French Morals, American Justice - The Globe and Mail

By Margaret Wente - from the Globe and Mail

The French elites are in an advanced state of shock about the downfall of one of their own, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the man who was widely expected to be president. But the French elites are not like you and me. Instead of asking whether such a powerful, brilliant and successful man could be so coarse, reckless and stupid, they’re outraged about the perp walk. How dare the Americans humiliate him so? Pictures of the great man in cuffs are indicative of “a brutality, a violence, of an incredible cruelty,” declared Elisabeth Guigou, a former French justice minister. “I’m happy that we don’t have the same judiciary system.”

Me too. The American system is infinitely more fair. In France, it’s unimaginable that an immigrant hotel maid of no status could lodge an assault complaint against an ultra-alpha male and be taken seriously. It’s inconceivable that the French police would pull that man off a plane moments before it departed or pack him off to a dingy jail cell like a common criminal. Good for them. If DSK had made it out of the country, it’s uncertain they’d have been able to extradite him.

Of course, it’s up to the American justice system to prove Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s guilt or innocence, a job at which it is generally quite good. According to press reports, his lawyers won’t deny there was a sexual encounter in that $3,000 hotel room. Instead, they’ll argue that it was consensual.

Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s sexual history was no secret among the French ruling class. But they didn’t care, and the media studiously ignored it. It would have been considered in grotesque bad taste (and possibly illegal) to bring these matters up. Besides, a certain amount of libertinage has always been admired among the political class, as a sign of vigour.

The French have long despised the Americans as unsophisticated prudes in matters sexual. In their view, the prosecution of Bill Clinton for dallying with an intern in the Oval Office was a crime. They vigorously defended the creepy filmmaker Roman Polanski, who sodomized an adolescent girl. How dare those lowbrows persecute a great artist? As every intellectual in France entertained wild conspiracy theories about the right-wing plot to bring down DSK, it was left to far-right politician Marine Le Pen to speak the truth. DSK, she pointed out, had long been a menace, and now he is “completely discredited.”

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French morals, American justice - The Globe and Mail

Here’s why Stephen Harper really won - The Globe and Mail

By Margaret Wente - from the Globe and Mail

Thanks to the central Canadian punditocracy, I now know why the Conservatives won an overwhelming election victory, and why the Liberals were pulverized. It was those nasty attack ads on TV.

So powerful were they that they persuaded millions of gullible voters to rise up against Michael Ignatieff and vote for someone else. Mr. Ignatieff himself blames them for his demise. Fellow Liberals think their leader was just too darn high-minded to strike back. “This is a blood sport,” griped Jim Karygiannis, one of the last Liberal MPs standing. “There is no Mr. Nice in this business.”

Liberal-minded opinion-mongers have been twisting themselves into pretzels to explain Stephen Harper’s completely unexpected whopping victory. They’re obsessed with the attack ads. Besides, they say, the Conservatives just got lucky. They reaped a windfall from the collapse of the Bloc Québécois and unexpected vote splits. Another reason is that Mr. Harper successfully appealed to “voter fatigue,” “fear” and an uninformed electorate that’s sadly oblivious to the destruction of democracy in Ottawa.

Anyway, they argue, it really wasn’t such a victory after all. Mr. Harper, they say, failed to broaden his base (even though he conquered Fortress Toronto, where he’d always been shut out), and won only 40 per cent of the popular vote (just like Jean Chrétien and Bill Davis). One commentator compared his win to George W. Bush’s “stolen” election of 2000.

If you want to understand why Mr. Harper loathes the mainstream media, look no further. But if you want to understand why he won, you’ll have to look elsewhere. One problem is that the media demonize the very qualities that have made him a success. They hate him for his micro-managing, control-freak ways. But those same qualities have been crucial to his success. Without them, he’d never have survived five years in the bear pit of minority government.

In fact, the Conservatives won because they did the sorts of things the Liberals used to do. They built broad coalitions among disparate groups. Take the so-called ethnic vote. When the Liberals courted new Canadians, it was smart. When the Conservatives do it, it’s sleazy. During the campaign, the CBC assembled countless panels of ethnic people to express their disgust at this condescending and divisive tactic. Amazingly, however, ethnic voters seemed glad to have important cabinet ministers show up in their ridings. They liked the focus on stability and a strong economy. Besides, the Liberals hadn’t been around for years.

The Conservatives’ years of efforts paid off spectacularly. To get results like that, you need a long-term strategy, passion, and someone willing to drink 15,000 cups of tea. The Liberals no longer have any of those things.

The Conservatives profited from vote splits. But they were also able to get out the vote where it mattered. They were focused and had ground troops who worked hard. For this, they’re being accused of running a soulless and technocratic campaign. (When Liberals ran things this way, they were called “professional.”)

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Here’s why Stephen Harper really won - The Globe and Mail

Fear and loathing among the eastern elites - The Globe and Mail

By Margaret Wente - from the Globe and Mail

I’m not crazy about Stephen Harper. He’s a cold fish. When he tried a little victory smile the other day, he looked like he was having an attack of gas. I’d rather share a beer with Jack Layton or a glass of chardonnay with Michael Ignatieff than a double-double with Mr. Harper. He strikes me as a guy with little sense of humour and even less small talk. I didn’t even vote for him this time around.

But the sheer animosity of many of my friends amazes me. They genuinely fear and loathe him. One of them unblushingly compares him to Hitler. Many of these otherwise smart, delightful and wise people sincerely believe that Mr. Harper wants to turn Canada into a right-wing theocracy where women have no abortion rights and petty criminals are executed at dawn.

“He’ll try to repeal gay marriage and privatize health care,” one of them predicted on Monday night. She was sitting next to me as we watched the returns on the CBC with a bunch of well-heeled downtown Torontonians. As the count of blue seats ticked steadily upward, the mood became funereal. They looked as if they wanted to don black armbands.

It’s not unusual for politicians to be loathed. In the last leg of Brian Mulroney’s reign, people took an irrational dislike to him. But the animosity displayed toward Mr. Harper is far more vitriolic. As Toronto Star columnist Heather Mallick told British readers in The Guardian, Mr. Harper is “a Canadian version of George W. Bush, minus the warmth and intellect. … What happens now is the full-scale Americanization of Canada.”

The intellect part is false, of course (as is the Americanization). You need a very big brain to steer your party from outer darkness to a majority government. What Mr. Harper lacks is emotional intelligence.

What are the roots of this animosity? An obvious one is Mr. Harper’s public personality – dour, controlling and sometimes mean. He lacks a vision that calls us to a higher purpose. His leadership strength is managerial, not inspirational. He has many of the characteristics of those CEOs who succeed not through personal charm but by laying out a strategic plan and sweating the details. He is relentlessly determined to push the marble with his nose to get where he wants to go.

Many people have deplored Mr. Harper’s efforts to demonize Michael Ignatieff as an opportunistic carpetbagger. But the hatchet job the Liberals have done on him goes back years, and has been devastatingly effective. Mr. Harper is routinely depicted as a cross between Darth Vader and Lord Voldemort, whose soulless band of Death Eaters will destroy democracy in Canada if they get the chance. They have successfully convinced themselves (and a large but shrinking part of the electorate) that a vote for Mr. Harper is un-Canadian.

It’s not uncommon to find this paranoid streak in the smartest salons of Ottawa and Toronto. Strange to say, it reminds me of those Republican wing-nuts who believe Barack Obama isn’t really an American.


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Fear and loathing among the eastern elites - The Globe and Mail

The Globe’s election endorsement: Facing up to our challenges - The Globe and Mail

From the Globe and Mail

We are nearing the end of an unremarkable and disappointing election campaign, marked by petty scandals, policy convergences and a dearth of serious debate. Canadians deserved better. We were not presented with an opportunity to vote for something bigger and bolder, nor has there been an honest recognition of the most critical issues that lie ahead: a volatile economy, ballooning public debts and the unwieldy future of our health-care system.

The challenges facing our next federal government do not end there, of course. The next House of Commons must find new ways to protect Parliament, the heart of our democracy. It needs to reform its troubled equalization program without straining national unity. Relations with the U.S. are at a critical juncture. Any thickening of the border threatens to punish all Canadians, while negotiations over perimeter security have implications for national sovereignty and economic security. Wars in Libya and Afghanistan, climate change, Canada's role in the world, the rapid and exciting change of the country's ethnic and cultural makeup – the list is great, as is the need for strong leadership in Ottawa.

Whom should Canadians turn to? Read more...

The Globe’s election endorsement: Facing up to our challenges - The Globe and Mail

Does NDP pose more of a threat to national unity than the Bloc? - The Globe and Mail

by Adam Radwanski - from the Globe and Mail

The obvious, instinctive reaction is to cheer for Jack Layton – if not nationally, then in the province where he’s most caught fire.

Quebeckers have long parked their votes with the Bloc Québécois – a party that by its nature has no interest in building a better country. Mr. Layton’s NDP, which has seemingly come out of nowhere to lead the Bloc in popular support, offers the prospect of more constructive representation and more thoughtful consideration of Quebec’s role within Canada.

But before getting out the pompoms, Mr. Layton’s message in recent days raises an uncomfortable question: Could the federalist party pose more of a threat to national unity than the sovereigntist one?

To create the “winning conditions” that sovereigntists have long been seeking, and that will be in demand if the Parti Québécois defeats Jean Charest’s Liberals in the next provincial election, requires a strong sense of grievance. The oui side came so close to victory in the 1995 referendum largely because of the perception that Quebec’s interests had been rejected by the rest of Canada, through the defeats of the Meech Lake and Charlottetown accords. But as of now, there’s nothing nearly so galvanizing in play.

For sovereigntists, it’s difficult to change that on their own. The PQ plans to try, with a stridently nationalist agenda aimed at provoking Ottawa. But Bloc MPs can make no serious claim to wanting to make federalism work, so it’s hard for them to help convey and spread a sense of disillusionment. Nor can they easily entice the federal government to launch into constitutional talks, of the sort that have previously ended in heartbreak, because no prime minister would be under any illusion that he or she could make them happy.

History suggests, however, that self-identified federalists are a different story. In the 1980s, Brian Mulroney built a coalition with soft nationalists, then tried to appease them. His reward was a chunk of his caucus breaking off to form the Bloc, a gesture with much more impact than anything the party they formed could do today. Their revolt, along with the frustration of the federalist provincial government of the day, helped set in motion the near-miss in 1995.

Since then, federal governments have stepped more carefully. Jean Chrétien’s Liberals went nowhere near constitutional talks, and took the opposite tack by introducing the Clarity Act. (That they also created all kinds of bad will with the sponsorship program is a different matter.) Paul Martin was more ambiguous – making former Bloc MP Jean Lapierre his Quebec lieutenant, and embracing “asymmetrical federalism” in a way Mr. Chrétien didn’t. But after dabbling with soft nationalism – giving the Québécois a “nation within Canada” designation, and engaging in a flirtation with Mario Dumont’s Action Démocratique du Québec – Stephen Harper has shifted back a little closer to where Mr. Chrétien was.

It remains highly unlikely that Mr. Layton will lead the government after May 2, but seat gains in Quebec and elsewhere could give him a big hand in shaping it. So it bears noting that there are a few shades of Mr. Mulroney’s approach in what he’s doing to win over Quebec.

The NDP has long had a commitment to provincial autonomy for Quebec that seems at odds with its interventionist message in the rest of the country. But Mr. Layton isn’t just promising not to impose federal programs. He backs extending Bill 101, Quebec’s controversial language legislation, into federally regulated workplaces. He is non-committal on the Clarity Act. He doesn’t want to add more seats in the House of Commons for underrepresented provinces such as Ontario and Alberta, without also adding more seats for Quebec so that it remains overrepresented. Read more...

Does NDP pose more of a threat to national unity than the Bloc? - The Globe and Mail

Tory majority could hinge on where votes bleed to NDP in final week - The Globe and Mail

By Eric Grenier - from the Globe and Mail

There is only a week left in this unexpectedly surprising election campaign and the final outcome is still unpredictable. But when the votes are counted May 2, where the surging New Democrats make their gains and whether the Liberals can hold on to their own seats could mean the difference between minority and majority government for the Conservatives.

According to ThreeHundredEight.com’s updated seat and vote projections for The Globe and Mail, the Tories are still on track to fall short of a majority, with 150 seats and 38.6 per cent of the national vote. The Liberals are likely to place second with 27.4 per cent and 76 seats (a loss of one since last week), while the New Democrats follow with 19 per cent and 36 seats (a gain of two). And the Bloc Québécois has dropped two seats to 45 in Quebec.

But the final week of the election campaign will almost certainly see these vote and seat numbers change significantly. Read more

Tory majority could hinge on where votes bleed to NDP in final week - The Globe and Mail