It’s (finally) summertime, when the political speculation is easy.

Heretofore, the subject that no longer seems as crazy as it once did: Will Stephen Harper quit before the next federal election in October 2015?

There are plenty of reasons why he shouldn’t, or why he won’t.

But there are 10 very good reasons why he just might, too. Here they be:

1. Ten years is a long time: By the time the next election takes place, Harper will have been in power for nearly a decade. Very few last that long, and those who overstay their welcome inevitably end up regretting their decision. After that much time has gone by, voters start to get sick of your face.

2. He could lose. As pollsters have been saying for months, Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau is the real deal. By now, it is clear that his popularity is no passing fad. For the first time, Harper needs to consider the possibility that he could to lose to someone he clearly considers his inferior. He doesn’t want to do that.

3. His party is getting restless. As Alberta Wildrose supporter Rod Love once observed: “When the water dries up, the animals begin to look at each other differently.” So too in politics. Harper’s backbench is no longer afraid of him, and rebelling. His PMO is heartily detested throughout the Conservative hinterland. To many Conservatives, Harper is being quietly regarded as a liability, and not an asset.

4. Leadership shenanigans abound: Jason Kenney has been running a leadership campaign for months; Peter MacKay is warning he will quit the party if he doesn’t get his way on leadership selection rules. Harper, mindful of what Jean Chretien endured, may be persuaded to choose discretion over valour.

5. He is not a wealthy man: Harper and his wife own their Calgary home, but not much else. And, as Calgary Conservative legend Harvie Andre once queried: “Why is it more profitable to know Harvie Andre than to be Harvie Andre?” Harper, knowing this, may decide he needs to build up a retirement nest egg while he still can.

6. He’s a young man: Not even 60, Harper has many prime earning years ahead of him — as a corporate rainmaker, as a member of lucrative boards, as the giver of big-ticket speeches. Why wait until he can’t enjoy the fruits of his labours? Why not go while the getting’s good?

7. Everything starts to look the same: After 10 years in the same job, new files aren’t as exciting or as challenging as they once were. Things develop a sameness to them; boredom and sloppiness start to set in. When that happens, it’s time to go.

8. The Cons don’t stand for anything anymore: Even the party faithful are admitting the mission statement is long forgotten. They have become, in effect, what they came to Ottawa to destroy. Even Harper, a policy wonk and partisan, would be hard pressed to express his party’s raison d’etre. Canadians sure can’t.

9. The job is done: Harper wanted to do three things. One, reduce the Liberal Party to a shadow of its former self. Two, unite conservatives as a single political force. Three, make conservativism a less radical political choice. He has indisputably done all three. His legacy is achieved.

10. Him: Watch him. Listen to him. There is no joy in the job for him anymore. There is no challenge. He looks unhappy.

Will he go?

Who knows?

But no one should be surprised, now, if he does.

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…And my daughter is at camp for the entire summer. When I told my youngest boy how sad that made me, this was his visual response.

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Is that so much to ask on Canada Day?

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If we have a national memory of seven minutes, do scandals matter any more, or at all?

If we have seen and heard everything before, does a new scandal register on our collective consciousness?

Not really.

It’s been quite a time, has the spring of 2013. At every level, in virtually every part of the country, sleaze and seaminess is, seemingly, the order of the day.

Federally, of course, there is the ongoing Senate expense scandal, which has spawned multiple RCMP probes of Conservative and Liberal senators. The mess has claimed the political career of the prime minister’s highly regarded chief of staff, and left the governing party plummeting in the polls.

Provincially, police are investigating the management of Ontario’s air ambulance service and the destruction of records relating to a couple of gas plants.

In Quebec, an inquiry into political corruption has been underway since late 2011 — and it has claimed an impressive number of politicians, including the last two Montreal mayors.

Municipally, Toronto’s mayor is alleged to have smoked crack cocaine in a video, and he has not sued the media outlets that have made that allegation.

In London, Ont., the mayor has been charged with fraud, and was found to have pocketed thousands from a defunct charity he chaired.

Politicians in Toronto, Mississauga, Winnipeg and elsewhere faced conflict of interest allegations.

At this point, the requisite disclaimers: Everyone’s innocent until proven guilty. No one has been convicted of a crime.

That all said, doesn’t it seem to you that the spring of 2013 has been qualitatively worse than previous years? That we are incontestably awash in political sewage? That, despite a myriad number of laws and regulations and well-funded overseers, things are getting worse, not better?

Perhaps. Maybe. But one thing is undeniably the case: Most of the time, most people don’t give a sweet damn.

There have been only two occasions when they did, and when scandal had a significant impact on the body politic: Forty years ago, when the Watergate scandal forced the resignation of a president. And a decade ago, in Canada, when the sponsorship affair commenced the process that led to the Liberal Party of Canada’s present ignominious third-party status.

Too often, however, it is forgotten that Watergate — the cancer on Richard Nixon’s administration — had been front-page news in both the Washington Post and The New York Times throughout the 1972 presidential race. Despite that, Nixon went on to win more than 60% of the popular vote. If the early days of Watergate mattered to American voters, they certainly didn’t show it.

So, too, sponsorship. After Jean Chretien learned of the mess and called in the RCMP, the Liberal Party reigned in the polls. At the time of his departure in December 2003, in fact, the governing Grits were registering around 60% support in national surveys. Despite the ongoing Mountie investigation, which was in all the papers at the time.

Watergate came to matter only because of the cover-up that followed — and because it was truly the first full-blown scandal that directly involved a sitting president, at a time when the media was still a power unto itself.

Sponsorship had a corrosive effect principally in Quebec, because voters there came to believe they had been swindled into voting for federalism during the 1995 referendum.

Apart from those two examples — apart from Watergate and sponsorship — scandals loom large in the minds of the media and politicians. But not so much the public.

Partly, it is because other things come up; they move on. Partly, it is because there is a grinding sameness to it all, year after year.

Mostly, however, it is because the public has long believed that public life does not attract the brightest or the best.

To them, it attracts only the dregs.

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Hollywood, here we come!

SFH’s tuneful genius is to be found in Julie Pacino’s (yes, daughter of) latest flick, Billy Bates. It’s being released in the Fall in LA and NYC. The Kardashians have asked us to take them down the red carpet at the star-studded premiere, but we said no.

Is it arty and deep? Yes it is. But so is Shit From Hell.

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This week’s cover of The New Yorker.

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I’ve actually never written you a letter before.

I’m doing so now to ask you to intervene in this case: hundreds in thousands in Canadian dollars going to one of the most violent neo-Nazi groups – the one, in fact, who provided the blueprint for the Oklahoma City bombing. The worst case of domestic terror in the history of the United States.

I am confident you and your office will do all that you can to stop this from happening.

Sincerely,

Warren

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The other reason this story is important is because it shows how very afraid the Conservatives are of the new Liberal leader.

Since Trudeau won the Liberal leadership in April, the Tories have been proactively on the attack with negative ad campaigns, regular bulletins and talking points and with members’ statements in the House all with the same message that ‘Justin Trudeau is in over his head.’

“Justin Trudeau still has them spooked,” Liberal insider and Sun News analyst Warren Kinsella wrote on his website on Tuesday morning.

“Otherwise, why make such a pathetically-transparent attempt to change the channel, orchestrated in the highest office in the land?”

The Tories’ Trudeau fears aside, this was a good story for them: Most Canadians would agree that an MP charging speaking fees to charities is just wrong. And for Trudeau to do that — even though he now is willing to pay back some of the money — made him look bad.

But by perpetuating the story in this manner, the Conservatives have made a bad news story about Justin Trudeau into a bad news story about themselves.

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Outside Sun News studios, following an appearance on Brian Lilley’s show, I am struck by a proverbial lightning bolt on the way to Damascus. Clearly, I was wrong about Dalton McGuinty, and pretty much everything else. Watch what happens next.

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