FTT

I'm just about fed up with the Harper Tories. I felt some trepidation when they were first elected, tempered with the knowledge that they weren't going to be able to pass the worst parts of their agenda without serious compromise. And in a lot of ways, that's been borne out. In some instances, changes in the political landscape - like the rising importance of environmental issues to conservative voters - have prompted them to take positive steps despite themselves. So while I don't agree with most of their policies, they haven't been a disaster, and I'm sure somewhere in their record I'd find something I could support.

No, the problems I have with them are to do with style. Let's start with the first thing they did: "Canada's New Government". Apart from being an obnoxious phrase, the implication that they've replaced the structure of our government is misleading (and worrying) - but I guess that's what rebranding is all about. If they were being honest, why bother changing the phrase "government of Canada"?

Then there's the fact that they're hanging on to it well past the point it could reasonably be considered accurate. A "new" government, I think it's fair to say, wouldn't have introduced a budget or had time for (multiple) cabinet shuffles; nor should it have had time to have had all the stationary changed. A couple of suggestions for words to replaced "new": "current", "present", "temporary", "provisional", or "soon-to-be-replaced."

It's not surprising that they're clinging to the phrase, though, when you listen to anything Harper (or the couple of cabinet members he allows off their leash) has to say. Phrases like "when we came to office", "the previous government" and "after 13 years of foot-dragging" appear like flies on sherbert. Sure, after every change of government you can expect a flurry of finger-pointing and blame-laying - and that's fair. The Liberals could have done a lot more on the environment, on native issues, on federal-provincial relations, etc., and I didn't have a problem with the first couple of months of chastisement. After that, though, things quickly got to a 'put up or shut up' point, which was at least a year ago. Once you're established in power, complaining about what the last guys didn't do is either whining or campaigning.

The latter is fine, if you're in an election campaign. Which, as you may have noticed, we're not. We also don't yet run our campaigns outside the country; the Tories haven't seemed to have realized this yet. In fact, just today, Harper used his meeting with incoming French President Sarkozy to point out, yet again, the Liberals' poor record of restraining carbon emissions. As was said the time Rona Ambrose fit a year's worth of piss in a 3 minute summit speech, no-one else is talking about their predecessors (and given that the French guy has been in office for what, two weeks now? - he's the only one who could be forgiven it). So rather than do something constructive (and no, intensity-based guidelines are not something), the Tories are choosing to talk about how the other guys just talked but didn't do anything.

So that leaves us with whining. And it fits with the other thing the Tories are good at: being some testy-assed, thin-skinned little bitches. Harper's shit-fit last Thursday ("When the leader of the Opposition is able to stand in uniform...then I'll care about his opinion...") was probably his most fascistic moment so far, but he's always shown himself to be a humourless prick.

He's also shown himself to be the political equivalent of a grade-grubber. There's rarely been a major policy announcement that hasn't had Harper as the sole speaker; despite having run on promises of political reform, the only things he's done have been to make the Supreme Court confirmation process awkward, add an extra couple of days of voting, and set fixed election dates. (Gosh, thanks! Token steps are just as good as real ones!) The Tories have also been playing to their base - their knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing base - from the moment they came to power; their petulant unwillingness to speak to the press, their offensive statements about opposition politicians' loyalties (seriously, fuck right off with that shit) and their running childish attack ads with no sign of an election anywhere in sight are of a piece with Harper's lack of humour or pleasantness. He tried very hard to be presented as 'boring' in the 2006 campaign, as if this might make him look like less of a robot. What it did was highlight the fact that he IS boring - I'm half asleep the second he opens his mouth - and that all he's got going for him is the ruthless, uninteresting drive of the control freak.

Of course, it's not really getting him the power he wants. He's still ending up Prime Minister of this country, which stubbornly refuses to be the place he's pushing it to be.

The title of Linda McQuaig's new book, Holding The Bully's Coat (which I'm more tempted to buy with each passing day of cringing and eye-rolling) sums up where this all gets us. Harper today bloviated about how committed 'we' were to action on climate change even as it was clear that he'd be backing Bush's non-action plan (his line about being a "bridge" between the EU and US is, of course, horseshit). He also commented on the peabrained American plan to place anti-missile defense installations in eastern Europe and Putin's sabre-rattling reaction (which is understandable, if not helpful). Harper's statement: Russia has nothing to fear. Well, one can imagine Putin thinking, that's a fucking relief.

Bush isn't helping, of course - how could he? He's plainly incapable of seeing another's point of view, and so he's prattling that "The Cold War is over," while blithely taking near-precise steps to bring it back. It's almost as if, I dunno, he's drunk or something.

I've read Americans say it's taken Bush the Younger's reign to make them miss Reagan; it's taken Harper's to make me miss Mulroney.