Tuesday, September 18, 2007
The Liberal Road To Redemption
So: Quebec byelections. The Tories pummel the Bloc in Roberval, taking 59% of the vote and jump 12% to come in a close second in St-Hyacinthe. And Outremont? Well, let’s let Cherniak tell the story:
9:10
We're winning in Outremont and close to 10% in the other ridings.
9:15
We're losing.
I have to say, the sight of Dion coming into the Liberal campaign office - I can’t believe he showed up, to be honest - to flank his defeated candidate along with what looked like half his caucus, was just plain weird. I don’t know whether to be impressed or nauseated by the ability of the Liberals in that room to mug for the cameras. I mean, the whole situation just seemed surreal. Here’s the mighty Liberal Party, packing its dwindling number of diehards into a room to cheer themselves hoarse for an embarrassing Montreal byelection defeat in a fortress riding, while in Opposition, with a Quebec leader, to a party that’s only won one seat in Quebec ever. And that’s just in Montreal. Elsewhere in the province, they are essentially a non-factor, getting their ass handed to them by a Conservative Party that is, by all accounts, offside with Quebeckers on such big-ticket policy issues as Kyoto and Afghanistan. Up is down, day is night. That is, if you subscribe to the whole Quebeckers-are-all-social-democrats-at-heart paradigm that so many political scientists have been peddling for years.
Which brings us to the NDP. Isn’t this proof, the argument goes, that an NDP breakthrough in Quebec is imminent? I wouldn’t go that far, but even if it is, I say: good stuff. Because in the two primary and distinct political universes that Quebec is composed of - Montreal, and not-Montreal - the NDP and Tories are not fighting over very much of the same political real estate. So if the Dippers want to usurp formerly Liberal territory in Montreal, they’re welcome to it. Any successful federalist alternative to the Liberals in Quebec is a positive development. I wouldn’t even be surprised if there were Tory staffers working on Mulcair’s campaign last night.
The attention of the media seems to be focusing on what all of this means for Stephane Dion, and I’ll get to him in a moment. But whether it’s caucus members parading in front of the cameras with a forced smile, or Libloggers frantically groping for some alignment-of-the-stars explanation that allows these results to be dismissed as a freak accident, I’m convinced that the Liberals as a party still refuse to contemplate the possibility that they might require a fundamental re-orientation. It was sponsorship, they used to say, nothing more. Then it was their divided house. Then it was “Canadians just need to get to know Dion”. Apparently, many of them sincerely believe it’s all just a bad dream - these byelections are just the latest nightmare - from which they will eventually awake, if they just wait long enough.
The liberal movement in Canada is a different animal than it’s American counterpart, but I daresay they share at least one common trait: presumptuousness. Anyone who’s a conservative but doesn’t openly advertise it knows what I’m talking about. You’re at a party, or maybe making small talk with co-workers. The subject turns loosely to politics. Somebody makes a crack about the need to get rid of Harper. A couple heads nod vaguely, others give no reaction. Why would the anti-Harperite make such a statement? It’s not to generate debate. It’s because to him (or her) it’s like making fun of Paris Hilton or Michael Jackson. It’s easy, and it’s obvious to them that it should be uncontroversial. Because everyone thinks Paris Hilton is a skank, and everyone thinks Michael Jackson is a weirdo. And to the liberal mind, it’s so obvious that Harper’s so awful, that it’s just assumed everyone else in the room is going to agree. I can say with certainty, no conservative - unless perhaps they’re at the Albany Club, or they’re being deliberately provocative - drops such opinions about liberals casually into a crowd of nonpartisans, because they know that not everyone in the circle is going to share their view, i.e. at least somebody in earshot will be a liberal. But for liberals, its as if conservatives are mythical creatures that exist somewhere out there, but never in the next cubicle or the next house on the block. Geography is partly to blame: to the liberal mind, conservatives are only supposed to live in places like Medicine Hat and Brandon and Owen Sound. And Jonquiere. And tiny obscure, backwater outposts no one has ever heard of like Calgary, Edmonton, Ottawa and Quebec City. You know - places with small people and small minds - unlike the sophisticates of Toronto or Vancouver or Montreal, whose inhabitants are increasingly used by liberals as a euphemism for “Canadians”. It’s as if the rest of the country doesn’t even exist, and if it does, their views don’t represent Canadians on account of, well, the fact that they don’t share the views of Torontonians or Vancouverites or Montrealers.
This is what is killing the Liberal Party (indeed, it has already emasculated the NDP, which is why that party’s appeal is now largely restricted to the downtown cores of these cities). It’s not that their views are “wrong” (I think they are, but that’s just my opinion). It’s that they don’t seem to consider the possibility that reasonable people could disagree with them without being deranged in some way. They have no interest in understanding why anyone would take a different view, and so instead immediately attack anyone who says such things as “I care about the environment but Kyoto seems impossible to meet” or “I dislike war but I think Afghanistan is a good cause” as being idiots. Conservatives might get angry at liberals, but at least they aren’t shocked that liberals exist.
Macro-trends aside, the most sobering development of the last nine months has to be the re-invention of Stephane Dion as a barking partisan. Here is a man who has devoted his life to the federalist cause, and was widely respected across partisan lines during his time as a cabinet minister. Winning the Liberal leadership as an underdog over such powerhouses as Michael Ignatieff and Bob Rae was a feel-good story, a triumph of the Liberal grassroots, a chance for the Grits to have a man of quiet demeanour but intelligence and thoughtfulness lead their party.
But instead of changing the party, the party changed him. Dion now drops such phrases as “climate change denier” and “George Bush” with the ease of Joe Volpe or Denis Coderre. Like the responsible student who wants to study, but gets dragged out to a party by his friends and is forced to funnel a dozen beers, the intentions were good, but the consequences are bad. Add on the devastating ad campaign by the Tories to label him as “not a leader”, designed to flip his one unassailable virtue - his soft demeanour - into a negative, and what’s left?
Can Dion rehabilitate his image? Yes. But not in six months, and obviously not by carrying on as he has thus far. And if the Liberals want to re-emerge as the dominant force in politics in this country, they are going to have to admit something they don’t want to: that Stephen Harper as Prime Minister isn’t the worst thing in the universe. They don’t have to stop disliking him. They don’t have to stop trying to get rid of him. But they do have to admit that Canada will not be in some unrecognizable, irreparable state if he remains in power for, God forbid, another five or six years. Because only once they focus their attention on repairing their own weaknesses, rather than knee-jerk opposition to everything that comes out of Harper’s mouth, will they begin to reconnect with the public.
I support my party, and I admit to pangs of schadenfreude when I see Liberals in disarray. But I am a democrat before I’m a Tory, and as much as an endless string of default Tory election wins might suit my own preferences, it would ultimately weaken the democratic process in reflecting the will of the people.
The results of yesterday's byelection are in part the consequence of Liberal drift. They would do well to convert it into the catalyst for serious introspection.
posted by ALW at 6:39 PM
