Kim Campbell's revenge

(Nothing new in the boys' room)

After two debates and an in-person attendance at a rally, I'm finding myself kind of depressed about the election, enervated instead of energized. Though I still think the choices facing us are important — Very Bad versus Not Very Good — it's not easy to get excited by the latter.

And it's not easy to get excited by canned rhetoric, by half-truths contending with lies, lies with half-truths, or by the fact the most inspirational actor in either the French- or the English-language debate was a separatist whose primary goal is to destroy the most successful and successfully complex civilization in the history of the world (ask me what's good about Canada some day!).

Tuesday and Wednesday nights saw me staring at the television, and Wednesday morning hopping on my bike for a hurried ride into downtown Ottawa, where Jack Layton was holding court at a Bank Street eatery at the ungodly hour of 8:00 o'clock in the morning.

Layton was introduced by my local MP who got predictable cheers for asking the partisan crowd of maybe 150 people who won the previous evening's debate.

Layton himself was, more or less, the same as what I've seen on television. Clear and concise, kind of funny, and a just a little stiff, as if even after decades in politics he's still not entirely comfortable speaking to a crowd. He stuck very close to his script; aside from a joke about the political points to be made from kissing "ma blonde" after the debate, I had already heard everything he said at breakfast almost verbatim on Tuesday night.

The NDP, it seems, is pro-family and pro-small business, anti-Senate and anti-credit card companies; pro-environment and pro-health care, against over-paid bank CEOs and, er, Stephen Harper — the rhetorical specifics are already fading, as are those from the "debates" themselves.

So I'd best get on with it. Click here for more if you're up for some ennui. I'll try to keep it short.

'Parliamentary democracy?' Wat dat?

Can we say 'presumption of privilege', ladies and gentlemen?

Iggy's leap at comic's tweet shows he shares Harper's contempt for Canada's democratic traditions

'Ok i'll produce a Iggy Harper debate. 50 grand to a charity of their choice. I'll find a broadcaster or 4.' — Rick Mercer, tweeting on Saturday, April 2, 2011.

'I'm in.' — Michael Ignatieff, Saturday, April 2, 2011.

I wish he Rick Mercer for trading in his satirist's badge in favour of court jester's (forgive the generic link to the Mercer's homepage; if one of you can tell me how to make a permanent link to a tweet, I'd be most obliged), but that wasn't fair. If Mercer ever was a real satirist, he gave it up a long time ago. And you can't blame a comedian for cracking wise. That's his job.

You can, though, blame Michael Ignatieff for taking the comic's bait.

The ostensible public intellectual and one-time Professor of Human Rights showed no respect for, or understanding of, Canada's history or our parliamentary culture and traditions in answering Mercer's tweet with his own, "I'm in."

I'm in.

On the proverbial first glance the idea of a Harper/Ignatieff face-off sounds not so unreasonable. After all, neither Jack Layton nor Gilles Duceppe (let alone Elizabeth May, whom the aptly-self-styled "consortium" of Canadian broadcasters has once again refused a spot in the boys' room) has a realistic chance at making the Prime Minister's office their own, so why not let the 'front-runners' have at at each other one-on-one?

In fact, this isn't just an example of a politician serving himself at the expense of his competitors, but a betrayal of Canada's political culture and traditions.

Read the full article at Edifice Rex Online