Now this is pretty sad:
I don't have much else to say about this at the moment. Gloat in the comments if you must, or try to justify the CPC's poor ethics if that floats your boat. Whichever you choose is fine with me.Personally, I'm feeling just a tad disillusioned at the moment. I did not volunteer literally days of my time for a party that thought it was "entitled to its entitlements".... at least I didn't think I was doing so through the campaign.
Andrew is not just a good blogger and a nice guy, he is also a principled supporter of his chosen political party. So this really must come as a hoof in the goolies for him. And he is not alone.
Between the cabinet seat for floor-crosser David Emerson and the appointment of an unelected Michel Fortier to the Senate and to cabinet, we probably have quite a few perturbed Conservative supporters out there. A firm stand on principles in Stephen Harper's prime ministership lasted about half an hour.
But, really, these folks kind of had a fall coming for proclaiming - and fervently believing - that their politicians would be more principled than the politicians they are replacing. It is not that politicians are inherently evil (Bush administration notwithstanding), it's that politics is a game that requires a malleable set of principles in order to gain and keep power, and then a good PR shop to convince people why the abandonment of principles was, in itself, a principled act.
This really isn't gloating, and Harper and his gang aren't any ethically worse than any other politicians out there. The Conservatives are simply getting a dose of reality now that they hold the reins of power, and so are their more idealistic supporters. Leadership requires tough choices often tinged with shades of grey. Deal with it, folks. There's more to come.
"Leadership requires tough choices often tinged with shades of grey."
Sure - I agree with the sentiment, however I don't think there's much grey in allowing Emerson to jump into the cabinet, or handing an important job to an unelected senator. If this was a case of picking the lesser of two evils, perhaps I would be a little less let down by Harper's actions.... but its not.
I know what you mean, Andrew, but these are the shenanigans that build and maintain political power structures. Still, I can't deny even I was amazed at how swiftly Harper went brutally pragmatic.
It must suck to hope for a saviour and get just another damned politician for your trouble.
These are indeed the types of "unprincipled" actions that build and maintain power, and if it weren't for the fact that Emerson declared that he would be Harper's worst enemy not two weeks ago, I would agree that this is an example of leadership requiring "tough choices."
But Emerson is clearly not someone to be trusted, and someone who is willing to cross the floor that quickly after an election should not have been considered for cabinet. This may simply indicate that Harper's political instincts are as lacking as Martin's. He's forgotten two things, assuming he never knew them:
1) Appearance is reality. Whatever maneuvering Harper deems necessary to maintain power, it must at least seem somewhat principled or else justifiable. The optics of Emerson's defection are appalling and make Harper look hypocritical for accepting his "worst enemy" into cabinet.
2) Loyalty matters. A leader who surrounds himself with those who are only interested in their own advancement does so at his own peril. Whether Emerson turns out to be a liability in the future is unclear, but his inclusion in the cabinet does NOT help ensure the loyalty of Harper's existing members.
Surely Harper has something to gain from all this. What's the strategy here? It has been suggested that maybe this is Mulroney's doing. If so, why would Harper be following Mulroney's blueprint and not his? How would that fit into his incremental strategy":
And another thing, from a PsyOps perspective, seeing that the 'Captain Canada' stunt was a complete fiasco, such 'on-the-surface-dumb' political moves fit very nicely in the plan to show that, see, there is nothing to fear here. That guy is such a klutz!
Sun Tzu did say, didn't he, that "while it's soothing to underestimate the enemy, it's often fatal, too."
I just read Cherniak's comment on those events. He has some good points. Not at all underestimating Harper for sure! That's wise of him, I think.
This past election was not about the Liberal government's competence, but rather about its ethics, as exposed in the course of the Gomery enquiry.
Whenever elections are about "ethics", you should know that the issue becomes one side's ethics, rather than the popular acceptance of the other side's actual perscriptions for power.
I expect this Conservative government to be more ideological and less pragmatic than the the former Liberal government, and less competent. I don't expect it to be any more ethical. If anything, I expect them to be be even less so.
All I can think of this morning is a campaigning former PM who once said of patronage appointments, during a televised debate, "You had an option, sir. You could have said no." The man went on to become the PM who made more patronage appointments than the ones he was railing against. In fact, when he made the comment his patronage appointment machinery was already gearing up.
We've seen this kind of hypocrisy before, time after time. We haven't learned a thing.
The issue for me is not simply ethics and floor crossing, but the abject "Canada Deserves Better" moralizing that came from the Harper campaign. The CPC has lost the moral credibility to push their core issues of accountability, democratic renewal, and senate reform. Many Canadians were willing to give these folks a chance to prove themselves as serious contenders in the political arena. But I think they just blew their one big chance.
kgp