By this time next week, the federal election campaign of 2008 will be history.
Why is it, then, that I don’t feel like we’re making history?
This election has been one of the most desultory campaigns in memory. With no emotional issue to galvanize voters (like free trade in 1988), no pressing urge to throw the rascals out (take your pick of 1993, 1979, 1957, or many others) and no exciting new personality to raise our hopes (Trudeau) only to dash them later (guess who?), the election of ’08 has been listless and pointless.
I’ve tried — oh, how I have tried — to get interested. But with the results in this politically stunted province not in doubt (many Alberta Tory MPs have spent more time campaigning in ridings outside of Alberta than in their own), it hardly seems worth 10 minutes of my arguably valuable time to vote on Oct. 14.
To try to rev up my enthusiasm for voting, I watched what I could of the leaders’ debates last week, beginning in French. But after about 20 minutes, I started to feel mal de tête.
Listening to simultaneous translation is like watching a dubbed Godzilla movie, with Stephen Harper as Godzilla and Stéphane Dion as Mothra. I sometimes switched to CBC French to try to pick up a few random words left over from my high school French, but it seemed to me that everyone was talking about grapefruits in the library, so I gave up. I did manage to pick up a few stray words from Green Party leader Elizabeth May, because she ... spoke ... so .... deli-ber-ate-ly, like an elementary school French teacher, that I could understand her a bit. Still, the debate did not translate, and I gave up.
The English debate was easier to understand, although no easier to watch.
I never thought it would be possible to feel sorry for the doctrinaire bully Harper, but it almost happened. Watching Harper — with those ice-blue eyes, cruel mouth, slightly beaver-like teeth, and helmet of hair — get verbally smacked down on the economy and everything else made him almost sympathetic. Almost. After spending millions trashing Stéphane Dion via cowardly TV ads, it was nice to see Harper have to face the music. When NDP leader Jack Layton (who knows the answer to everything, and isn’t afraid to let everyone know that) told Harper, “You either don’t care or are incompetent,” Harper looked like he wanted to reach over and pull Layton’s prissy little mustache out of his face, hair by hair.
Dion did reasonably well, considering his sub-Chrétient command of English. He actually seemed to get emotional over the Green Shift plan, which I think has done his party more harm than good. It might be a good idea, but I know for sure that it’s a bad idea to introduce something revolutionary and complicated in an election. Any policy that can be twisted into sounding like a tax hike, true or not, is death to a campaign. (In the 2007 provincial election, the Alberta Liberals proposed ending the natural gas rebate program, and using the money for home energy retrofits. The Tories twisted that into the ludicrous threat of seniors losing their homes when they couldn’t pay their heating bills. It was moronic, but I have no doubt it scared the crap out of a lot of older voters.)
To his credit, Harper deflected most of the barbs thrown his way, but I think they landed during the discussion on Afghanistan. As the leaders pointed out, if Harper were prime minister when George Bush launched his catastrophic war on Iraq — the New Coke of American political blunders — Canadian troops would be in Iraq today. It scares me that Harper was in lockstep with Bush on this fatal blunder, and it bothers me even more that Harper would not admit to being wrong. (As scary as that was, it was a child’s bedtime story compared to Jack Layton saying, “With Jack Layton as prime minister ...” )
Ultimately, the debate was neither enlightening nor game-changing. How could it be, with five people, three of whom had no chance of becoming prime minister? What we needed was a one-on-one with Harper and Dion, the only two men with a legitimate chance of becoming the next PM. The five-person format assured there would be no KO moment like Brian Mulroney’s famous demolition of John Turner in 1984. (Check it out at archives.cbc.ca/politics.) I guess having a plethora of political voices gives us a healthier, more nuanced democracy then the Americans, but I do sometimes envy the American ability to see every issue in stark black-and-white terms — no Barack Obama pun intended.
For me, the most telling moment of the debate wasn’t a moment at all, but a signal. I noticed Harper was wearing a Canadian flag lapel pin, aping the showy patriotism of American right-wing politicos who would rather go naked than appear in public without their flag pin. I hate the increasingly American tone of Canadian campaigns, a trend which we can pin entirely on Harper and his Republican-lite team.
Hmmm ... I might just have talked myself into voting on Tuesday after all.
