Harper Goes to School on Chretien

Harper Goes to School on Chretien

Stevie wasn’t just building a firewall around his unilingual desk when he was sitting across from John, oh no.  Note the shrugging, empty phrases—you dance with the one that brung you, Harper says, and if it’s 1 in 3 of the 2 in 3 who voted, good enough.  Shrug.  What, me miniscule majority?  Shrug.  Harper’s replication even of Chretien’s physical gestures are almost uncanny.

Jean would often hand off to other MPs, though in his case he had some trusted go-to people.  Harper has to adopt the Mulroney-Nielsen approach—so cloaked in scandal is Harper that he has to hand off to John Baird (wake me up after the fourth chin).  Clement, Ambrose, Bernier, Raitt, Oda—all stuck in the most disgusting muck Canada has seen for a generation, Harper has no choice but to go to his gay bachelors—Baird, Kenney, Moore, etc.

Weak front bench, no second line—clichés aside, is there a difference?

Chretien, the p’tit gars, normally liked to express himself as being on the side of the little guy, the average Canadian.  Harper seethes with open contempt for average Canadians, knowing he needs his pitchfork base and a few more glassy-eyed chinless dupes he can round up at the saloon on his way out without paying.  If they don’t speak English, “yes, your Papa Dum, Papa Dum.”  Yes!!

Harper regales himself on his empty Challenger at your expense (you can’t catch that with a swather, although some people did like Bennett buggies, too, when R. B. was in a dewy glen, at home, in England), but his just-enough commonality touch—he got his style suggestions from the man he supposedly most abhorred.