02/02/07, Rex Murphy, Look who let the dogs out
Post
How is Stéphane Dion doing?
First the good news. The Conservatives are attacking him.
Mr. Dion must be relieved. It would have been mighty disappointing to go through all the trouble of winning the Liberal leadership to then walk into the House of Commons as Leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition, only to be ignored.
The Conservatives, however, are nothing if not considerate. Mr. Dion's trim frame (the famous knapsack has its virtues — it's probably weighted with back issues of Hansard, every thinking politician's way to stay fit) had barely made its debut in Question Period when the Tories unleashed a series of ads designed to rub the shine off his leadership.
I say “unleashed” only in deference to established usage in such matters. Whenever one gang in the Commons launches a campaign to slag the leader of the other gang, I believe it's mandatory to invoke the metaphor of a dogfight. “The pit bulls are loose. The pit bulls are loose. Who let the dogs out?” The Commons is a tepid arena at the best or worst of times, and Question Period, however vigorous, will never be confused with an action film. Crouching Tories, Bleating Liberals will never, as our friends in the film industry delightfully put it, “open wide.” Though I do confess the fantasy images of Stephen Harper bounding weightlessly from treetop to treetop to the music of a plaintive zither, while being pursued by Stéphane Dion and Kyoto, the Emission Dog, has occasionally troubled my sleep. It's conceivable I'm digressing.
But the anti-Dion ads, if we must call them attack ads, are, at best, mere puppies. Much has been made that the Conservatives, in putting them out when there is no election officially in sight, are going “American.” This is in obedience to the great national reflex to ascribe any outbreak of nastiness in Canadian political life not to our own considerable reserves of homegrown snarkiness but to the contagion of the American example.
“Pish,” I say, and rather forcefully, too. Our politicians are as capable of biting the ankles of their opponents — the odd rhetorical kneecapping, too — without any stimulus from American practice. The Americans bring a lot of juice to their game, but we've had our own Olympians.
Does no one remember John Crosbie during his golden days in the Commons? Mr. Crosbie was a one-man ructions generator, of such force I believe there was some talk of including a provision on his performance in the early SALT talks. And have we so soon forgotten Sheila Copps scampering over the desks with all the agility and some of the charm of a lemur in pursuit of the cowed Sinclair Stevens during the high glory days of the Rat Pack? American — hardly.
The real question, then, is not whether the anti-Dion ads are American but whether they work. Doubtless from the Conservative side of the blitz, even the idea of playing with tapes from the Liberals' own leadership race has a certain sadistic payoff. Using Michael Ignatieff as a stick to beat Mr. Dion had to be Jason Kenney's taste of Tory heaven.
But political advertisements, unfortunately, are not measured by the chortles of the caucus that produces them. They have to play to a more discriminating clientele — the largely uninterested (there is no election on) public. And the message of these ads, as I read them, is not the one they so winsomely banner — “Stéphane Dion is not a leader” — but the rather less flattering one that the public needs to be told so.
I can think of more gorgeous hikes to the public's heart.
It might have occurred to the Conservative brain trust that the public is capable of sizing up Mr. Dion on its own. And while it probably runs athwart every campaign professional's most settled conviction, and would probably register as an original thought, the public — prepare for a revelation — has a mind of its own. This is hardly to mention the secondary consideration that, by pre-emptively striking out at Mr. Dion, the Conservatives exposed a vital flank of their own. Monkey see, monkey do is one of political science's most revered axioms. The Liberals, having been pestered with bits of their own recent history, were only too pleased to rummage in the graveyard of Conservative press releases.
Stephen Harper, back in the grey, foggy days of the Canadian Alliance, had written a letter describing the Kyoto agreement as “a socialist scheme to suck money out of wealth-producing nations.” What a fine, tart, neat summary — sounds straight from the heart. But it also offers the untimely thought that Mr. Harper's recent conversion to the new and apparently irresistible green consensus is a little more mellow that he would like the world to believe.
That's the problem with setting the dogs loose. You never know whom the ungrateful hounds are going to bite.
First the good news. The Conservatives are attacking him.
Mr. Dion must be relieved. It would have been mighty disappointing to go through all the trouble of winning the Liberal leadership to then walk into the House of Commons as Leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition, only to be ignored.
The Conservatives, however, are nothing if not considerate. Mr. Dion's trim frame (the famous knapsack has its virtues — it's probably weighted with back issues of Hansard, every thinking politician's way to stay fit) had barely made its debut in Question Period when the Tories unleashed a series of ads designed to rub the shine off his leadership.
I say “unleashed” only in deference to established usage in such matters. Whenever one gang in the Commons launches a campaign to slag the leader of the other gang, I believe it's mandatory to invoke the metaphor of a dogfight. “The pit bulls are loose. The pit bulls are loose. Who let the dogs out?” The Commons is a tepid arena at the best or worst of times, and Question Period, however vigorous, will never be confused with an action film. Crouching Tories, Bleating Liberals will never, as our friends in the film industry delightfully put it, “open wide.” Though I do confess the fantasy images of Stephen Harper bounding weightlessly from treetop to treetop to the music of a plaintive zither, while being pursued by Stéphane Dion and Kyoto, the Emission Dog, has occasionally troubled my sleep. It's conceivable I'm digressing.
But the anti-Dion ads, if we must call them attack ads, are, at best, mere puppies. Much has been made that the Conservatives, in putting them out when there is no election officially in sight, are going “American.” This is in obedience to the great national reflex to ascribe any outbreak of nastiness in Canadian political life not to our own considerable reserves of homegrown snarkiness but to the contagion of the American example.
“Pish,” I say, and rather forcefully, too. Our politicians are as capable of biting the ankles of their opponents — the odd rhetorical kneecapping, too — without any stimulus from American practice. The Americans bring a lot of juice to their game, but we've had our own Olympians.
Does no one remember John Crosbie during his golden days in the Commons? Mr. Crosbie was a one-man ructions generator, of such force I believe there was some talk of including a provision on his performance in the early SALT talks. And have we so soon forgotten Sheila Copps scampering over the desks with all the agility and some of the charm of a lemur in pursuit of the cowed Sinclair Stevens during the high glory days of the Rat Pack? American — hardly.
The real question, then, is not whether the anti-Dion ads are American but whether they work. Doubtless from the Conservative side of the blitz, even the idea of playing with tapes from the Liberals' own leadership race has a certain sadistic payoff. Using Michael Ignatieff as a stick to beat Mr. Dion had to be Jason Kenney's taste of Tory heaven.
But political advertisements, unfortunately, are not measured by the chortles of the caucus that produces them. They have to play to a more discriminating clientele — the largely uninterested (there is no election on) public. And the message of these ads, as I read them, is not the one they so winsomely banner — “Stéphane Dion is not a leader” — but the rather less flattering one that the public needs to be told so.
I can think of more gorgeous hikes to the public's heart.
It might have occurred to the Conservative brain trust that the public is capable of sizing up Mr. Dion on its own. And while it probably runs athwart every campaign professional's most settled conviction, and would probably register as an original thought, the public — prepare for a revelation — has a mind of its own. This is hardly to mention the secondary consideration that, by pre-emptively striking out at Mr. Dion, the Conservatives exposed a vital flank of their own. Monkey see, monkey do is one of political science's most revered axioms. The Liberals, having been pestered with bits of their own recent history, were only too pleased to rummage in the graveyard of Conservative press releases.
Stephen Harper, back in the grey, foggy days of the Canadian Alliance, had written a letter describing the Kyoto agreement as “a socialist scheme to suck money out of wealth-producing nations.” What a fine, tart, neat summary — sounds straight from the heart. But it also offers the untimely thought that Mr. Harper's recent conversion to the new and apparently irresistible green consensus is a little more mellow that he would like the world to believe.
That's the problem with setting the dogs loose. You never know whom the ungrateful hounds are going to bite.
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