Panic! Panic! Panic, Panic, Panic!

Murray Dobbin: Stephen Harper = Ronald Reagan

In a recent column published on Rabble.ca, Murray Dobbin produces what seems to be the result of many a cold-sweat soaked night, in which Dobbin has dreamed visions of Stephen Harper as Ronald Reagan, and suffered nightmares of the ignominity of Harper refuting Dobbin's ideological vision for the country.

"As I watch with alarm Stephen Harper's lead over the Liberals solidify, even as he displays contempt for climate change efforts, and disdain for parliament, I am reminded of Ronald Reagan. What I remember is this: on almost every major issue on which he took a strong public stand, he was opposed by a majority of Americans. But that did not stop them from supporting him, giving him high ratings as President -- and re-electing him."

As in so many cases, Dobbin's memory is clearly extremely selective. A perusal of Ronald Reagan's approval ratings -- the best indicator of how much the American people supported him -- there were only two times at which a majority of Americans opposed him: during the high unemployment of January, 1983 (42% approval) and during the Iran-Contra affair (44% approval).

During the remainder of his Presidency, Reagan's approval numbers never dropped below 64%. His disapproval rating would never climb above 28%.

Likewise, Harper's polling lead in leadership categories only continues to grow. Dobbin insists that a majority of Canadians oppose him. Unfortunately for his thesis, the majority of Canadians have yet to back him up.

"What explains the contradiction?"

Perhaps that the contradiction doesn't exist?

No, that can't be good enough for Dobbin.

"Americans saw in Reagan a man who, specific policies aside, believed strongly in what he was doing. And conversely, they saw in the Democrats a party of shameless opportunists who would claim to believe in anything if it got them a few extra votes. They were tired of trying to decipher the complexities of the issues, tired of the spin, distrustful of government and the media. Their default position was to go with the guy who seemed to say what he meant and mean what he said. They were looking for someone with principles -- and apparently any principles would do."

Of course, Dobbin seems to overlook the fact that Reagan governed during the 1980s -- the time of the famed "me generation".

The 1980s were known as a time of self-centred materialism in the United States. The truth is that Americans very likely appreciated Reagan's principles at the time. A socialiist as committed as Dobbin should be looking at this as a flaw of the United States of the day, not ignoring it for the purpose of making an ill-fitting argument.

If Dobbin wants to (mistakenly) equate the United States of the 1980s with the Canada of today, he at least seems to appreciate the significance of the principles of deficit some of Canada's political leaders.

"If Stephen Harper is Ronald Reagan then Michael Ignatieff seems destined to play the role of Hubert Humphrey or Bill Clinton or Al Gore -- Democrats with infinitely flexible principles and an ethical relativism that has degraded democratic politics in the US. The Liberal Party of Canada is the classic party of opportunism whose century of success as the natural governing party was predicated on running from the left with progressive policies, and then governing from the right, with policies designed to favour Bay Street. It worked so long as it was well-executed, and the party maintained internal unity and self discipline.

But now the Liberals are neither united nor disciplined. Paul Martin's ruthless ten year assault on his own party in aid of becoming its leader is still itself playing out in new incarnations of backstabbing and public disputes. So divided by the trench warfare between the two camps that no one within the ranks of party could lead it without being immediately assassinated, they went to the US recruit an outsider with no battle-baggage.

But what they got was a postmodern academic with no convictions that couldn't be trumped by particular circumstance. A human rights advocate who okays torture; a leader whose philosophy dictates that he can't feel strongly about anything -- for whom right and wrong are so intertwined he just can't be sure which is which."

Moreover, Canadians would be forgiven for not fully understanding where the Liberal party stands on a great number of issues. The federal Liberal Party opposed the HST before they were tenuously in favour of it. They were prepared to support the government before they wanted to defeat it. Ignatieff was in favour of tax cuts before he was opposed to them.

And so on.

"Such a leader may well be incapable of fighting the pitbull ruthlessness of Stephen Harper whose passion for dismantling Canada knows no bounds. Ignatieff's persona is that of the effete snob personally offended by a man who refuses to play by the rules. But he can't adjust and recognize that it is Harper who is now making the rules and thus defining the landscape on which the battle takes place."

But as Dobbin as previously indulged himself in forgetting, it wasn't Harper who made the new rules. It was actually Jean Chretien and Warren Kinsella.

Hell, Kinsella even wrote two whole books about it. (For fuck's sake, Murray! -ed)

More over, the pure ideological nature of Dobbin's panic shines through his bombast. Stephen Harper doesn't have a "passion for dismantling Canada". He has a competing vision for Canada which an increasing number of Canadians share. His vision challenges Dobbin's vision of Canada as an ideological left-wing construct. But this isn't a bad thing.

It's actually a good thing.

It's only natural that the scant praise Dobbin has for Ignatieff are on the occasions in which Ignatieff echoed Dobbin's vision of Canada as a left-wing ideological construct: as a high-tax state with a deeply embedded nany state, with arms of the government devoted to promoting the official state ideology.

"To his credit, Ignatieff has had some promising moments in the past few months -- as when he mused aloud about the necessity of (ultimately) raising taxes to deal with the structural deficit. But he didn't have the courage to stick to it and the media and his own party smacked him so hard he almost forgot he'd ever said it. And his messaging on Harper was dead on. He attacked him on the tax issue: 'We pay taxes, Mr Harper, because we're all in this together. It costs us something, but it makes Canada the place it is: a place where we look out for each other.' And he revealed the theme on which he should fight the next election: 'Stephen Harper ...believes that the only good government is no government at all.' He topped it off, at about the time he was going to force an election, with 'We can do better' which sounds a bit like 'A better world is possible,' the theme of the World Social Forums.

Combine these themes -- and all the sub-themes they harbour -- with a campaign using Liberal veterans to tag Harper with all the frightening, anti-Canada statements he has made in the past, and Ignatieff would begin to claw back the ground he has lost in the past two months. And most importantly, he could claw it back from the radical libertarians how running the show, and not the NDP. But these gems come in fits and starts and there is no momentum."

The problem is that the Liberal Party and the NDP teamed up to wage this campaign three times before. On one occasion, they succeeded in preventing Harper from forming a government -- although the Liberals were able to win only a minority government.

On the next two tries, the Liberals were beaten.

It's been five years since the last federal election campaign in which fear-mongering was a successful tactic. Only an ideologue as foolish and boorish as Dobbin would actually advocate for political fear-mongering -- so long as it's directed at the "right" target.

"As for the NDP, it, too, is operating well below its potential. The longer Jack Layton is in Ottawa the more trapped he seems to become in the daily obsession with tactics. The NDP will never form the government (Quebec ensures this) and its strength therefore is squandered in this endless search for the perfect tactical maneuver. That game makes sense for the two contending parties but the NDP's strength is its vision (it's got to be there, probably locked up in a back room so it won't provoke anyone).

The NDP has no coherent vision that it is willing to boast about, just a series of disconnected policies, some of them admittedly very good but all of them harnessed to the singular strategy of replacing the Liberals. This is the critical weakness of the NDP -- it has decided that it will present itself as the real government in waiting with Jack Layton as prime minister. This strategy all but destroys any possibility of appealing to Canadians on the basis of a hopeful vision of what the country could be. Inadvertently, the NDP hobbles itself in the contest for hearts and minds.

Instead of boldly contrasting itself with Harper's dystopic vision of the country and the ruination of Canada's international reputation, the NDP attacks the Liberals, acquiesces to policies such as Harper's draconian crime bills, and allows free votes on the long gun registry. Then there is Layton's personal musing about eliminating income taxes for small business (lost revenue: $5 billion a year)."

And, of course, who cares if such tax cuts could help create jobs and bring the country closer to the NDP's laudable traditional goal of full employment?

Clearly, not Dobbin. What really matters to Dobbin is all of the often-superfluous government programming the government could fund with that revenue, regardless of the fact that the job-creating stimulus of those tax cuts would help alleviate human poverty in the first place.

"The NDP seems so caught in the minutiae of tactical maneuvering that it cannot see the forest for the trees. The constant opportunist calculations are reducing the NDP to the ethical equivalent of the US Democratic Party (one party fundraiser even referred to the party as the Democratic Party even though the suggested name change was never debated at the party's convention). Their strategy of slowly replacing the Liberals is like slow suicide -- at the end of the process they will of necessity become the Liberals."

It's on this note that Dobbin actually raises a worthy point.

Canada needs the NDP to serve as a credible alternative to the Liberal Party. But it will be nothing of the sort if it simply emulates the Liberal Party as closely as possible.

"Does being bold entail risks? Of course. Could the NDP lose seats in the next election? Yes, but they might anyway -- as they certainly would have done had there been a fall election. Wouldn't it be better to risks seats by being bold and visionary, inspiring Canadians to think big, rather than risk them racing to the bottom with the Liberals assuming Canadians are too dull and unimaginative to reclaim their country?

If neither the Liberals nor the NDP find the courage to present a vision to the country and redefine the political discourse, it is virtually certain that Stephen Harper will be prime minister after the next election. But if even one of them manages, they could save the country."

Of course, so few Canadians are aware that their country is in such peril!

How could this be?

Oh, right. That's because the country is not in peril. Murray Dobbin and Michael Byers' vision of Canada as a left-wing ideological construct very much is in peril, but that's actually a good thing.

At far-left websites like Rabble, however, the sense of panic is absolutely palpable. Murray Dobbin seems to think it's his responsibility to spread that panic so he can advocate a "stop Stephen Harper at all costs" crusade.

The problem for Dobbin is that as long as the Conservative Party's poll numbers continue to climb, it seems that fewer and fewer Canadians want Harper to be stopped, or even to stop.

In the meantime, the only option Dobbin seems to have is to try to spread anti-conservative panic, even if fewer and fewer Canadians are listening.