He has failed because the imbroglio in the upper chamber speaks to more than the dubious accounting methods said to be employed by Mike Duffy and Pamela Wallin, two high-profile Harper senators forced to resign from the Conservative caucus.
It also speaks to the essential Stephen Harper.
The prime minister is a complicated man. He is at heart deeply ideological, a Margaret Thatcher conservative who believes firmly in the primacy of markets.
However, on broad issues, Harper has been willing to demonstrate a surprising streak of flexibility. At the beginning of this slump he deliberately pushed up the federal deficit in order to get the economy moving.
On the seminal question of medicare, he moved away from a stance of outright opposition to Canada’s favourite social program and instead adopted a craftier position of benign neglect.
But there is another side to Harper, a bitter and mistrusting side that is beyond ideology.
It is this that makes him so famously controlling.
He does not trust his caucus members to speak their minds. Nor, with a few notable exceptions, does he trust his cabinet. His office rides herd on what ministers may do or say in a manner without precedent in this country.
Incidentally, it is this aspect of Harper that makes so unbelievable the claim that he knew nothing of the $90,000 “gift” from Nigel Wright, his former chief of staff, to Duffy.
More than anything though, the Senate scandal underlines Harper’s bitterness and sense of partisan grievance.
All politicians are, by definition, partisan. Most display a sense of delight. When former prime minister Brian Mulroney famously promised patronage appointments to all living and breathing Tories, he wasn’t entirely kidding.
But he was also revelling in the possibility of his party, after years in opposition, being able to cut up the cash.
Harper’s partisanship, however, seems to focus on bitter grudges.
These days, he tries to keep that bitterness masked. But it was evident in his famous firewall letter of 2001 which, in effect, told Albertans that if Ottawa wasn’t going to give them what they wanted, they should cut themselves off.
It shows up in the sheer venom of the Conservative attack ads against political foes such as Stéphane Dion or Justin Trudeau.
And it informed some of his key choices for the Senate.
It’s worth remembering that for the first three years of his prime ministership, Harper declined to make many Senate appointments, insisting that provinces should first hold elections for these posts.
But the provinces balked. And by 2009, when Harper began flooding the Senate with patronage appointments, he made no pretense of being non-partisan.
It was as if he were telling the country: OK, if you don’t want to play my new game, I’ll play the old one — and I will do it as in a manner that’s tougher and meaner than any before me.
Indeed, other prime ministers were more easygoing. Liberal Paul Martin, for instance, appointed Conservatives to the Senate, three of whom still sit in Harper’s caucus.
But Harper appointed only red-meat Conservatives. And among those he did choose were those — like Duffy and Wallin — whose task was to take no prisoners in the fight against the hated opposition.
Today, Duffy and Wallin are unwelcome in the Conservative caucus. Without naming names, Harper made that clear in his televised address to his party’s MPs and senators Tuesday.
But the two senators are no different than they were when Harper appointed them — street fighters willing to mix it up with political foes, celebrities who expect to be treated royally and who, in return, use that royalty to deliver their sponsor’s message.
Harper appointed them and defended them publicly when the expense scandal first surfaced. His top aide and confidante gave Duffy the $90,000 he needed to repay expenses improperly claimed.
Now the prime minister wants the country to believe he had no idea what was going on. That is not just implausible. It is impossible.
Original Article
Source: thestar.com
Author: Thomas Walkom
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