Nothing Beats A Solid Record
A few days after Prime Minister Stephen Harper called a federal election, a Canadian broadcaster wistfully compared the campaigns on the two sides of the border:
"It's like sitting alone in a tiny attic apartment listening to a wonderful party roaring below."
I snorted.
"No it's not. It's like being warm in bed with your wife happily watching some classic movie, while through the floor you hear the crushing, awful noise of hundreds of people blowing out their eardrums and wrecking their livers in a desperate effort to score a hookup before closing time."
What would John McCain give to be able to mount the kind of campaign Stephen Harper is running?
Harper's message is one of proud accomplishment: We made the government work, we cut taxes, balanced the budget, repaid debt, sustained economic growth and enjoyed strong growth in employment and personal incomes.
Against a challenger offering radical change, Harper can ask:Why tamper with success? Stephane Dion suffers the same problem that faced Bob Dole in 1996 -- that has faced every challenger seeking to displace an effective and successful incumbent.
Contrast that with John Mc-Cain's situation!
Just this past week, the U. S. governent has had to take over two giant government-sponsored mortgage lending institutions, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, to avert a collapse of the U.S. credit market.
That might seem enough bad news for one week. But no. On Wednesday, federal inspectors released a report detailing the corruption, drug abuse and sexual misconduct inside the Interior Department. The officials in charge of collecting oil and gas royalties from public lands -- up to $10-billion a year -- have engaged in what the inspectors call a "culture of ethical failure," accepting sex and money from the industry they supposedly oversaw. The best sentence in the report: "Sexual relationships with prohibited sources cannot, by definition, be arms' length."
Stephen Harper can tell Canadians: You are better off than you were two and a half years ago. Your government is more honest. Your country is more respected in the world. In the United States, by contrast, the candidate of the incumbent party is left to try to outbid the challenger's promises of change and reform.
Canadians may think this dull. The Globe and Mail's Margaret Wente even suggested that Canada lacks important issues: "The stakes could not be smaller."
Very wrong, I think. For Canadians, the stakes on Oct. 14 are every bit as high as the stakes are for Americans on Nov. 4. Both are electing the next leadership of their federal government, the next management of their national economies. Whether your country is large or medium-sized, it is equally important to you to choose your political leaders wisely.
And dull? If anything, life in Canada is too exciting. The Canadian economy is hyper-cyclical. Recessions are harsher than south of the border, booms more booming. The prices of Canadian natural resource products plunge and soar; the Canadian dollar swings wildly against other major currencies. In the five years from 2002 to 2007, the Canadian dollar appreciated 33% against the U. S. dollar.
The inescapable volatility of the Canadian economy puts a premium on government that is steady, competent and predictable.
Look at some history: no matter who had won the election of 1980, Canada would have faced a difficult adjustment from the high commodity and energy prices of the 1970s period to the low commodity and energy prices of the following decade.
By bad luck, however, the person who did win was the politically reckless and economically incompetent Pierre Trudeau -- and he promptly steered Canada into the disaster of the National Energy Program and 15 years of chronic multibillion-dollar budget deficits.
Nobody could complain that the Trudeau years lacked excitement. They also nearly wrecked the country.
A great athlete makes the nearly impossible look childishly easy. In the same way, good management makes the difficult look dull. There are no near-death experiences, no late-night coffee-and-cigarette sessions. Information is gathered, views are canvassed, merits and demerits are confidentially debated, a decision is reached. New information is grounds to reconsider the decision; mere criticism is not. Everything is careful, steady and predictable -- one less thing to worry about for a private sector already sufficiently exposed to market turbulence.
If John McCain could run on Stephen Harper's record, he'd be cruising to an easy third term for the GOP. Maybe it's because the loonie has become so strong that Canadians feel they can afford to be so much harder to please.
"It's like sitting alone in a tiny attic apartment listening to a wonderful party roaring below."
I snorted.
"No it's not. It's like being warm in bed with your wife happily watching some classic movie, while through the floor you hear the crushing, awful noise of hundreds of people blowing out their eardrums and wrecking their livers in a desperate effort to score a hookup before closing time."
What would John McCain give to be able to mount the kind of campaign Stephen Harper is running?
Harper's message is one of proud accomplishment: We made the government work, we cut taxes, balanced the budget, repaid debt, sustained economic growth and enjoyed strong growth in employment and personal incomes.
Against a challenger offering radical change, Harper can ask:Why tamper with success? Stephane Dion suffers the same problem that faced Bob Dole in 1996 -- that has faced every challenger seeking to displace an effective and successful incumbent.
Contrast that with John Mc-Cain's situation!
Just this past week, the U. S. governent has had to take over two giant government-sponsored mortgage lending institutions, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, to avert a collapse of the U.S. credit market.
That might seem enough bad news for one week. But no. On Wednesday, federal inspectors released a report detailing the corruption, drug abuse and sexual misconduct inside the Interior Department. The officials in charge of collecting oil and gas royalties from public lands -- up to $10-billion a year -- have engaged in what the inspectors call a "culture of ethical failure," accepting sex and money from the industry they supposedly oversaw. The best sentence in the report: "Sexual relationships with prohibited sources cannot, by definition, be arms' length."
Stephen Harper can tell Canadians: You are better off than you were two and a half years ago. Your government is more honest. Your country is more respected in the world. In the United States, by contrast, the candidate of the incumbent party is left to try to outbid the challenger's promises of change and reform.
Canadians may think this dull. The Globe and Mail's Margaret Wente even suggested that Canada lacks important issues: "The stakes could not be smaller."
Very wrong, I think. For Canadians, the stakes on Oct. 14 are every bit as high as the stakes are for Americans on Nov. 4. Both are electing the next leadership of their federal government, the next management of their national economies. Whether your country is large or medium-sized, it is equally important to you to choose your political leaders wisely.
And dull? If anything, life in Canada is too exciting. The Canadian economy is hyper-cyclical. Recessions are harsher than south of the border, booms more booming. The prices of Canadian natural resource products plunge and soar; the Canadian dollar swings wildly against other major currencies. In the five years from 2002 to 2007, the Canadian dollar appreciated 33% against the U. S. dollar.
The inescapable volatility of the Canadian economy puts a premium on government that is steady, competent and predictable.
Look at some history: no matter who had won the election of 1980, Canada would have faced a difficult adjustment from the high commodity and energy prices of the 1970s period to the low commodity and energy prices of the following decade.
By bad luck, however, the person who did win was the politically reckless and economically incompetent Pierre Trudeau -- and he promptly steered Canada into the disaster of the National Energy Program and 15 years of chronic multibillion-dollar budget deficits.
Nobody could complain that the Trudeau years lacked excitement. They also nearly wrecked the country.
A great athlete makes the nearly impossible look childishly easy. In the same way, good management makes the difficult look dull. There are no near-death experiences, no late-night coffee-and-cigarette sessions. Information is gathered, views are canvassed, merits and demerits are confidentially debated, a decision is reached. New information is grounds to reconsider the decision; mere criticism is not. Everything is careful, steady and predictable -- one less thing to worry about for a private sector already sufficiently exposed to market turbulence.
If John McCain could run on Stephen Harper's record, he'd be cruising to an easy third term for the GOP. Maybe it's because the loonie has become so strong that Canadians feel they can afford to be so much harder to please.