Krauthammer on the Canadian Election

I think he has it right.

Cheer Up, Conservatives

Governments ought to change at regular intervals, just to keep things honest. After ten years, an administration tends to run out of ideas and energy. A time out of power is a time to recharge the batteries.

Trudeau may be unqualified, inexperineced, and not very bright, but he has some experienced and qualified people around him. With luck, he will be wise enough to listen to their counsel.

In the meantime, look at the bigger picture. In the Anglosphere as a whole, here is who is in power. right of centre in blue, left-of centre in red.

The Finish Line

This just in: this is Justin.

Tomorrow morning we will know. All the polls show a Liberal win in the Canadian federal election. Probably a minority, but that makes little difference. The NDP will not join a coalition, but they will support Trudeau’s government for now. Given the ideological similarities between the two parties, it should be fairly easy or the Liberals to stay in power beyond that.

I think this outcome was rather improbable when the writ was dropped. It came about, firstly, because the NDP chose the wrong campaign strategy in trying to cleave to the centre. That set up the Liberals as the natural alternative. The emergence of a clear alternative was always going to be trouble for the Conservatives, because their natural constituency is only about a third of the electorate.

I thought that, if a clear alternative were to emerge, it was most likely to be the NDP. I thought that because Trudeau seemed to be gaffe-prone. But that calculation was always playing the odds. AS it turned out, Trudeau avoided saying anything transparently dumb for the duration.

I expect the NDP to stick with Tom Mulcair. They really don’t have a better option handy, and Mulcair was not the problem this time. He deserves another chance. Harper, on the other hand, is not going to want to stay on, even if he could. The next bit of excitement will be a Conservative leadership race.

In a Black Mood

Baron Black of Crossharbour's mug shot.

In his latest piece, Conrad Black is shockingly severe on Stephen Harper, calling him a “sociopath” and a “sadist.” Lord Black calls for the election of Trudeau.

Where is this coming from? Black is ideologically on the right; he was the founder of the National Post, and he founded it to be Canada’s conservative voice.

It sounds like a personal animus against Harper.

I’m guessing that’s what it is. It was under Stephen Harper’s authority that Black was thrown off the Privy Council. His Order of Canada was revoked on the same day. In 2012, Black told Peter Mansbridge that he intended to reapply for his Canadian citizenship “in a year or two.” This has not happened. Black, as a convicted felon, would have needed his application to be approved by the federal cabinet. Presumably he expected this to happen, and was turned down. By Harper.

One can understand, then, why Black would feel personally ill-treated. He, after all, had a lot to do, as he points out in the present column, with the resurrection and reunification of the Conservative Party of Canada, and with creating the media climate for its success.

Black might also be looking wistfully at Donald Trump’s signal success in the US Republican stakes right now. If there were a Canadian figure who could pull the same trick north of 49, Black is the name that naturally comes up. And it is just the sort of thing he might be interested in. He is a political animal. He has already made his mark in finance, in journalism, and in scholarship. Isn’t this the very new world to conquer? Win or lose—most likely lose, according to the last polls—Harper is likely to step down soon. It could have been Black’s moment.

Except that, as a non-citizen, he is a non-starter.

The frustration must be immense.

But here’s a thought: run Barbara Amiel. Think Carly Fiorina.

The NDP Drops Out of Contention

Tom Mulcair strikes the classic politician's pose: looking up and away, as if into the future.

It looks as if Tom Mulcair and the NDP have fallen off the knife edge. Previously in a three-way statistical tie for the current Canadian federal brass ring, each new poll now seems to show them a little bit further behind.

What went wrong?

In retrospect, I think their campaign strategy was flawed. It wasn’t the niqab issue—that should have been as big a problem for the Liberals. It wasn’t opposition to TPP—that was a Hail Mary after the numbers started falling. It wasn’t any blunder by the leader. Their problem was more fundamental: it was in trying to move to the centre to pick up moderate votes. If it is only hitting them this late in the campaign, it is because undecided voters only start to make up their minds this late in the campaign.

Political operatives always want to move to the centre as the vote nears. It is cynical, but it is the conventional wisdom. You win by managing to cover a larger area of the ideological spectrum than your opponent. You win by having the more popular stand on a larger number of issues.

This idea, besides being cynical, is probably wrong. Political operatives care very much about political ideology and about issues. They naturally assume, therefore, that everyone else does. But anyone who does care is probably generally interested in politics, pretty much by definition, and so probably already committed to one party or the other. If you are uncommitted until the last weeks, it follows that you are not a policy wonk. You are uncommitted because you are not big on politics, and are not that interested in the issues.

What are they looking for?

In Canada, specifically, they tend to look for two things. Most times, Canadians don’t like drama. They are just looking for someone who will be competent and honest and will mostly leave them alone. As Bill Davis used to say, with Canadians, “bland works.” They like a Robert Bourassa, or a Mackenzie King, an un-flashy, managerial type. A Stephen Harper.

Every now and then, though, with these long winters and such, things get boring, and Canadians hanker for a little entertainment. Then they want something that looks like vision, like change, but not too scary. They go for a Diefenbaker, a Pierre Trudeau, even a Levesque.

The NDP’s problem is, in the natural run of things, you cannot defeat a managerial type with a managerial type. If Canadians are in the mood for bland, the bland option is always to vote continuity. So, if Stephen Harper is to be defeated, he must either defeat himself by showing great incompetence of corruption, or his opponent must offer some excitement, and people have to be sufficiently bored to grasp for it.

In seeking to look safe, the NDP have inadvertently stripped themselves of any excitement. Trudeau’s Liberals, though, had some inkling this was not the way to go. There is an old saying in the Liberal Party: they always lose if they run to the right of the Conservatives. After all, if you want conservative, you naturally think CPC, not Liberal. Let alone NDP. So the Grits have put some “real change” into their platform: legal marijuana, electoral reform, deficit spending. Nothing too scary, but enough to look cool and a little naughty.

The NDP, seeing their polling begin to slide, doubled down on their initial error by coming out against the TPP. A worse move they could not have made. They figured they were losing by straying from their “base,” so they tacked back suddenly to the left. Instead, they cast off their chance to look managerial, but did it by promising no change. Making them even more boring than the Conservatives. Worse, the original move to the centre made them look dishonest and opportunistic, and the deoubling back made them look doubly insincere and opportunistic.

The Conservatives ought to be in trouble, but are still in contention. Theoretically, the NDP’s fall establishes the Liberals as the clear alternative. If you assume it’s about ideology, instead of 33-33-33, Conservatives- Liberals-NDP, we now risk moving towards 33-66, Conservatives-Liberals. NDP votes are supposed to go Liberal, not jump across the ideological sky to the Conservatives.

So far, that is not happening. The Liberals seem to be going up, and the Conservatives seem to be going up. If there is now only one left-wing party to choose from, there is also, by the same token, now only one managerial party to choose from. These two may cancel out.

In general, the managerial approach is the preferred one in Canada. The vision thing is the harder sell. There is a reason why Canadian governments tend to stay longer in power than anywhere else in the Commonwealth, or perhaps in the democratic world.

So I suspect the odds still favour Harper. The TPP may be the perfect touch, a little change, but change that enhances rather than tarnishes the image of good managerial government.

By the same token, win or lose, the Liberals would be foolish to ditch Trudeau as leader. Each succeeding election, the craving for change will grow, and he has the proper image. "Not ready yet," that's all. If that.

The Lion and the Unicorn

The lion and the unicorn

Were fighting for the crown

The lion beat the unicorn

All around the town.

Some gave them white bread,

And some gave them brown;

Some gave them plum cake

and drummed them out of town

Trudeau and Mulcair have both now said, publicly, adamantly, that they will not prop up the Conservatives in a minority situation. This, pundits prognosticate, means that the Conservatives must get a majority, or they are out.

Not so fast. At this stage, neither alternative party wants the public to think that a vote for them is a vote to keep the Conservatives in. Simple principle: anyone who wants the Conservatives in is voting for the Conservatives.

But what actually happens if the Conservatives win more seats than anyone else?

Harper would have the right to be appointed Prime Minister by the Governor-General. It would be a public scandal if he were not. Then it is up to the other parties to vote him down. Let's say they vote him down. Then, if the election has been quite recent, the Governor-General would properly go to the leader of one of the other parties to see if they can form a government. He might instead violate tradition and call an election, but if he did, the waste of money and apparent lust for power would be a big issue, and the Conservatives would not be the ones blamed.

Now, while it may not be in the interest of either the Liberals or the NDP to see the Conservatives stay in power, it is much less in their interest to see the other alternative party given a chance at government. Since they compete for more or less the same ideological constituency, this would be a crippling blow, perhaps a death blow. It tags their rivals as the apparent alternative.

Therefore, it becomes in their interest not to force it to this point. Given that the Conservatives do not bait them with something they cannot support without looking duplicitous, the party in third place when the election is over is pretty sure to vote with the government for the first six months at least—until it would look as if the Governor General would have to call an election if the government fell.

They could insist, of course, that they are not "propping up" the government at all, but merely supporting this or that specific measure which they feel is in the best interests of Canadians.

The Globe Canadian Leaders' Debate

Trudeau lost. That is what matters.

I have now had a chance to see the Globe & Mail Leaders' Debate. It ran overnight in my time zone, so I had to wait until someone made it available on YouTube.

The main impression left by the debate was the shouting, which often drowned out any comprehensible points. This was terribly unseemly, and not something that will sit well, I think, with Canadians. We are a polite people. We follow the rules.

And Trudeau seemed to be the one most responsible for it. Worse, because he seemed so much younger, it looked worse for him than it would have been for either of the others. Worse still, much of what he said did not seem to make sense, and was repetitious. He seemed overexcited, like a kid on a sugar high. I almost felt like calling for the gong.

On points, Mulcair won. He got off a few really fine lines: on Trudeau “knowing all about” smoke. On the snooze button versus the panic button. He also avoided the creepiness of the first debate. However, I think he lost ground by joining aggressively in the shouting match. And I think Trudeau winged him badly by suggesting that his talk of no deficits was just political boilerplate, that he would get in to power and declare, as always happens, that the books are far worse than he thought, and the promise would have to go. Well done, Trudeau—except that the point probably helps Harper more than the Liberals.

I think Harper won the debate in the terms these “debates” are usually won: on endearing himself to the public. If you were to try to pick the one guy up on that stage who did not sound as much like a conventional politician as the other two, it was--no doubt there is an irony here--Harper. He generally avoided the shouting match. He gave the impression that, instead of making wild promises, he was talking straight: “I never said everything was wonderful.” That tone, I think, will resonate.

Conversely, the points made against him in the debate mostly sounded like typical political jive. As the current race in the US, and the one just concluded in the UK Labour Party, have shown us, times have changed, and the old jive now no longer works. In the past, people were naively inclined to believe, if there was a recession, it must be the government's fault, and if there were good times, it must be the government's doing. Nowadays, we are more aware of what is going on in the world. So, when Trudeau gave the now-too-familiar line “are you better off now than you were ten years ago?” Harper's response was spot-on: “which country would you rather have been in over the past ten years?” Trudeau came off as the political hack, Harper as the straight talker. More notable is the post-debate attempt to nail Harper for using the term “old stock Canadians.” He use it neither approvingly nor disapprovingly. This is hyper-pc stuff, and Trump seems to have revealed, in the States, that there is no longer much of a constituency for it. Harper loses here only if he backtracks or apologizes.

However, it probably does not even matter that Harper won. Because Trudeau lost.

The Conservatives remain in the race because the alternative vote has been split almost evenly between two parties. If the Liberals now fall back, the beneficiary will be the NDP. For Harper to win, his gain will have to be bigger than the Liberals' loss.

Given Trudeau's performance, that seems unlikely.

How Many Politicians Can Dance on a Razor's Edge?

News reports keep saying the Conservative Party of Canada campaign is in disarray and Harper’s chances of forming a new government are disappearing down the rabbit hole. And yet the poll numbers still show the three main federal parties neck and neck, as they have from the beginning of this long campaign.

If this is how Harper does in freefall, I’d like to see what happens if he catches a break.

It seems from this that Harper and the Tories have an absolute floor support of about 30%. But so far all the breaks have gone against the CPC; so we do not yet know really what their ceiling might be.

Of course, for them to stay competitive without their campaign catching fire, something else must happen. Thirty percent keeps you competitive in a three-way race. It will bury you in a two-way race. If they stay flat on their floor, they must count on the NDP and Liberals splitting the opposition vote, as they have so far, right down the middle.

For sheer sporting interest, you can't beat "first past the post."

Off Down the Yellow Brick Road

Gilles Duceppe for Wicked Witch of the West?

It's a silly, trivial, thought, but I can't unthink it. Has anyone else noticed how much the current Canadian election campaign resembles The Wizard of Oz?

Stephen Harper is the tin man—suspected at least of having no heart.

Justin Trudeau is the rubbery scarecrow, suspected of having no brain.

Thomas Mulcair is the cowardly lion—much less frightening than expected.

And Toto? That little dog yapping at everyone's heels just has to be Elizabeth May.