The economy is faltering, incomes are falling behind inflation, and government ethics and accountability are even more of a sick joke now than they were under the Liberals. But Stephen Harper is calling an election because he believes that nothing matters more than public perception of leadership, where his advantage over opposition leader Stéphane Dion is huge.
And indeed, on the same day that Stephen Harper was in the Northwest Territories, robustly defending Canada’s Arctic sovereignty and boldly defining the battlelines for the upcoming national election campaign, Dion was in Montreal, talking up arts funding as a major platform issue and burnishing his elitist credentials.
As much as I favour greater government support for arts and culture (an industry a new report by the Conference Board of Canada says is directly or indirectly maintaining 1.1 million jobs in this country), I know that this is not a salient issue with the swing voters who will decide the election. And Dion is merely underlining in the public mind that he is a Montreal professor with no clue about bread-and-butter issues and no stomach for the rough business of national political leadership.
Canadians don’t doubt Harper’s toughness or his grasp of economic issues. This public perception persists even as he hobbles the federal government by turning over unprecedented power and money to the ever-grasping provinces, and presides over a decline into what he calls a “technical” recession, an interesting modifier if there ever was one. (It calls to mind the doublespeak a few years back from thirtysomething Calgary Conservative MPs Rob Anders and Jason Kenney, who announced with great fanfare and some Frank Zappa nostalgia that they were “technical” virgins.)
But instead of cornering Harper on the direct consequences to Canadian voters of a recession, technical or otherwise, and hammering away at what should be the obvious distinctions between Harper’s economic track record and that of the Liberals, he talks about arts funding and allows Harper to define him as a dangerously left-wing politician who’s out of touch with the mainstream, an accusation which will resonate unless Dion can reset the parameters of this campaign with a national agenda that speaks to people.
Harper’s party is uniquely awash in cash and business expertise, which will help reposition the prime minister slightly but significantly. His challenge is to reinforce the perception that he is a strong leader while revealing a softer and more empathetic side. Women voters in particular are wary of him: polling by Decima shows that many women don’t support Harper because they feel he doesn’t project optimism and doesn’t share their values.
The first national Tory campaign ad, which was unveiled last Friday, strikes the right balance. It emphasizes his status as a “family man” who cares, but it also shows him standing next to a 4x4, so we know that he’s not a total wimp like Dion. And I must admit that my heart swelled at the re-emergence in the ad of the Harper Vest™, that singular girth-concealing fashion statement that had Presidents Bush and Calderon seething with envy at last year’s Mexico summit. Were Harper still pals with Brian Mulroney, however, the former PM might warn him off the shameless use of children as campaign props (even indirectly), which, as Mulroney learned, has a way of backfiring.
One little bit of good news for Dion is that Harper seems particularly anxious to call the election in time to pre-empt this month’s federal by-elections, which I’m guessing Tory polls are showing would not have been the disaster for the Liberals that the government had anticipated. And another spot of cheer for Dion is that some national polls show his party still very much in contention.
But the odds for Dion are long at this point. He ranks third, behind even Jack Layton, in polls asking Canadians whom they would prefer as prime minister, just as the Liberal Party is now in third place in fundraising. As much as I would love to see Layton take advantage of the weaknesses of both larger parties and build a larger NDP presence in Ottawa, a Dion-led Liberal collapse would also or even primarily result in a strengthened Tory caucus.
It’s now up to Dion to cultivate whatever populist flair lurks within him and challenge Harper at every opportunity from a base of solid, voter-relevant economic policy. He must also make maximum use of popular lieutenants like Bob Rae and Michael Ignatieff to show Canadians what a new Liberal team would bring to Ottawa. A strong leader isn’t scared of his own people.
Dion’s leadership win defied expectations, and now all that stands between us and a stronger Harper mandate is the hope that he can somehow do it again.
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