There they were, the two tough guys, Jean Chrétien and Stephen Harper, together on centre stage. The old warrior from Shawinigan was back on the Hill for the unveiling of his portrait to hang in Parliament's hall.
The voice still sounded like cement pouring from a truck and the words were intoxicatingly plain. He championed Canada, as he always has, and he was convincing as always doing it because of his raw edge. It's like he was chiselled from Laurentian rock.
Dispirited Liberals were uplifted yesterday in seeing their three-time winner. His spirit, his rugged charm shaped the party. They need it back.
Stephen Harper, good-humoured and generous, spoke respectfully of what Mr. Chrétien accomplished. Although it is no exaggeration to say this Prime Minister loathes anything Liberal, he has a fondness for the old lion's tough ways and winning record. It was evident when he drew a comparison, pointing out how he, too, was known to run things with a firm hand. Given all the criticism Mr. Harper takes for being so iron-fisted, he feels the example provides him some cover. As in, he did it, why can't I?
The two men are, in fact, comparable in a way - they helped each other succeed. Mr. Chrétien profited wonderfully from the conservative split brought on by the Reform Party, of which Mr. Harper was a founder. Mr. Harper profited wonderfully from the sponsorship scandal, of which Mr. Chrétien was a founder.
But the Prime Minister has it wrong if he is trying to emulate his predecessor's tough and ruthless ways. Mr. Chrétien didn't win because he was authoritarian. He didn't win because he manhandled the system. This was his downside. It was why his image was, in the end, tarnished to a degree. The bullheadedness led to abuses such as the sponsorship scandal, Shawinigate, the pepper spraying of protesters and the like.
He was at his best when he was the little guy from Shawinigan, when he stood his ground, at one with the values of everyday people and the country.
Mr. Harper and his Conservatives must occasionally wonder why they can never approach Mr. Chrétien's degree of popularity. Mr. Chrétien benefited from a badly split right side of the political spectrum, but the Conservatives have a badly split left side. While there are several parties divvying up the electoral pie today, the same was true in Mr. Chrétien's years (although the Greens weren't as prominent then) and in many elections previous.
Yet the difference in degree of appeal is wide. Mr. Chrétien's support was almost always above 40 per cent. Through more than four years of governance, Mr. Harper's Conservatives have averaged barely 35. This ranks them as one of the most unpopular governments in Canadian history. Of prime ministers of any duration, only R.B. Bennett would appear to have maintained such lower numbers and he, of course, faced the Great Depression.
A principal reason for this low ranking is that Mr. Harper tends to emulate Mr. Chrétien's weakness instead of his strengths. He seems to feel that running roughshod over the system with ruthless tactics will score him points.
He's at it again. He got beaten up with the ill-conceived Christmas prorogation of Parliament and has yet to recover his pre-Christmas popularity as a result. In defiance of Parliament he then tried to deny MPs documents on the Afghan detainees and was rebuked by a Speaker's ruling for it. This week, he put up a new challenge to the system in denying parliamentary committees the right to call cabinet staff members to testify.
In the meantime, the government is upping the "up yours" ante by grafting to its budget bill a whole raft of legislation that doesn't belong in a budget bill. It's an abuse of process. Among other things, the bill dispenses with the need for environmental assessment for many federally funded commercial projects.
No doubt, Mr. Harper feels he is demonstrating great political moxie in overrunning the system again. But he might be advised to look at the record of the guy with whom he just shared the podium.
Lawrence Martin