Prime Minister Stephen Harper, right, meets Liberal leader Justin Trudeau, left, and his daughter Ella-Grace at the Calgary Stampede parade, Friday, July 4. Trudeau's six-year-old son, Xavier, shook hands with the PM. Photo: THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh Is that all there is?
If you’re a Conservative supporter, you could be forgiven for wondering.
We’ve now a little more than a year to run until the next federal election campaign. In virtually every poll, Justin Trudeau’s Liberals lead the Tories. In the byelection sweepstakes, the Grits’ vote share is surging, the Conservatives’ faltering, the New Democrats’ crumbling.
But as far as the PMO message track is concerned, it’s business as usual.
Saturday evening, in a speech to a friendly Calgary Stampede audience, Prime Minister Stephen Harper had a fine opportunity to show that he understands the way the game is changing, or at least carve out a bit of new rhetorical territory. Instead, he stuck to the long-established path – some will call it a rut – laid down in many previous prime ministerial speeches.
Why is the Conservative government so awesome, and deserving of an extraordinary fourth term, after nearly a decade in power? It’s the economy, stupid. Unlike the spendthrifts across the aisle, who will take your hard-earned money and blow it on massive, wasteful and ineffective new government programs, the Conservatives can be relied upon to lower taxes, stimulate job creation, and bolster free trade. Huzzah.
Whom does the Conservative government champion? Look no further than the prime minister’s speech for an answer; hard-working families, that’s who. If you’re a soccer mom or hockey dad who holds down a steady job and regularly breakfasts at Tim’s, chances are you’re among the blessed. If you’re lazy, sluggardly, shiftless or indolent – or, God forbid, single — you may find a home among the Liberals, but you probably have no business in the Big Blue tent.
Why are we all safer with Tories in charge? “If, God forbid, Canadians are attacked, or robbed,” The Canadian Press quotes Harper as saying, “if they lose someone they love to a murderer, or if they see their children driven to suicide by bullying and harassment … the first thing they want their government to do is not make excuses for criminals but to stick up for victims.”
Liberals hug thugs and care only for ensuring criminals have a full range of cable TV and gluten-free dessert options in their sumptuously appointed cells. The Conservatives, thank goodness, will punish the evildoers with various mandatory minimum sentences, and never mind the lawyerly weenies and eggheads who say these don’t deter crime, and in some cases are unconstitutional.
About Trudeau personally, meantime, Harper offered the customary bon mots: “He will repeal our reforms … he will restore that key Liberal principle of criminal justice, that the offender must be considered innocent even after being proved guilty … whatever you want, they’ll spend money on it and you can have it … he has nothing – absolutely nothing – of substance to offer.”
The narrative of Trudeau as an empty vessel with little but name, toothy grin and hair to his credit first became current in early 2012. It got a road test during the Liberal leadership campaign in 2012 and early 2013, as contenders such as Martha Hall Findlay and Marc Garneau used it to what they believed was good effect. The Tories then picked up the ball in April of 2013 in the first of a series of attack ads, and they have been running it doggedly downfield ever since, up to and including Saturday in Calgary.
All through that period, Trudeau and the Liberals have steadily improved their position. One does not have to be Alexis de Tocqueville to appreciate that something in Harper’s message is misfiring.
Here’s what it is, in a nutshell: Character.
Earlier Saturday at the Stampede, Liberal photographer Adam Scotti snapped a photo of Trudeau and his six-year-old son, Xavier, in an informal encounter with the PM.
Aside from the wildly improbable irony of this prime minister, who has his own particular narrative to contend with, allowing himself to be photographed wearing a black hat, next to Trudeau in a white one, the photo is telling.
For starters, it speaks well of both men that they would set aside politics in this way, for a brief moment. But equally clearly, Trudeau is ushering his son into the handshake with his arch-rival – a gesture of respect for the office, and also the idea that one can oppose a politician’s views, but not demonize them personally. Yet on the very evening following this little human exchange, Harper engaged in further demonization. Attack ad, redux.
If it were effective demonization, one could at least try to justify it using the excuse of expediency. But it has proven for two years now not to work – including in the most recent round of byelections. The personal attacks merely reinforce Harper’s own negatives, while bouncing harmlessly off his nemesis.
Could Harper, at this advanced stage of his career and with so much water under the bridge, credibly re-invent himself as a “white-hat” politician? Well, no. But he could, and should, offer something beyond the usual tired bromides about the economy, and personal attacks on Trudeau, to persuade Canadians he deserves another turn at bat.
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