Me and Steve on New Year's Eve

Winter solstice provides an opportunity for introspection - the time of year when assessing one’s faults allows one to open the New Year with fresh resolution.

The lack of light is useful as a degree of depression is conducive to finding such fault, though real depression is no joking matter. So it was that I turned recently to faults of my own.

Thankfully, given the length of the list, I had some extra time. So by the time we headed out to a delightful New Year’s Eve, I had reviewed the list, beaten myself up a bit on the worst of them and selected one that I would endeavour to redress in the New Year.

I resolved that 2008 would be the year I tried to render more than criticism of our fearsome leader, Steven Harper. There was no real reason, I determined, for me not doing more to warm up to the guy.

He’s from Alberta; I’m from Alberta. My family voted Progressive Conservative for years; his probably did as well, though I suspect more than a tinge of the old Social Credit in his historical imagination. Even that shouldn’t be too great of an obstacle for me as Social Creditors in Alberta had high regard for higher learning and quality public radio.

I chatted with John Diefenbaker when I was thinking of a career; he probably chatted with some conservatives too before choosing economics or political leadership. (The Chief recommended Law, and as are most Progressive Conservatives, he was about half right.)

I respect some Conservatives, especially the ones who do fair and effective constituency work, and even the occasional minister, though the Reform crew and the common sense revolution guys from Ontario scare me.

I find some conservative writers remarkably compelling. And I know that some who read this column are True Blue. (Sure, like most good papers, the one you’re reading runs columns on both sides of the ideological divide, this to provoke conversation and debate, but this doesn’t mean I should be quite so unrelenting in my criticism of Mr. Harper’s vision for the country, does it?)

Steve taught at the university for a while, and go figure, so have I. I’ve participated with one of his chief advisors, Tom Flanagan, on more than one academic occasion and couldn’t help but find him smart and almost charming.

Steve cares a lot for his kids and so do I. He played the role of hockey dad and - you guessed it - so have I.

He clearly likes to eat to “manage” his stress and I’m pretty sure I keep up bite for bite. And he does seem to think that relying upon the intellectual class is useful in guiding public policy, which makes terrific sense to me, though I’m still awaiting my call.

So what’s not to like? Sure, his personality grates in a way that only those who have read too much of the Coles Notes versions of Machiavelli and Nietzsche can appreciate (and see in themselves the stuff of either princes or ubermen). But one should be able to work around a leader’s personality, shouldn’t one?

The sharp slap of reality

Thanks in no small way to the winter wind that keeps Canadian politics from spawning the circus to the south, I found that this resolution, like so many before, failed to acknowledge the force of the real world. And to his credit, Steve helped.

Who would appoint a “neutral” committee of folks — most of whom who have little relevant expertise to offer and the majority of whom who have conservative leanings — to determine our foreign policy, putting Canadian lives at stake to do the work left by our American friends, who then diss us in the process?

Who would spend $1.4 billion to buy and $1.7B to service a bunch of American planes to carry our troops when we’re moving into a seemingly certain decline in our economy, one arguably caused by our American friends? (Perhaps we can use the new planes to move around unemployed forestry and manufacturing workers?)

And who would be so crass and unsophisticated, so bullish, to fire a highly regarded woman the night before she was to be given a chance to speak to Parliament, when so much is known about how the glass ceiling works in discouraging women from a life in the public realm?