Liberal war roomers spent part of yesterday, and remember this was election day . . . wait for it . . . watching the second season of The West Wing on DVD. The Grit war room members had suffered a couple of setbacks during the campaign, and it had nothing to do with Paul Martin's slumping fortunes in the polls.
Rather, the first setback came in mid-December with the death of John Spencer, who played chief of staff Leo McGarry on The West Wing. The second setback took place just one day before election day when NBC announced that after seven years it was cancelling the show. (The Martin Grits grew up with the show, and director of communications Scott Reid sometimes joked about being "Josh" on the program.)
"While most troops were dispatched to local campaigns to pull vote, the few remaining staffers left behind at headquarters to field media calls gathered around television sets to watch the second season on DVD," said a Grit strategist. The program's finale will air in May; last night may just have been the Liberal Langevin Block's finale.
Talking transition
The Conservatives knew they were being taken seriously when the call came last Friday from senior Privy Council Office officials. The bureaucrats asked for the name of the person they should contact in the Harper camp to get the transition talk rolling -- that's if, of course, the Harper team won on election day.
Meanwhile, transition is what the bureaucracy has been working on for the past several weeks. Public servants in all departments have been putting together briefing books, flagging to an incoming government possible priority
issues and those that a government might want to put into a Throne Speech.
But a weird scenario making the rounds yesterday suggests this could be all for naught: If the Liberals were within striking distance of the Tories, a coalition with the NDP would not be ruled out.
"Making this offer would force the Tories to enter talks with the Bloc," said a senior Liberal.
The kids
Stephen Harper and Laureen Teskey spent much of their afternoon yesterday with their children, Ben, 9, and Rachel, 7, in Calgary. The couple have not seen much of their children of late, and will not be able to spend as much time with them if they move into 24 Sussex Dr.
On CTV's Question Period on Sunday, Mr. Harper spoke about the challenges of the job and being a father of young children. He said it's a little easier for him because his children have grown up with a political father: "Stornoway is obviously not the same as 24 Sussex, but all I can tell you is this . . . that Benjamin, my son, has been following the election closely, and I think he's, he's surprisingly aware of the upsides and downsides of all this, and he's been giving me his daily polling advice and he likes what he sees. But we tell him that we'll only know on Monday night."
Hot and not:
Hot: Ambassador David Wilkins. Earlier in the campaign, Mr. Wilkins was the story when he lambasted Paul Martin for taking shots at the Bush administration. Since his outburst, however, he has been very quiet but not inactive. Rather, the South Carolinian has taken up skating. Now, the ambassador can be found gliding (we're not sure how elegantly) along the Rideau Canal. At his portrait unveiling in the South Carolina State House last week, Mr. Wilkins told friends that the Canadian winter is fantastic, and raved about the canal. Apparently, half of the state is thinking of coming up to try it out.
Not: Carolyn Bennett. According to Mac Marzolini, the eight-year-old son of former Liberal party pollster Michael Marzolini, who now heads Pollara, the Liberal incumbent in St. Paul's, Ms. Bennett, is on her way out. The junior Marzolini has the polling bug, and so armed with pencils and bar graphs, Mac determined that the Tory's Peter Kent had 50 per cent of the vote, compared to 36 per cent for the Liberals and 6 per cent for the NDP. However, his poll also showed that White Shark, a window cleaning company, could maybe form the government -- obviously a lot of dirty windows in the riding.
Hot: Whack the PM. The Internet election game has been a big hit during this campaign, and not only in Canada. Recent statistics show that 33 U.S. government employees have even played the game as well as 230 people in Britain and 11 in Switzerland. Says the game's operator, Franke James: "I thought the Swiss were neutral."
