Gomery, Gomery, Gomery.
In the Globe and Mail, Rex Murphy has a really good column summing up the Gomery report's findings and what they mean (I just hope he's right to be so sanguine about there not being an election this fall):
Judge Gomery's report brought nothing fundamentally new to the facts and details of the story. What was new was his considered judgment on two of its principal actors.
The judge chose to say that Paul Martin was “exonerated” and that Jean Chrétien, though not implicated in any of its specific mischiefs, had to bear the responsibility for the overarching dereliction that was the program's hallmark.
Mr. Martin had to be grateful for the description. Should he have been found complicit in the scandal, even to a minor degree, his fragile government and his fragile hold on its leadership would have evaporated...It has been a curious fact of Mr. Martin's entire tenure as Prime Minister and party leader that he has had constantly both to deplore the state of the Liberal Party, and equally insist it is the only party worthy of governing the nation. Apology followed by a sales pitch is an awkward sequence. Judge Gomery's report at least left room to attempt it. It “exonerated” Mr. Martin, though “exonerate” seemed a somewhat larger word than was in Judge Gomery's remit to offer.
Exactly. The problem for Martin is how little his personal exoneration matters. It doesn't matter becuase it's a personal exoneration, and the anger over Sponsorship isn't personal. Canadians aren't upset with the Sponsorship culprits. They're upset by the fact that the same party has ruled for 12 years with no end in sight. Parties that rule so long usually get themselves tied up with the civil service and with powerful private firms (like ad agencies, for instance) and develop the "culture of entitlement" and all that. That's why we voters all implicitly hate the "political establishment" and why successful politics is usually about reform, about the charasmatic leader who rises above the corruption of his party and of the party system and strikes out a bold way forward.
But that option isn't available to Martin or to any potential Liberal leader (even a charismatic one) right now. Martin can't change the paradigm. He can just keep doing what he's good at: scraping through, cutting deals, with the apology and the sales pitch at hand, offered one after the other, with bravado or whining as need be. Sponsorship wasn't Martin's fault. Its major players weren't his cronies but his predecessor's. I even think sponsorship wouldn't -- maybe couldn't -- have happened under a Martin government as opposed to a Chretien one. But politically, it's irrelevant. He's the face of the Liberals -- staid, boring, centrist, establishment, self-dealing, been-around-forever -- and this is a quintessentially Liberal problem. Canadians are sick of the Liberals. More fundamentally, they're sick of the democratic indignity of being stuck with the Liberals election after election. So of course the Liberals fall immediately behind in the polls, like they do every time a Gomery finding comes out. The numbers are an expression of our exasperation with the status quo, and our general lack of partisan loyalty, but not of reallignment.
Afterall, there's nowhere to reallign to. The current Tories are supply-siders and privatizers and their leader is, as a Chretien aide might have said, a moron, and (as the Princess Monkey says) an offensive, homophobic moron at that. The NDP have great ideas during elections and also have the benefit of an enterprising, charismatic (by Canadian standards) leader. But they're always either too nice or (currently) too dogmatic, to form a majority. The Bloc, meanwhile, exists to insult the notion of nationalism. The vindication of their perpetual outrage and their upcoming routing of the Liberals in Quebec represents the real cost and punishment of Sponsorship to the party and to the national interest in general.
Personally, even in a hypothetical world with decent alternatives, I think it's debatable whether Sponsorship alone would merit throwing the national Liberals out of office. From my reading of the scandal, most of the underlying problems that allowed the corruption to take place could be fairly soundly addressed by tougher auditting, procurement and oversight rules, stronger whistleblower protection, the sort of things Gomery is likely to recommend in his final report (and for the Liberals to campaign on in the next election if they make it that far). But it would be nice to have the option. Martin can hold inquiries and sue for reiumbursements and decry corruption til the cows come home, but his job as leader of the Liberals is to keep reminding us, at the end of the day, of Maggie Thatcher's great refrain: TINA. And that's the one thing Canadians don't want to hear and the one thing we just aren't going to forgive the PM for embodying, or for telling us.
Judge Gomery's report brought nothing fundamentally new to the facts and details of the story. What was new was his considered judgment on two of its principal actors.
The judge chose to say that Paul Martin was “exonerated” and that Jean Chrétien, though not implicated in any of its specific mischiefs, had to bear the responsibility for the overarching dereliction that was the program's hallmark.
Mr. Martin had to be grateful for the description. Should he have been found complicit in the scandal, even to a minor degree, his fragile government and his fragile hold on its leadership would have evaporated...It has been a curious fact of Mr. Martin's entire tenure as Prime Minister and party leader that he has had constantly both to deplore the state of the Liberal Party, and equally insist it is the only party worthy of governing the nation. Apology followed by a sales pitch is an awkward sequence. Judge Gomery's report at least left room to attempt it. It “exonerated” Mr. Martin, though “exonerate” seemed a somewhat larger word than was in Judge Gomery's remit to offer.
Exactly. The problem for Martin is how little his personal exoneration matters. It doesn't matter becuase it's a personal exoneration, and the anger over Sponsorship isn't personal. Canadians aren't upset with the Sponsorship culprits. They're upset by the fact that the same party has ruled for 12 years with no end in sight. Parties that rule so long usually get themselves tied up with the civil service and with powerful private firms (like ad agencies, for instance) and develop the "culture of entitlement" and all that. That's why we voters all implicitly hate the "political establishment" and why successful politics is usually about reform, about the charasmatic leader who rises above the corruption of his party and of the party system and strikes out a bold way forward.
But that option isn't available to Martin or to any potential Liberal leader (even a charismatic one) right now. Martin can't change the paradigm. He can just keep doing what he's good at: scraping through, cutting deals, with the apology and the sales pitch at hand, offered one after the other, with bravado or whining as need be. Sponsorship wasn't Martin's fault. Its major players weren't his cronies but his predecessor's. I even think sponsorship wouldn't -- maybe couldn't -- have happened under a Martin government as opposed to a Chretien one. But politically, it's irrelevant. He's the face of the Liberals -- staid, boring, centrist, establishment, self-dealing, been-around-forever -- and this is a quintessentially Liberal problem. Canadians are sick of the Liberals. More fundamentally, they're sick of the democratic indignity of being stuck with the Liberals election after election. So of course the Liberals fall immediately behind in the polls, like they do every time a Gomery finding comes out. The numbers are an expression of our exasperation with the status quo, and our general lack of partisan loyalty, but not of reallignment.
Afterall, there's nowhere to reallign to. The current Tories are supply-siders and privatizers and their leader is, as a Chretien aide might have said, a moron, and (as the Princess Monkey says) an offensive, homophobic moron at that. The NDP have great ideas during elections and also have the benefit of an enterprising, charismatic (by Canadian standards) leader. But they're always either too nice or (currently) too dogmatic, to form a majority. The Bloc, meanwhile, exists to insult the notion of nationalism. The vindication of their perpetual outrage and their upcoming routing of the Liberals in Quebec represents the real cost and punishment of Sponsorship to the party and to the national interest in general.
Personally, even in a hypothetical world with decent alternatives, I think it's debatable whether Sponsorship alone would merit throwing the national Liberals out of office. From my reading of the scandal, most of the underlying problems that allowed the corruption to take place could be fairly soundly addressed by tougher auditting, procurement and oversight rules, stronger whistleblower protection, the sort of things Gomery is likely to recommend in his final report (and for the Liberals to campaign on in the next election if they make it that far). But it would be nice to have the option. Martin can hold inquiries and sue for reiumbursements and decry corruption til the cows come home, but his job as leader of the Liberals is to keep reminding us, at the end of the day, of Maggie Thatcher's great refrain: TINA. And that's the one thing Canadians don't want to hear and the one thing we just aren't going to forgive the PM for embodying, or for telling us.
4 Comments:
"successful politics is usually about reform, about the charasmatic leader who rises above the corruption of his party and of the party system and strikes out a bold way forward."
Sounds more like fascism than successful politics if you ask me (yeah, I know, you didn't ask me).
Oh, I don't know. I think we're generally drawn to the individual rather than the party even in perfectly democratic systems -- that's my impression of how it works in the States. The fascism problem occurs once the charismatic leader declares an end to democracy in the name of his charisma, but that doesn't have to happen. The point is just that no Liberal politician is going to be able to convince Canadians he's a reformer, that he can remake the Liberals. Not while the Liberals are the only option, anyway.
Hm, that first sentence I wrote isn't right (that's why I blog instead of mainly commenting on other people's blogs, so I can edit). A better way of putting it would be "we're drawn to the myth of the reformer who remakes the party" even in democratic systems. That's especially true in the States but I think it's fairly universal.
It seems to me people inherently view political parties as corrupt but are open to the notion of the "changing of the guard" with the right leader. But that's not going to happen here. We want options. Martin can't give us that. That's my impression of the situation anyway.
Maybe it's just that when I hear the word 'charasmatic' as an adjective describing a politician, I mentally substitute 'male, tall, with symmetrical facial features'.
I don't argue that people are drawn more to a 'charasmatic' individual than they are to boring old parties and policies, but I do think that this is part of what leads us down the path to fascism / authoritarianism.
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