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Blog of Adam Daifallah -- author, journalist, law student. Lover of politics, writing, golf, curling, fitness, fashion, bacon and maple products -- not necessarily (but probably) in that order. Partisan of the Anglosphere. Contact me via email at adam@daifallah.com.
Saturday, December 06, 2008
Harper's got the conch
The Liberals have started throwing Dion to the wolves. John Manley's open call for his resignation is the first salvo; many more are sure to come. This also might be Manley's way of rethinking his decision to not run for leader. (One thing's for sure: Bob Rae's decision to make himself cheerleader-in-chief of the coalition scheme will likely be fatal to his campaign.)
The coalition movement has been a public relations disaster, with a spate of polls showing the Canadian public rallying to the Conservative Party. Obviously, sensible Liberals -- from whom we have not heard much these last ten days -- are realizing that Canadians are not warm to this. Hence why they must pin this on the outgoing leader to avoid damaging the Liberal brand any further. If Dion and Dion alone wears this, the party can move on relatively quickly.
It was an incredible week in Ottawa, where I currently am. Most days it seemed we were verging on Lord of the Flies -- quasi-organized chaos.
It was fascinating to observe the body language of MPs, with the Conservatives I saw looking either like they had been hit by a bus, or just waking up from a bad nightmare. Liberals had either a perplexed look or an overjoyed one (Marlene Jennings, whom I saw at a bar Tuesday night, had a Cheshire-cat grin on her face that would make even Donny and Marie Osmond marvel.) And journalists just looked exhausted -- probably because they were.
At the height of coalition fever, in the middle of the week, the behaviour of the Liberals and NDP reminded me of that scene in the movie The Ten Commandments when Moses climbs the mountain, leaving his followers below to revel in idolatry, adultery and other sins. The would-be coalition was worshiping the golden calf of power without thinking through the longer-term implications, all in an attempt to save Dion from joining Edward Blake in the dustbin of federal political history. (I specify federal political history because Blake did serve as Ontario Premier and had a spectacular legal career, founding one of this country's finest law firms.)
Prime Minister's Harper's office has come in for severe criticism for not having enough "adult supervision" in the Langevin block, but to me it seemed most of the child-like behaviour was emanating from the coalition. It will be fascinating to see the postmortems, and let's hope at least one parliamentary wag has it in him or her to write a book about what happened when all is said and done. I'm particularly interested to learn more about the role of ultra-ambitious MP Thomas Mulcair in creating this story, because I have a feeling he was the prime mover behind much of what went on.
Can't wait to see what happens next week.
# posted by Adam Daifallah : 10:10 AM
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