POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL
Harper's legacy?
Clearly it will not be in anything tangible, unless you count ridiculously expensive planes bought to help subsidize his friends at the Pentagon.
Nor is it in any worthy new laws for the country, unless you count his meaningless crime reforms intended only to satisfy some blood vengeance.
It certainly will not be in foreign affairs. He is a two-trick pony there. First, do whatever the United States even hints that it wants. Two, drag Israel into our national politics as it is in the United States.
His will be the legacy of a new political culture, a severely amoral one. The rank smell of Newt Gingrich, Tom Delay or a Phil Gram clings to Harper.
This man spends virtually his entire day thinking and working towards maintaining his power, about what kind a wedge he can create that might gain him a few votes, what new cheap trick or charge - it doesn't matter whether it’s true, it doesn’t matter whether it hurts Canada, just so it works.
He works tirelessly to block all efforts at honest investigation into serious matters - whether its troops’ ugly behavior in Afghanistan or his minister's leaving secret papers at his biker-girlfriend's house for weeks.
Harper has succeeded in being kind of a Teflon-coated PM, avoiding many matters he should have taken responsibility for, and he's done this without a bit of Ronald Reagan's charm.
That's because his loyal base are the kind of people who think Sarah Palin is something good rather than ridiculous, and it's because the Liberal Party cannot put an effective leader up against him, and, of course, it's also because Quebec is simply out of national political play.
In that combination of circumstance, he's been lucky, not skillful.
But he does have a unique skill set in Canada's national politics: he's a schoolyard bully and a cheap manipulator of considerable talent.
