No election! And everyone can declare victory. Even the Prime Minister, even the Opposition Leader, even the people. Everyone except those of us in the media who see politics as sport and relish in repeatedly reducing it to schoolyard scorekeeping.
Instead of the ritual of heaving invective at one another from across the Commons aisle, Stephen Harper and Michael Ignatieff sat down and negotiated like adults. Both gave a bit on the Employment Insurance issue. Mr. Ignatieff got some concessions on other points, including an opportunity - via a rescheduled voting day - to bring down the government early in the fall. But Mr. Harper didn't have to cave on anything major.
The Opposition Leader had more cards to play. Mr. Ignatieff has the lead in the polls. He had the support of the other parties, had he wished to bring down the government.
On the phone from Calgary, Tom Flanagan, a former mentor to the Prime Minister, talked about what Mr. Harper would have done were he in Iggy's shoes. “Do you think he would be worried much that it was a summer election? I don't think so. If he thought it was a favourable juncture, he'd grab it.”
Mr. Ignatieff lacked the gumption to go for it, he was saying. By threatening an election and pulling back, he risks looking pusillanimous.
By contrast, in bringing on the last election, Mr. Harper cast aside his pledge of a fixed election date. He claimed the opposition was obstructionist when it wasn't. Damning the torpedoes, he went ahead - and he won.
On the Liberal side, a senior strategist explained that, well, Michael Ignatieff really isn't that way. He hasn't spent a lifetime in politics. His every move, the adviser said, isn't dictated by naked political self-interest. So when he stood up at the start of the week and announced that he wasn't looking for an election, he meant it. The problem was that not many believed him. The media spin game didn't work in his favour. The Liberal Leader was seen as equivocating. Opposition leaders aren't supposed to equivocate.
There's a happy medium a leader has to find between crass political calculation and operating in the public interest. In a new update of his book Harper's Team , Mr. Flanagan has issued a harsh critique of the Prime Minister, saying he has let political calculation get the best of him. He cited last fall's disastrous fiscal update, the failure to articulate a national vision, the widespread impression that he exists for nothing except winning.
“It's a bit unusual to have someone who is by nature a strategist be the leader,” Mr. Flanagan explained this week. Getting trapped in a minority government played on Mr. Harper's instincts to the point where “everything became survival and tactics.”
This obsession with political calculus has created “an end result that is regrettable, and I think there is a big cost to Canada,” said Mr. Flanagan, who is unlikely to be dining at 24 Sussex any time soon but who is to be appreciated for his candour.
Mr. Harper's comportment this week might help soften his image. Not wanting an election, he didn't have much choice but to compromise. That he came before the cameras shortly after Mr. Ignatieff tabled his demands to say he was willing to negotiate made this perfectly clear.
The Liberal Leader appeared to be dictating the agenda. But through later manoeuvrings, the PM avoided having that perception take hold.
The weakness in the Liberal position was that none of the demands Mr. Ignatieff put on the table were grave enough to merit an election. Not after we just had one in the fall.
Election timing, it should be said, is an overblown consideration. The 2006 election was held in January, after a campaign extending through Christmas. Everybody grumbled, but just like in the last campaign, the media moved on to other issues after the first week. As for a summer campaign, it actually has many advantages - the weather, the free time for people to campaign, the ease of getting out the vote.
But the vast majority of Canadians are of the opinion that no election is necessary now. The leaders were smart to realize it and to engage in constructive, instead of destructive, dialogue. The week should serve - but probably won't - as an example for the future.
