over Kyoto and Afghanistan and a host of issues but balked and balked and balked again only to leap into action when his public funding was threatened.

I suspect a whole lot of Canadians would sooner sunbathe in January than back one of these two.

And why, I wonder, should they have to?

Why are the only two options available the status quo or the coalition? Why should we be compelled to choose between these selfish, silly, petty leaders?

There is a third option, a very different way to resolve this conflict. It's to tell both Stephen Harper and Stéphane Dion to go. Now. Goodbye. Get lost. And good riddance.

Stéphane Dion has done his country honorable service in the past, but let's be blunt about the man. He's a stumblebum.

His leadership of the Liberal party has been almost comically inept. After falling backwards to victory in the leadership race, Dion failed to develop relationships within the party. When the Conservatives launched a transparent campaign to frame him as not-a-leader, Dion stayed mum and proved the point.

Insularity and passiveness are crippling traits in a leader, but they are fatal when combined with stubbornness and Dion is plenty stubborn. As we learned during the election campaign, he doesn't listen and he doesn't change his mind. And the Liberal party paid the price.

He had to go. And Dion, with obvious reluctance, agreed.
[Top]

But rather than stepping down immediately and allowing for the appointment of an interim leader, Dion foolishly decided to stay until a new leader was chosen by the party. Among Liberals there was a little grumbling but a collective shrug. What harm could it do?

Plenty, as it turned out. A man who cannot run an election campaign is now attempting to become leader of the most unwieldy government in Canadian history and his pretext for doing so -- that to wait and see what's in the Conservative budget in January would imperil the economy -- is flagrant nonsense. The threat to the Liberal brand is immense.

And what if, after the election, Dion had acknowledged that he is the lamest of ducks and gotten out of the way? The Liberals would be led by someone respected in the House of Commons and the public at large. Someone like Ralph Goodale. Or, given the state of the economy, John McCallum. We can only imagine how this crisis would have played out differently. It may even be that if Stephen Harper had not faced such a wretched opponent, the tone of his economic statement would have been very different and this crisis would never have come about.

Which brings us back to the prime minister.

From the day Stephen Harper returned from the political wilderness, he was accused of being an ideologue. Oh, he may temper his policies to suit the politics of the day, pundits said. But inside was a ruthless neo-con biding his time.

I can't see into men's souls -- this is a power held only by deities and Republican presidents -- but I do know that there has been remarkably little ideology in anything Stephen Harper has done.

True, he has been ruthless. Sometimes astonishingly so. But he has not been ruthless in advancing an ideology. He has been ruthless in advancing himself.

All prime ministers are ambitious and all politics is personal, ultimately. But there has never been a prime minister more passionate about power and control, a prime minister more incensed by those who get in his way. Stephen Harper sits in the House of Commons and seethes. This bitter, nasty, resentful man doesn't have opponents. He has enemies. Put some jowls on him and he's Richard Nixon.
[Top]

Before this crisis exploded, all sides were talking about a new spirit of co-operation. The economic crisis demanded it. So did the divisions with the House of Commons. Stephen Harper helped to set this new, enlightened tone, and for that he was congratulated.

Then came the economic statement, which included a proposal to eliminate public funding for political parties. There was no rational explanation for it. Harper had never mentioned it before. The sums involved are tiny. It has nothing to do with the economy.

But it would kneecap each of the opposition parties.

It was so gratuitous, so partisan, so nakedly hostile, it cannot be explained in merely political terms. One must resort to psychology. Stephen Harper's psychology.

Having precipitated the crisis, having made politics so personal, Stephen Harper is the essential element of this crisis. Remove him from the equation and the personal animus that is driving the coalition would disappear. Remove him and everyone would get a little calmer. Remove him and the order could be restored.

If Stephen Harper resigned, the Conservatives would turn to a respected interim leader. Jim Prentice would do nicely.

Negotiations about the budget could begin. On substance, there isn't a vast gulf between the government and the opposition. I'm sure a compromise could be reached. It is, after all, the Canadian way.

This is what Stephen Harper could do for his country and his party simply by resigning. But I doubt he will resign because his cause is not his country or his party. It is himself.

Richard Nixon hung on to the miserable end, too. Only when senior Republicans came and told him it was time to go did he finally resign, and by then it was too late for the Republican party.

Something for both Liberals and Conservatives to think about.

You can contact Dan Gardner at the Ottawa Citizen.
E-mail: dgardner@thecitizen.canwest.com

Back to Columns

Home

Copyright © 2005  Dan Gardner
Website Design & Management by:  GRA Web Site Design Ottawa