I'm inclined to agree with the conclusion of this article:
You gotta hand it to him
Regrets, he's had a few, but then again, too few to mention
Mark Steyn
National Post
Today's lesson is taken from the concession speech of long-ago California State Senate candidate Dick Tuck:
"The people have spoken, the bastards."
The day after the U.S. election, with Dubya clinging to victory by a hanging chad, Rush Limbaugh, the king of conservatives, told his audience: "Maybe there are fewer of us than I thought." Rush has 22-million listeners. Today, after the Canadian election, I must regretfully inform you, the loyal reader (I use the singular advisedly): There are definitely fewer of us than I thought.
If 10% of Rush's listeners were to move to Ontario, the Liberals would be history. Matter of fact, they don't even have to move, just take a short vacation at the right time and swing by the polling station -- for, among the many other distinctive "Canadian values" the Liberals promoted in this campaign, we now know that to complain about aliens illegally voting in our elections is by definition "racist." By contrast, if 100% of Canada's right were to move to America, we could all squeeze into Ken Whyte's Honda Civic and drive down to South Carolina, where we could ask Jesse Helms if he needs anyone for casual yard work.
There may not be much of a right for the unite-the-right movement to unite, but Jean Chrétien is doing a magnificent job of uniting the left. In every single Atlantic province, the PCs held solid but the NDP vote collapsed and went straight to the Liberals. The good news is that, in Newfoundland, the Alliance vote rose by over 50%. That's to say, it climbed from 2.5% in 1997 to 3.85% on Monday. If Stock can keep that up, he should be on course to sweep Gander circa 2024.
The Conservative vote declined to nosedive in the East or Ontario and managed to go up in Alberta, but it did fall apart in the one place no one was paying any attention to: Quebec, naturally. The Charest Tory vote of 1997 split almost evenly: a quarter apiece went to the Alliance, the Bloc, the Liberals and the Clark rump. I won't pretend to know what the ROC is supposed to make of this, though one francophone did tell me, "Relax, we're just f--king with you." But it seems to me Quebec is Canadian to this extent: If and when the Tory vote goes belly up in Ontario, the Grits are as likely as anyone else to be the beneficiaries.
Thus, the Alliance failed to achieve any of its modest goals: no Liberal minority, no Ontario breakthrough, no Clark scalp hanging from the riding office in Calgary Centre. Woe, woe and thrice woe! On the other hand, Jean Chrétien achieved goals he didn't even know he had. The allegedly most reviled man in Quebec has healed the province's 20-year post-patriation rift with the Liberals, through the ingenious tactic of barely uttering a word on the subject. He has seen off all his foes, both large -- memo to P. Martin: A watched pot never boils -- and small -- hasta la vista, Nunziata! We right-wing pundits can't even make the same cracks we've been doing for years: The Liberals really are a legitimate national governing party now. If Canada had a U.S.-style Electoral College, 10 of its 13 provinces and territories would be red. The National Post reader who wanted a Berlin Wall erected on Ontario's western border is overreaching: The largest vote in Manitoba went to the Liberals.
In Bob Fosse's Broadway show Pippin, there's a couplet about "the rule that every general knows by heart/It's smarter to be lucky than it's lucky to be smart." General Chrétien was smart enough to be lucky, not least in the faint-heartedness of his opponents: a conservative party that's not conservative, a separatist party that's not separatist, a New Democratic Party that hasn't come up with anything new in decades, and an Alliance that proved pitifully short of allies. Chrétien probably figured all along that in Ontario Mike Harris would sit this one out, leaving Stock looking like just another lost tourist. But it must have been a bonus when Lucien Bouchard decided to announce Quebec's unpopular municipal mergers in the middle of the campaign: Ah, you gotta love Lucy! His jackknife was getting a little rusty and Gilles Duceppe's shoulder blades were just too inviting.
Best of all, Chrétien is lucky enough to have the opposition play according to his rules. He insists that Liberal party values are "da Canadian values," and the other parties rush to agree -- even the Bloc, which runs the world's dumbest secessionist movement: They want to break away from Canada to set up a country that in every respect -- punitive taxation, abysmal health care -- will be indistinguishable from the country they've left. We won't have competitive elections until we have competing national visions, which means an opposition that has the courage to frame issues like health in its own terms. Dubya did it down south with education and Social Security. And, whatever you think of him, a nice guy with issues does better than a nice guy running on his niceness. Stock's mistake was to eschew a Bush campaign for a Rick Lazio one, and he still got smeared as a right-wing madman. That's an occupational hazard for conservatives, of course, but it's sheer ineptness to let it happen to you when you're actually running to the left of Tony Blair.
On his campaign jet, Stock led the inmates in a chorus of Doris Day's Que sera, sera. But it would be a mistake to conclude that such comforting fatalism is typical of Miss Day's catalogue: Other Day hits seem more pertinent to the Alliance condition, among them The Deadwood Stage, Enjoy Yourself (It's Later than You Think) and -- are you listening, Stock? -- Move Over, Darling.
If only he was Doris Day. When Stock showed up a few months back, we teenyboppers in the press corps cooed that he was young and hot while Chrétien was old and wrinkly. Where we went wrong was in assuming this was a problem for da old guy. Chrétien's always been old, and his opponents have always been young and hot, and by now we should have noticed that none of 'em stick around long enough to get wrinkly. Chrétien is Sinatra to Kim Campbell's Milli Vanilli and Jean Charest's Baby Spice. That would make Stock not Doris Day but 2Pac Shakur, the late gangsta rapper slain in the internecine east/west rap wars. Extending the analogy beyond its natural limits, Joe Clark would be The Notorious B.I.G. Paul Martin is looking more and more like Eddie Fisher.
As for Chrétien, regrets, he's had a few, but then again too few to mention. Like Sinatra, he's spent half his career singing "And now the end is near, and so I face the final curtain," and the end never seems to get any nearer. The day after election day in spring 2003, I'll be sitting here writing: "Few of us took Jean Chrétien seriously when he mused last year about Wilfrid Laurier's four back-to-back majorities ..." The day after election day 2057, I'll be writing: "Few of us took Jean Chrétien seriously when he said in 2005, 'Dat Queen Victoria, she was on da throne for 64 years. Dat sounds about right to me.' "
I salute you, Prime Minister. You are truly indestructible. But, if you're looking for a volunteer to receive the first Shawinigan Handshake of your new term, I humbly submit myself: Please, I beg you, throttle me now.
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