My view, presently
Sorry.
Ontario political body language
They live in interesting times, Ontario’s political leaders do.
The Liberals need to accommodate the NDP if they want to stay alive. But if they give away too much, they risk being seen as weak, and having traded fiscal probity for self-interest.
The PCs have relegated themselves to the sidelines, once again – but, as Jean Chrétien used to remind us, the job of the Opposition is to oppose. And too much cooperation – as Dion and Ignatieff can testify – can be toxic to your brand. (Too much “being nice,” as well.)
The NDP, meanwhile, can’t lose. If they continue to extract concessions from the Wynne Liberals, they’ll get to claim credit. And, when the relationship has outlived its usefulness, they can summarily execute the Grits and say “it’s time for a change.”
As I write in Fight The Right, even progressive voters think an abundance of cooperation and consensus is synonymous with weakness. It’s a mistake to always equate conciliation with strength. It isn’t. Ask Stephen Harper.
If I’m right, the Ontario NDP has the upper hand. One of their opponents appears inert, the other seemingly lies prostrate.
The only risk to the Horwath New Democrats, at this point, is being seen as propping up the government for too long. My hunch? They’ll continue to take what they can, then stick in the knife after April’s budget.
What’s yours?
Jebs
I was taught by Jesuits. So was my Dad.
Jesuits taught me about social justice, trade unionism, liberation theology, the power of words, fighting intolerance, and real liberalism.
The new pope being a Jesuit?
That’s a big, big deal.
Brad Lavigne and Jean Chretien: the dramatic encounter
[The scene: this week, in or near the hallways of power in Ottawa. Brad Lavigne, who helped propel the NDP to a historic victory, and Jean Chrétien, the winningest Liberal leader, are suddenly face to face. They shake hands.]
Lavigne: Did you get a chance to watch the ‘Jack’ movie on Sunday night?”
Chrétien: No, I couldn’t, but I read Kinsella’s piece about it. He said it was good.
Lavigne: And he was right!
[The end. Curtain.]
Garneau goodbye?
As one of his infamous clients would say…
In Tuesday’s Sun: dispatch from sunny Florida
FORT MYERS, Fla. — Is this place coming back?
As recently as two years ago, it assuredly wasn’t. The thousands of winter-weary Canadians who trekked here every March saw plenty of evidence to suggest the once-great United States had ceased to be great. It was in deep economic trouble.
Florida’s prospects were grinding and grim. The U.S. in general was hammered by the great global recession with astonishing ferocity.
For the first time in years, however, good news seems to be finally outweighing the bad. Last week, the U.S. Department of Labour confirmed the national jobless rate had dropped to its lowest level in four years. In February, the American economy added nearly 240,000 jobs, sending unemployment to its lowest level since December 2008, when the U.S. started to go to hell in a handbasket.
To some, the job numbers were a big surprise. Wall St., which gets things wrong more often than not, had expected about half as many jobs. The good news sent the Dow Jones Industrial average to another record high.
What is most remarkable about this turnaround isn’t economics — it’s politics. Throughout American history, no president has achieved re-election with an economy as bad as the U.S. economy has been. In fact, presidents don’t really win re-election when GDP has gone below 3%.
Barack Obama’s achievement — winning in November, and winning big, too — is therefore pretty amazing. How did he do it?
From the beginnings of his presidency, Obama knew the principal cause of U.S. economic misery: The reckless deregulation mania of George W. Bush’s regime.
Long before he became president, Obama signalled he was no leftist reformer. On the economy, “we should be guided by what works,” he said.
So, while he favoured the New Deal of Franklin D. Roosevelt — and while he dismissed privatization fetish of the Republicans as “social Darwinism” — Obama was a Democrat in the Clintonian model. He gave shareholders a vote on executive compensation — a “say on pay.”
He created the “Buffett rule” — and gave families earning under $250,000 a tax cut, promising the middle class three times the benefit they would have received from the GOP’s John McCain.
He offered business a tax break for hiring more employees. He eliminated big tax cuts for big corporations, and levelled charitable tax credits.
But his signature achievement was the stimulus program he brought in within weeks of taking office. Coupled with multi-billion-dollar loans to the auto industry, Obama put the U.S. back on the road to the recovery it now (seemingly) enjoys.
On each of those initiatives — every one — conservatives opposed Obama. They derided him as a “socialist” and suggested he was a secret Muslim, and Africa-born, to boot. They are the very same ones now indifferent to what sequestration will do to everyday Americans and the recovery.
Obama’s economic policies were the right mix of private and public. Since 2008, the thread that runs through them is an acknowledgment that government can indeed be a force for good. But that government is not responsible for the irresponsible.
Up in Canada, it is Stephen Harper’s willingness to walk in lockstep with Obama — and the resistance of Jean Chretien and Paul Martin to demands for deregulation by bank lobbyists — that has kept Canada in a comparatively better position than the U.S. And, simultaneously, Harper has kept himself politically viable by acting like Obama — not Bush.
Until recently, Florida has been a nice place to visit. Thanks to Barack Obama, it’s becoming again a nice place to live in, too.
You’d like to see this really happen, wouldn’t you?
In Sunday’s Sun: wherein I say nice things about the NDP icon
Now, before you get all mad at me for having the gall to say nice things about the Jack Layton movie in these pages of all places, I respectfully suggest you get mad at Charles Adler first.
After all, I merely LIKED Jack. Adler — the prairie arch-conservative and slayer of all things socialistic — is actually IN Jack.
It’s true! Early on, as the film chronicles Layton’s career as a Toronto municipal politician, there’s an unforgettable scene where Layton appears on right-wing talk radio. And there, casting baleful looks, is Sun News’ own Charles Adler. Appearing, and sounding, mightily unimpressed.
Nobody does high dudgeon as well as my friend Adler. He deserves an Oscar for his performance as, well, himself. Two thumbs up!
The rest of the cast, you ask? They — particularly Rick Roberts, who turns in a stunningly great performance as the now-deceased NDP icon — are terrific, too. If the cast’s objective had been to make Layton’s story more personal than political, they succeeded.
If, however, viewers taking in Jack Sunday night on CBC are looking for more of the political and less of the personal, they will come away disappointed. Jack is much more about the man than the politician.
As such, Layton comes across as he was in life — much liked and, even for some, much loved. Even when a gay-hating constituent tosses a cup of hot coffee at his face, Layton is nonplussed.
Instead of going home and changing his shirt and tie, Layton goes ahead with a date with his future wife, Olivia Chow (played with great skill by Sook-Yin Lee). Chow’s mother tells her daughter that Layton is crazy.
In Jack, Layton isn’t crazy — but it is made clear that he regularly drove his staff and family crazy. His relentless positivism, it turns out, was no act. When things got bad (and they did often before May 2011), Layton would simply pick up his guitar and start singing. And thereby drive his staff and family crazy.
Among those driven batty by Layton’s unflagging optimism were his cadre of loyalists. So, we see actors portraying political legends like Brian Topp (with more hair), Brad Lavigne (with more height), as well as Karl Belanger and Anne McGrath (who has far more real-life charm than portrayed in the film), groaning about Layton’s refusal to ever accept life’s glass might be half empty.
Utterly missing from Jack is a hint, much less an explanation, for Layton’s extraordinary win in 2011.
Was it his shrewd use of his cane and his health issues, a la Lucien Bouchard? Was it his sunny personality, which contrasted so favourably to the glum Stephen Harper and Michael Ignatieff? His unflappable determination?
The viewer is left with no answers. An explanation might have made Jack better. And it might have assisted the NDP, too, now under Thomas Mulcair, looking like a shadow of what it was under Layton.
That aside, Jack is an enjoyable film about a pretty extraordinary fellow. One who, like Moses, led his followers to the political promised land, but who never got the chance to go there with them.
It’s on TV Sunday night, and it’s worth your time. And, if nothing else, it’ll give you a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see Charles Adler on the CBC!
At JFK, a familiar sign distracts us
