JOHN CHUCKMAN

COMMENT POSTED TO THE NATIONAL POST TO A CCOLUMN BY REX MURPHY

What is Mr. Murphy on, medical  marijuana?

An excellent speaker? Harper? The guy who addresses us as “friends” much in the manner of a tent preacher?

Harper is only comfortable either giving a set speech on a topic with which he is comfortable or in delivering a cheap, fast put-down in Question Period.

Hardly the skill range of a good speaker.

Add to that his basic dislike of people and the kind of stiff arrogance we saw in Ignatieff, and you do not have a winning combination.

Really great speakers always possess a kind of honesty in wanting to communicate something – even if its selective in nature – and Harper is likely the most dishonest personality ever to hold office in Canada.

Harper is driven by negatives.

He doesn’t like Canada and its traditional way of doing things. He said so himself.

He hates the Liberal Party and would love to destroy it. Again he said so himself.

He admires the way things are done in the United States, a country which today approaches no longer even being a democracy.

This is a man full of resentments with not a lot positive to contribute.

I almost suspect he was bullied as a kid in Toronto and has never forgiven his tormentors. He works hard to get back, possessing a genuinely destructive personality.

He has little popular appeal, naturally enough, and I think it fair to say his career is largely one of circumstances, of having lucked out with the Liberals so divided.

His lack of genuine feeling – except for a warm feeling about power – comes right through. He can’t hide it.

I believe the Conservative Party associates who have left before the election have done so for a generally unobserved reason: they are tired of his private tyranny and relentless suppression of individuality. They’ve put up with it long enough, likely believing he should have retired as leader and given someone else a chance, but, no, his negative personality listens to no one and his love of power has reached badly corrupt levels. Most of them will return after he is defeated.

And he is going to lose and lose big, no matter what polls may say.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY JEFFREY SIMPSON IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

Parties, like great families or national empires, do have a limited life.

A great family like the Eatons rose to being a household word and then declined to nothingness in several decades. Except for the name on the Eaton Centre, no ordinary young person of the next generation will even know who they were.

It is possible, but I don’t absolutely think so, that Canada’s Liberals have begun just that same descent along the arc of power.

To explain this phenomenon of declining power, it is not necessary to assert notions like being spoiled by success.

After all, the set of problems facing a nation changes over time, so much so that in periods of say fifty years, the old problems are forgotten or unrecognized by a different generation.

There have been countless examples of this in my lifetime, the greatest surely being America’s barbarous war in Vietnam.

Today, I’m sure if you asked most young adults about that ghastly effort, killing three million people in ten years of terror, many would not know where Vietnam is located and many would have no idea of when the war occurred.

That inevitable process of fading mass memory over the generations is part of why parties fade away.

But also, leadership always plays a key role. We’ve all seen in great family dynasties the way the iron-willed founders are succeeded often by less capable sons and grandsons.

Just look at Trudeau, one of our great leaders – whether you like his policies or not, he was a great leader. His son Justin, a handsome and intelligent young man, clearly does not possess the same talents and ruthless drive for success. One can almost feel the difference in temperament and attitude and drive.

And the Liberal Party has made some bad choices in its leadership recently.

Then there is the inevitable role of luck and fortune in the rise and fall of parties and families.

Old man Kennedy in the United States made his serious money through work with the Mob during Prohibition. Take away the historical mistake of American Prohibition and likely the Kennedy family would never have risen to such heights.

The bad luck of the Liberals has been two-fold, at least.

First, Quebec having been taken out of play in national politics. Second, the appearance of an opponent more dark and ruthless in his application and abuse of power, Stephen Harper, than they have ever faced.

Harper is simply a new phenomenon in Canada – a man who is perfectly comfortable with the Republican Right types like a Dick Cheney or a Tom Delay or Newt Gingrich – ugly, bad-tempered, ruthless men all.

The Liberals have never faced such a man before. Moreover they do it not with a Trudeau or a Chretien but an Ignatieff, a man of no political experience and little political talent.
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From another reader:

“Shouldn’t Bob Rae be front and centre reminding us what an NDP Government can do to You !!!”

Bob Rae was a responsible and capable premier.

Those were dangerous days economically, and Rae got us through.

He tried the path of the least hurt to people. If it had been someone of Harper’s ilk, I guarantee thousands would have lost their jobs, permanently.

Just wait, if Harper gets his majority, the budget will be balanced on tens of thousands losing their jobs as whole departments and programs are abolished.

To say anything else is just ignorance.

The people still whining about Rae Days make themselves sound like pathetic big babies.