Steve’s dysfunctional challenge

Talk about déjà vu all over again! Late August and Liberals are rattling their sabres, such as they still can. The Conservatives are taunting them with calls to “meet them outside”, the polls are all over the map and Conservatives are bracing for more sparks on the ethics front.

Journalists have made their decisions, mostly tired of being worked by neo-conservative spin masters who aren’t as smart as they need to be to make the game fun, the NDP has lost its way, the Greens are eco-surging and the Bloc is not sure what it’s really all about anymore. The economy is on a downward trail, the war is intensifying (and getting uglier), and most of us are looking south for our political inspiration.

Thankfully, at least for those of us with dwindling short-term memories, we can relive the experience anew.

Still, there is one difference this August and it deserves our attention. Our guy Steve has apparently decided that if he can’t force the Liberals into calling a general election, he may have to do it himself.

This, on first blush, is just a tad embarrassing for him as it was he who championed the four-year fixed term as the best reform we could achieve in Parliamentary democracy. Being the sort of economist who apparently believes that politics gets in the way of good government, he was, just two years ago, pretty sure that the Americans had it right with this fixed term stuff. Looking at a way of justifying this apparent flip-flop, Steve’s boys have fixed on what they take to be the current dysfunction of Parliament.

Chances are that Dion’s Liberals might just wait a while now to pull the plug and enjoy watching Steve squirm a bit on this petard of his own making before seeking to defeat the Government.

But there is also a chance that Harper, having carved out this space, will choose to occupy it and visit the Governor General. Assuming that she would allow the Prime Minister to call an election, despite his own legislation seeking to prevent such political convenience, would an election called by Harper (on the claim that Parliament has become dysfunctional) help or hurt his electoral prospects?

Tough questions for the PM

One assessment that appears to be taking shape in the press corps is while the dysfunction argument might indeed work with Canadians who already find Steve’s form of leadership appealing, others will not be persuaded so easily. For the rest of us, he will have to answer at least the following questions.

In claiming that Parliament is dysfunctional: (1) does he mean that what he has accomplished to-date has been insufficient; (2) does he fear that the Commons Committee on Ethics is about to denigrate the Conservatives more fully on their past election spending, or that the Mulroney inquiry and Cadman affair are becoming threats to be pre-empted; (3) does he think that Parliamentary Committees should do less rather than more; or (4) is he concerned that the economy, the war, and the price of oil are going to get worse before they get better, and can’t afford to wait much longer?

The tougher questions, however, are: (5) if the polls are showing either a minority Conservative or a minority Liberal government as the two most likely outcomes of a fall general election, doesn’t this mean that voting Conservative will produce just as dysfunctional a Parliament as the one he claims we have now? (6) Accordingly, isn’t a vote that causes a Liberal minority the sensible thing for us to do?

Given the greater proximity of values and policies of the other four parties, isn’t it more likely that a Liberal minority would make Parliament work in greater harmony? And in this way, (7) isn’t Steve’s dysfunctional argument self-defeating?

Our Prime Minister is considering rolling the dice and hoping they turn up “majority.”

This new impatience is odd as his strategy has been to target ridings that he thinks he can win, shower them with modest attention, and slowly grow his minority.