Max Pointy Gets It Right

I view Rex Murphy's appearances on CBC's National with some trepidation. I sometimes agree with him and sometimes he drives me crazy. But Rex, true to his upbringing on The Rock, is also a source of many of the great lines in Canadian political commentary.

In his January 3rd editorial, Murphy not only nails the current situation in the election campaign but manages to exceed quota on the quips as well. The piece is too short to excerpt so here it is in its entirety.

Voting for the one because you can't stand the other Jan. 3 2006

Now that Santa is safely out of the way, the campaign begins in earnest.

A lot of this election is already settled. The Liberals, for example, are not going to sweep Alberta, and the Conservatives are not going to storm Quebec.

The polls show that nationally, the two major parties are in a rough draw, and with three weeks left in the campaign, only a few regions are in real play.

The Liberals probably won't agree with me, but this is really quite a remarkable tribute to their party. Liberals have suffered or brought upon themselves almost every misery known to politics. Couple of years of Gomery, David Dingwall's aria of entitlements and the entitled, the-beer-and popcorn ruminations of strategist Scott Reid, and now, an investigation into potential leaks from one of Ralph Goodale's continuous rewritings of the 2005 budget. Any other political party after all that and more wouldn't just be down for the count, they'd be calling up the funeral home and doing rough drafts for the obituary, but the Liberals have the tenacity of lichen, and the durability of granite, and even after an avalanche of troubles, they remain a good prospect of stretching a fourth-term minority into a fifth-term minority. The Liberal Party may be battered, defensive, divided, and uncharacteristically without focus, but it has a ferocious instinct for survival, and hard times bring out all its determination and its every well-honed guile.

Against that, the Conservatives an Stephen Harper have spent the first five weeks trying to pre-empt what they expect to be thrown their way by the Liberals in the remaining three. The Liberals would like Canadians to see Stephen Harper as somewhat less cuddly than Dracula, and the Tory Party is an engine of reaction and repression compared to which the Spanish Inquisition was the early Vatican's idea of a quiz show. But for five weeks now, Mr. Harper has been in full soothing mode. He does not have fangs, and actually campaigns in daylight. More Marcus Welby than Vlad the Impaler. The Harper campaign, with its issue-a-day bulletins, has really had but one intent: To make bland a virtue, to take bland and beat charisma over the head with it. Stephen dull is better than Stephen scary, and it might be a hard compliment for Mr. Harper to digest, but he's good at dull, and, well, we've seen him at the punching bag - he's not that hot at scary. Incidentally, first rule of the photo-op, keep the boxing gloves off the chess club president.

So here's where we are: The Tories are pitching themselves as the bland alternative. It doesn't make for a great slogan - "Choose us and you won't be startled." The Liberals are offering amnesia and alarm. Forget sponsorship; save Canada from the Tory zealots. You can string these pieces of zirconium any way you please, but they won't turn into a pearl necklace.

Each of the two leading parties of a presumably great nation are arguing you must vote for them because of the defects of the other. Won't make for a stampede in either direction on polling day as well, voting for the one because you can't stand the other. If this is a vision for Canada, wallpaper is a movie. For The National, I'm Rex Murphy. (empahsis added)

Thanks Rex. Wish I could have said it that well.