Harper Confronts Economic Crisis As A Lonely Conservative On World Stage
You probably know this old joke:
A mother and her son are walking along the beach. Suddenly a giant wave roars into shore, engulfs the boy and carries him out to sea. The woman bursts into prayer: “Lord I have always been a good woman, given to charity, prayed every day, shunned every sin. Please Lord -- restore my son!” No sooner had she finished, but another wave roared in, and deposited the drenched lad. She eagerly embraced him, then turned to Heaven, and said: “He had a hat.”
Supporters of the Harper government find themselves this week in a similar position. For a government to be re-elected in the middle of the worst financial chaos in a generation -- some say since 1929 -- is an achievement. To increase seat totals, make inroads in once inhospitable ethnic and urban ridings and win one-fifth of the vote in Quebec is an even more impressive achievement.
Yet it’s also true that the government failed to cross that once beckoning threshold to majority status. And if not now, then when? Will the Liberals ever again offer up as tempting a target as Stéphane Dion? Won’t the government -- any government -- stumble into damaging trouble and controversy as its tenure extends into year four, five, six? Can the future hold anything positive?
Anybody who owns a crystal ball has its dial firmly set to the Wall Street channel. But here are some hopes and goals that Canadian conservatives might want to keep in mind over the coming months:
Prime Minister Harper will soon confront some of the most difficult challenges faced by any Canadian leader since 1945: a global economic crisis, a grinding war on the other side of the planet and an aging population that will require more and more public support.
And he will face these challenges intellectually very much alone. Other recent prime ministers could all find inspiration and support from ideological soulmates around the world.
Jean Chrétien was elected in 1993 as one of a wave of neo-liberal politicians, questioning past Big Government orthodoxies: Bill Clinton in the United States, Tony Blair in Britain, Gerhard Schroeder in Germany. These leaders borrowed ideas, policies and rhetoric from each other and provided each other important moral support -- as when, for example, Bill Clinton all but endorsed Chrétien’s Clarity Act in a speech in the Canadian House of Commons.
Brian Mulroney could find allies around the planet for his deregulating, market-opening and anti-Soviet economic and foreign policies: Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Germany’s Helmut Kohl, Japan’s Yasuhiro Nakasone.
Pierre Trudeau did not get on well with any American president. But he could find like-minded leaders in Britain (Harold Wilson and James Callaghan), Germany (Willy Brandt, Helmut Schmidt) and Mexico (Luis Echeverria especially).
Harper, however, will soon be standing quite alone. If Barack Obama wins the U.S. presidential election, as seems probable, Harper will be left as the only surviving conservative head of government in the English-speaking world. The non-English-speaking world is not much more congenial: In Germany, a very slightly conservative party governs in coalition with Social Democrats. And in France, Nicholas Sarkozy is veering further and further left with every drop in the stock market indexes, calling, in a speech this week in Brussels, for a “new form of capitalism” in which no financial institution “should escape regulation and supervision.”
This situation opens both opportunities and dangers for Prime Minister Harper.
The danger first: Canada’s reliably left-tilting media will soon be taunting Harper as an international outlier, a sorry holdout against the glamorous new ideas of President Obama.
That test offers an unusual eminence for a Canadian political leader. But then, these are unusual times.
A mother and her son are walking along the beach. Suddenly a giant wave roars into shore, engulfs the boy and carries him out to sea. The woman bursts into prayer: “Lord I have always been a good woman, given to charity, prayed every day, shunned every sin. Please Lord -- restore my son!” No sooner had she finished, but another wave roared in, and deposited the drenched lad. She eagerly embraced him, then turned to Heaven, and said: “He had a hat.”
Supporters of the Harper government find themselves this week in a similar position. For a government to be re-elected in the middle of the worst financial chaos in a generation -- some say since 1929 -- is an achievement. To increase seat totals, make inroads in once inhospitable ethnic and urban ridings and win one-fifth of the vote in Quebec is an even more impressive achievement.
Yet it’s also true that the government failed to cross that once beckoning threshold to majority status. And if not now, then when? Will the Liberals ever again offer up as tempting a target as Stéphane Dion? Won’t the government -- any government -- stumble into damaging trouble and controversy as its tenure extends into year four, five, six? Can the future hold anything positive?
Anybody who owns a crystal ball has its dial firmly set to the Wall Street channel. But here are some hopes and goals that Canadian conservatives might want to keep in mind over the coming months:
Prime Minister Harper will soon confront some of the most difficult challenges faced by any Canadian leader since 1945: a global economic crisis, a grinding war on the other side of the planet and an aging population that will require more and more public support.
And he will face these challenges intellectually very much alone. Other recent prime ministers could all find inspiration and support from ideological soulmates around the world.
Jean Chrétien was elected in 1993 as one of a wave of neo-liberal politicians, questioning past Big Government orthodoxies: Bill Clinton in the United States, Tony Blair in Britain, Gerhard Schroeder in Germany. These leaders borrowed ideas, policies and rhetoric from each other and provided each other important moral support -- as when, for example, Bill Clinton all but endorsed Chrétien’s Clarity Act in a speech in the Canadian House of Commons.
Brian Mulroney could find allies around the planet for his deregulating, market-opening and anti-Soviet economic and foreign policies: Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Germany’s Helmut Kohl, Japan’s Yasuhiro Nakasone.
Pierre Trudeau did not get on well with any American president. But he could find like-minded leaders in Britain (Harold Wilson and James Callaghan), Germany (Willy Brandt, Helmut Schmidt) and Mexico (Luis Echeverria especially).
Harper, however, will soon be standing quite alone. If Barack Obama wins the U.S. presidential election, as seems probable, Harper will be left as the only surviving conservative head of government in the English-speaking world. The non-English-speaking world is not much more congenial: In Germany, a very slightly conservative party governs in coalition with Social Democrats. And in France, Nicholas Sarkozy is veering further and further left with every drop in the stock market indexes, calling, in a speech this week in Brussels, for a “new form of capitalism” in which no financial institution “should escape regulation and supervision.”
This situation opens both opportunities and dangers for Prime Minister Harper.
The danger first: Canada’s reliably left-tilting media will soon be taunting Harper as an international outlier, a sorry holdout against the glamorous new ideas of President Obama.
But the opportunity is even greater: Free-market, limited-government conservatives around the world have long looked to the United States and the Republican party for leadership. After the defeat impending in November, however, Republicans seem fated to recoil upon a thin inventory of purist rhetoric and antiquated policy ideas. Such a reaction could lock U.S. conservatives out of government for years to come -- and impoverish the thinking of centre-right movements worldwide.
That test offers an unusual eminence for a Canadian political leader. But then, these are unusual times.