An unholy Alliance
by Rex Murphy
Ralph Klein had an Oprah moment this week.
The Queen of soft focus and scented candles, and the King of the wide, rich West do not often yoke. (Fate has its spasms of mercy.) Mr. Klein confessed -- advertised -- that he had once smoked marijuana. Gave it up. Said it made him more paranoid that he already was.
I hope it was for medicinal purposes. So many of the experiments in Alberta, instituted by its Premier, turn on innovations in health care. It may be, then, that this early dalliance with the mellowing weed ("not poppy, nor mandragora . . . shall ever medicine thee") was inspired by a vision of the public good, rather than a private impulse to "groove" with Purple Haze, or (shudder) The Carpenters.
A little hip depravity goes some way, as the horrible term has it, to "humanize" our public figures. Maybe Ralph has found his inner Clinton, and Edmonton is Empathy North.
I doubt it. Alberta politics, like Ontario politics, is not built on "I feel your pain" or other yuppie treacle. Tories in Alberta and Ontario are hard boys. They have several ideas -- "government is bad, let us run it"; "balance the budget or else" and "we're the only adults in the building" -- that they are pleased to call a philosophy.
They have been successful with this narrow agenda, but have taken to reading that success as some sort of triumph in a larger, cultural cause. This imparts to the politics of Alberta and Ontario something of an arrogant edge, an intolerance toward those who haven't seen the light as being lesser creatures, noisy children at the grownups' party.
Now, in the righteousness crapshoot, the left have owned the dealer so long they should be barred from the table, so maybe a flare of right righteousness has its place. But the attitude carries a penalty.
A few narrow ideas that were superlatively correct in response to slack fiscal practices, to government as exuberant feel-goodism and therapy, have become ends in themselves. What began as a mere course correction has become a fixation.
That's the problem with new-style conservatism. It thinks it owns the truth. New-style conservatives might help themselves with the reflection that "owning the truth" was precisely what annoyed them most about their natural opponents on the left. Disagree with a Liberal and that Liberal will tell you you're a jerk. Disagree with the NDP and you're on the "wrong side of history," and a piece of moral flotsam not worth the rock you wash up on.
And now that they have power, the winners in the mighty solitudes of Ontario and Alberta are highly pleased with themselves. They've routed the slackers and whiners, and have invested in the singularly unattractive notion that they govern, mainly, for the people who agree with them. If you're not inside the tent with the winners, well, too bad for you. This may work (I have my doubts) for a province. It's pathetically inept as a prescription for a federal state.
The difficulty extends beyond a crisp and condescending attitude. It goes to power and influence. The two powerful governments of two powerful provinces are now attempting to franchise their very provincial triumphs to a national medium, the Alliance party.
It is not at all clear that powerful provincial regimes are the ideal nurseries for national politics. The entire fate of the Alliance experiment depends, without disguise, on gaining the benediction of two sitting premiers, Ralph Klein and Mike Harris. The two, new, star candidates, Mr. Day and Mr. Long, are not so much autonomous contenders, as -- if I may borrow a term of art from what I truly hope is an entirely different world -- nuncios.
They are delegates of provincial regimes. Earlier this week in Toronto, Tom Long's wonderfully contained self description at the Mike Harris celebration dinner corralled this aspect with the impervious logic of an equation: "I'm here as a foot soldier for Mike Harris."
The eagerness of these camps to sideline the onlie begetter of the Canadian Alliance, Preston Manning, may have less to do with Mr. Manning's celebrated lack of Ontario charisma, as his ownership of some independent political clout. There's a chuckle in here somewhere, but Preston Manning may not be Alberta's or Ontario's first choice, because he likes to run what he leads. He's a lot like, well, Mike Harris and Ralph Klein.
Should Mr. Day or Mr. Long win the Alliance contest, and the longer game of national power, it will I am sure be good news for Ontario and Alberta, in so far as those provinces can be identified with their present governments. I don't think it means a garden party for everybody else.
We've seen this kind of political shunting already, where a province, or more properly a faction with it, decides it needs "dedicated" representation in a national vehicle.
It's called the Bloc Quebecois. |