Getting to know you

The one sure thing that can be said of the election on Monday is that Canadians reward the folks that hang around. They get used to them. Then they elect them.

Stephen Harper is Prime Minister with his first majority government this morning because most folks have gotten to know him over these past seven years. Most, or at least 39.6 per cent, don’t see the devil that his detractors see.That doesn’t mean they like him or want him to come over for supper on Sunday; rather, they see him as a decent, hardworking if uninspiring manager with some control issues.They’ve seen the good and the bad and by and large have gotten used to him. Sometimes that is enough.

Similarly, Jack Layton has benefited from hanging around. In Quebec he is ‘un bon Jack’ a term generally meaning a good guy. Having gotten to know him better as the leader of the NDP for the past eight years, Canadians have largely concluded that Layton is, indeed, a likeable and decent fellow. I doubt that Canadians woke up on Monday morning and decided to take a hard swing toward socialism or the policies of the NDP. More likely, a third of Canadians voted for a guy they had grown fond of.

Michael Ignatieff we don’t know as well. He has been harder to warm to. He is seen as too cerebral. Too cosmopolitan. Too academic.

His failing, if it can be called such, is that he is simply too new to the game. It turns out that we want our leaders to sit out a few games, watch from the bench for a while before we are ready to put them on the ice. This is why I was pleased Ignatieff initially signalled his intention to stay on as leader of the Liberal party despite losing his own seat in Toronto.

Ignatieff’s decision on Tuesday to step down as leader was likely not his alone— the brash, the ambitious and the impatient likely had already begun plotting a purge of the upper ranks of the party.

But a change of leaders is a massive mistake for the Liberal party and a tragic misreading of this week’s election results. It is also bad for Canada.

This is because the second thing that is clear as a result of Monday’s election is that our polictical arena has changed. Overnight Canada has become a very much more polarized place, politically speaking, than ever before.The Conservatives on the right.The NDP on the left. And a huge chasm in between. The centre, it seems, has been evacuated. This is a problem, because this is where most Canadians reside.

In Canada the governing party tends to minister to the centre despite their political leanings. They tend not to pander to the extremes in their party or supporters. Canadians insist upon it.

This will be harder to do in the next Parliament as the Conservatives hold a comfortable and confident majority while the NDP, with its new role as opposition buoyed by the support of a third of Canadians, will seek to hammer away with a very different agenda.

For those who worry that Canadian politics is at risk of descending to the bitter and abusive template offered by the U.S., this week’s results provide more reason to worry. Both the Conservatives and NDP have their share of the devout who will insist that Canadians take sides against the devil on the other side.

This is where we come back to Michael Ignatieff and the Liberals. It will become clear in the coming months and years, I suspect, for the need for a moderate voice in political debate.

Ignatieff, if he had dodged the knives that were coming for him, was the natural voice for the centre. This alone wouldn’t have won him votes—the devout vote in larger numbers—but it would have given him time for Canadians to get to know him. And as we’ve seen on Monday—familiarity is a powerful advantage in electoral politics.

Now the Liberals will try install a new leader and start all over again.They are likely to face the same fate four years from now. Better for the party and the country that Ignatieff had stayed, regained a seat in the house and begun the hard work of shoring up the middle. But that way forward is gone now.

rick@wellingtontimes.ca