Not Busy Being Born, Coalition Now Busy Dying

This is a piece I submitted for the coalition feature in the latest issue. I've been assured it was left out because of a lack of space and not because it sucks. (And I'm sure I didn't help my case for inclusion by turning this in a day late and 200 words longer than asked for.)

But thanks to the miracle of the interweb, all that typing won't be wasted.

A note about writing this.... My conversation with Donald Gutstein ended with his comment about how the coalition has missed its moment. I liked the way he put it and thought the remark important so I opted to start writing with that. After doing so, the article naturally became an inversion of the way the interview played out. You'd think, then, it would leave us in a happier place. But it doesn't. And so it goes....

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Not Busy Being Born, Coalition Now Busy Dying

A deathknell is sounding for the coalition. And there seem to be two camps ringing the bell announcing its demise: those who welcome the news and those who hear the tolling with a certain amount of sadness. Among those in the latter camp is Donald Gutstein, senior lecturer at Simon Fraser University and co-director of NewsWatch Canada.

“The moment has passed,” he says with regret. “What’s happened is the resumption of traditional politics in Canada. We have Harper on the right and Ignatieff on the centre-right and that’s going to be the range of debate. And, I think, that’s it.”

With the entry of “prorogue” into our vocabulary and Ignatieff into the Liberal command chair, the media has declared the nacent centre-left uprising done. You could almost hear a sigh of relief in the coverage. We’ve already written these stories, the media seems to be saying.

“They’re part of the corporate elite too so they’re happier with this kind of political and economic system,” says Gutstein. “What twigged it for me was the morning after Ignatieff was crowned, Margaret Wente said, ‘Yes, we can live with Ignatieff.’”

But how did it all unravel so fast?

From the moment the coalition became a possibility, the spin machine in every party’s warroom fired up. On one side, Harper was portrayed as akin to a tyrant, a petty man out to wreck petty vengence on his opponents. From the other, the coalition was depicted as a naked power grab by the Liberals inspired to action by a threat to their government welfare cheque.

While Harper’s reputation took a bit of a hit, opinion polls showed over 60 percent support for his government -- a pretty clear indication that his message had the most traction.

A few factors contributed to this, not the least of which being many Canadian’s lack of understanding of their own political system. Coalitions are de rigeur in many parliamentary democracies, but to a populace more familiar with the idea of an American-style republic they can sound pretty threatening.

“They filled a void by creating a myth about how the Canadian political system works,” says Gutstein of the Conservatives. “Patrick Muttart, he’s the guy in their warroom who’s in charge of the master narrative, and in the 2006 election he spent time in Australia and spent time in the US. So I think the master narrative is to move Canada more in the direction of an American-type republic. Even voting for senators and everything is part of that. And the left was totally incapable of correcting that message.”

At the same time though, he notes there were many on the left who weren’t behind coalition either, and he points to the perceived weakness of its leader as the key reason for that.

“I think one of the things was the problem with Dion,” says Gutstein. “I think it was more of a tactical concern than a strategic or ideological one. You know, with Dion as the leader of the coalition, what is it really?”

Ultimately, Gutstein argues that the mainstream media itself should hold much of the blame for putting paid to the coalition message. He notes that it was the way the coverage framed the situation as a “crisis” that first set off his alarm bells.

“What’s this crisis? There really wasn’t one,” he says. “The crisis was the possibility of a centre-left government. For the corporate media and for corporate Canada that could have been a huge crisis. So, at the outset, they chastised Harper for getting into it in the first place. He shouldn’t have done what he did, so they were after him at first. But then they totally switched over to attacking the coalition.”

Is it any wonder, then, that so much of the recent coalition coverage reads like an obituary?

A Little Bit of History Repeating

It’s been almost a week since the outing of Bernard Madoff’s investment firm as a gigantic Ponzi scheme. Apparently the day before his arrest, Bernie told his senior employees his firm was "all one big lie" which managed to bilk investors out of $50 billion. (Here’s the wikinews article on his arrest.)

As the Globe notes in it's coverage of the Madoff probe, the timing on this couldn't be worse as "the Madoff scandal has further weakened already-battered investor confidence in securities markets and has raised more troubling questions about the effectiveness of the regulatory system."

Sometimes the parallels between now and events of the late 1920s are a little spooky. For instance, John Kenneth Galbraith in The Great Crash tells the tale of Clarence Hatry whose fall from grace is one of the events that, along with the collapse of the stock indexes, pricked the investment bubble:

In England on September 20, 1929, the enterprises of Clarence Hatry suddenly collapsed. Hatry was one of those curiously un-English figures with whom the English periodically find themselves unable to cope. Although his earlier financial history had been anything but reassuring, Hatry had built up an industrial and financial empire in the nineteen-twenties of truly impressive proportions. The nucleus, all the more remarkably, was a line of coin-in-the-slot vending and automatic photographic machines. From these unprepossessing enterprises he had marched on into investment trusts and high finance. His expansion owed much to the issuance of unauthorized stock, the increase of assets by the forging of stock certificates and other equally informal financing. In the lore of 1929, the unmasking of Hatry in London is supposed to have struck a sharp blow to confidence in New York.

It's funny that not only are these two frauds linked in the ill-timedness of their unmaskings, but also in the humbleness of their origins: Hatry started out in vending machines, Madoff's initial investment stake was earned working as a lifeguard and sprinkler installer.

It's also funny that while Hatry was notorious in his day, he doesn't even warrant a wikipedia entry of his own now. I wonder if we'll find a way to conveniently forget Madoff in time for the next big speculative mania?

If the Shoe Fits

If there's one skill that soon-to-be former U.S. president George W. Bush is going to need in the years to come it's the ability to duck. Judging from a recent incident that occured during a news conference held as part of a pre-Xmas trip he made to Iraq to bolster troop morale, he's already mastered the ability, like Neo in the Matrix, to dodge projectiles directed at him. Don't know how well he'll fare though at ducking responsibility for all the ill-fated policy decisions made during his two-terms in office that have placed his country, and the world at large, in such peril environmentally, economically, geo-politically, etc.

Panic in Detroit

One of my favorite sports blogs is The Wayne Fontes Experience, run by a Detroit Lions fan -- yes, they're still fans of an 0-13 football team. It's well written, insightful, and his live-blogging of Lions games reminds me of my state of mind when the Saskatchewan Roughriders sucked and were so incompetently managed that I despaired of ever seeing competitive football at Taylor Field ever again.

But it's not just the disastrous state of Detroit football that's on his mind: it's also the disastrous state of the Detroit economy, thanks to the Big Three meltdown and the outgoing Congress' 'let them eat cake' attitude. And -- surprisingly for a sports blogger, he provides a glimpse into the state of mind in Detroit's coffeeshops, bars, and hangouts. (Might not be entirely safe for work).

My anger at the southern GOP, led by DICK Shelby, is palpable. Their
grandstanding is going
to affect every single one of us who lives in the Midwest, the Rust
Belt in particular, and not in a good way. Personally, I'm scared to
death for my family and friends who work in the auto industry, and
thanks to union busting politicians, like DICK Shelby, it's going to
get ugly for them.

He also links to a column from a Michigan newspaper. Oh boy. Jim Bunning, former pitcher for the Detroit Tigers was supposed to be at an autograph-signing thing in Michigan. Except that he's now a Tennesee GOP senator -- and voted against the federal bailout package.

Lazy Sunday Pop Culture Post

Technically I should be working right now so, naturally, I instead decided to write a post promoting the podcasts I like and think more people should pay attention to. I considered submitting this to the prairie dog proper but figured it was too slight and self absorbed even for that (types the guy who recently had published a Top 6 Comic Book Plot Devices). Plus I can't get it up to six items needed for a Top 6 because in all honesty I only regularly download five.

So, without further ado, here's my...

Top 5 Podcasts I'm Following These Days

1. Skeptic's Guide to the Universe
A weekly science news show that focuses on debunking all the nonsense and pseudoscience to which we're subjected on a daily basis. Sure, call me a nerd, but I find it somehow cathartic to spend an hour each week listening to five people mock creationists and climate-change deniers.

2. Tiki Bar TV
A monthly comedy vidcast made, up until recently, in a Vancouver apartment done up to look like a tiki bar. Each episode Doctor Tiki, Lala and Johnny Johnny encounter some crisis that is eventually solved by a cocktail. What I've described here rather clinically is actually very funny and cleverly written. Yeah, I've mentioned this show in stuff I've written in the paper before but I reckon it's worth repeating here because a) it's Canadian and b) it's just that good.

3. Diggnation
Two guys sitting on a couch drinking beer talking about what people on the internet are talking about. Sounds dull but is strangely addicting. Plus, it's a great way for out-of-touch, aging hipsters to stay au courant with what's happening on the intraweb.

4. Wormwood
Bi-weekly (sometimes monthly) radio drama about an occult investigator and his adventures in the town of Wormwood. Similar in tone to Buffy the Vampire Slayer -- has that same blend of supernatural horror and comedy. Favourite moment in the series so far: reanimated decapitated heads making out on the floor of a morgue.

5. Search Engine
Probably not fair putting a show from the CBC up against all these amateur endeavours, but Search Engine has always been Mother Corp's bastard child (as evidence: it got pulled from a regular spot on Radio One and now exists only as a podcast). It's a tech and web culture show not unlike other fare on CBC. But, unlike most fare on the CBC, it's edgy and political.

Gee, Premier. Wall ...

You won't have to hurry that Senate election legislation, eh?

"Ottawa hasn’t functioned effectively since May, and isn’t likely to start working soon"

I generally regard the killing of trees to print Macleans magazine as an environmental crime, especially as its journalistic or literary quality has China Syndromed after former Alberta Report hack Ken Whyte took the job as editor in chief. There's one exception -- Kady O'Malley's 'Inside the Queensway' blog.

I don't normally include Paul Wells, mostly because, as befitting someone who attended the University of Western Ontario, he conducts himself with the snobbishness of a English peer. Watching him on TV, I think Wells could make Michael Ignatieff look like Red Greene. So it's more of a surprise that his latest column on Stephen Harper is - gasp! - eriudite and readable.

My favourite line ...

Stephen Harper spent his whole adult life complaining that the state
was no good for anything. Now, under him, it is so. Consistency at last.

Trouble in the Tory Henhouse

Norman Spector, in his Globe And Mail blog, says Stephen Harper is going to try to woo Quebec voters. Again.

After the events surrounding the coalition, it's impossible for anybody to read this with a straight face. Harper demonized the Bloc Quebecois and, by implication, all those who voted for them, in order to secure a majority of votes in Canada outside Quebec. Like them or loathe them -- and I'm not much of a fan of Quebec separatism -- the BQ were elected by the people of Quebec in a free and fair federal election, and have as much right to represent their constituencies as anyone else. Jerks such as Rob Anders probably contribute as much -- if not more -- to the stresses of Canadian confederation than Gilles Duceppe.

The proposed Dion/Layton coalition government was popular in Quebec, and Harper's attack on it was seen by Quebecers as an attack on that province's voters, as if to say that they had no right to express their opinion on government.

Of couse, we should note that the man Harper tagged as his Quebec "golden boy", Mario Dumont of the Action Democratique du Quebec, was gonged in the Quebec election. His socially conservative, return-to-Duplessis policies are pretty much dead. And so are Harper's shallow roots in the province.

It makes you wonder --- why do the Cons put up with Harper's two-faced bungling? For a story in an upcoming prairie dog, I interviewed U of R political studies professor emeritus Howard Leeson, who was a senior adviser to Roy Romanow during the 1981-82 constitutional talks and part of his kitchen cabinet consiglieri during Romanow's premiership.

We jawed for 20 or so minutes, and during our conversation Leeson riddled me this: what's so great about Stephen Harper? He's led the Cons in three elections. He lost one, and received two minorities in the face of the weakest, financially troubled and most incompetently led Liberal Party since Confederation. "If Joe Clark was leader, the Conservatives would have had 200 seats easily," says Leeson.

So what's next? Andrew Steele of the Globe & Mail has a few thoughts on his blog.

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Filling The Other House

Neurotics build castles in the sky; psychotics move into them.