by Rick Mercer
SO LONG, SO-CONS | OCT. 2, 2007
Once again Ottawa is red-hot with election fever.
Now of course, I'd love an election. For me, an election's like the World Series. I'd take one every October. But in fact, if there is an election coming up, it's going to be a truly interesting one. It will be historic. For the first time ever, we'd have a Liberal party that has no idea what it is or what it stands for versus a Conservative party that's suddenly decided it's no longer conservative but big-tax-and-spend liberal.
But more importantly, for the first time in a very long time we are going to have an election where the so-cons, those good, God-fearing, very politically active social conservatives, are going to have absolutely no influence or say on the debate or the agenda. It's like we woke up in Fidel Castro's Cuba.
We have Stephen Harper to thank for this. Because since he became prime minister it's like he's managed to successfully spay and neuter every single one of those so-cons. Think about this. If social conservatives in this country were animals, of the four-legged variety, they'd be on some form of endangered species list. Cripes, if they had gills, David Suzuki would have to organize an emergency round table on how to protect them. As it stands now, the only evidence that the so-cons actually exist is when you talk to Tories and they laugh their asses off about how much money these people keep sending the party.
Now there is a very clever trick. Imagine convincing thousands of people to send you millions of dollars so you can form a government. Then you form the government and as a reward to those people you tell them to shut up and forget everything they've ever stood for and then you give them nothing. And then they send you more money in return because they have nowhere else to go. Whoever said Stephen Harper is a brilliant strategist wasn't lying.
So if we're heading into a federal election where Stephen Harper might form a majority, there are only two explanations: the social conservatives have been sold down a river, or they know something we don't.
CHOOSING
THE NERD
As much as I love an election, I love a leadership convention even more. From a showbiz perspective politics doesn't get much better than this. In an election the parties turn on each other; in a leadership convention a party turns on itself. This leads to a whole new level of carnage and destruction. Being a well-lubricated fly on the wall at one of these family feuds is just too much fun.
The Liberal leadership convention in Montreal was the most fun I had in all of 2006. And given the result, I don't think there'll ever be another one like it. Some things, like choosing a leader for example, are simply too important to be trusted to delegates.
FLIGHT DELAYED | DEC. 1, 2006
I am not in Montreal for the Liberal leadership convention. I am sitting on the tarmac in Toronto. Air Canada delayed my flight three times, and I have just boarded my flight almost two hours behind schedule.
Earlier tonight I caught Joe Volpe's speech on TV. Volpe's introduction video was put together by the same children who donated money to his campaign. It wasn't even a video, actually, it was just a collection of old pictures of Joe set to Tom Cochrane's Life Is a Highway. It didn't seem like a campaign video so much as the type of thing well-meaning but talentless children might prepare for their parents' fiftieth wedding anniversary. Usually these things work because family members get to laugh at the bad hairstyles from the seventies. I think the purpose here was to make people think, “Wow, Joe has been to the Great Wall of China—he should be our leader.”
The Iggy and Bob speeches I watched at the airport. Not a bad place to watch, really. I was in a similar situation years ago when I joined the huddle around an airport tele vision to watch the Canadian women's hockey team win the gold. This time it wasn't nearly as hard to get a seat with a decent view.
One guy who was pretty knackered announced to those watching that Bob Rae looked “familiar”; this got a pretty good laugh. A few minutes later he announced, “I think he's a comedian.” Bob certainly exhibited a stand-up's confidence by leaving the safety of the podium and walking to the edge of the stage. At the halfway point, when Bob made the joke about Harper's cabinet being vegetables, the guy laughed a little too hard and said, “See? He's funny!”
Ignatieff, I noticed, speaks very slowly—the sign of a good educator. He wants to make sure that even the dim kids can follow him. I admit I have a problem with this style. When Iggy starts waving that bloody finger around, I feel like I'm back in Ms. Patzold's grade eight class. His legions of fans seemed to like it, though. When he wiggles the finger they tingle inside. I think Iggy actually made a big mistake and either reached into the wrong pocket or ticked off the TelePrompter guy because it seemed to me that he was delivering his victory speech. I remember thinking it had something to do with “hope.” Basically he decided to do Bill Clinton's act but not as well.
Air Canada is “looking for a pilot.” It's going to be a long night, but not the kind I had envisioned.
THE MORNING AFTER | DEC. 2, 2006
The one advantage of showing up to a party stone cold sober at 1:50 a.m. is that you will probably be the only one who remembers anything. The disadvantage this time was that by the time I arrived at ground zero, the delegates were drunk and confident—a bad combination.
The Delta Hotel lobby was a zoo just a few hours ago. Hundreds of young people were circling like parched animals in search of a watering hole. There was no shortage of options—on the way to the elevator I was told that there were free shots in a Dryden room and a huge Dion event happening, with a free ice vodka fountain. I kind of felt nostalgic for the days when I would have walked over broken glass to reach such a Shangri-La. I ended up having a few Heinekens in a room that apparently was rented by Paul Martin. Martin wasn't there, but it seems the huge podium in the corner is one he practises on when preparing for a big speech.
There are two schools of thought on Ignatieff's early-round results: it's possible that Ignatieff's people intentionally suppressed a pile of votes on the first ballot, knowing they will come to him on the second. This is an old trick that guarantees that there will be growth on the second ballot, which gives the illusion of momentum.
My gut tells me this is not what happened. I talked to one Iggy delegate last night who was vicious because he saw three Iggy ballots destroyed and on the floor in the voting area. He seemed to think there was some sort of conspiracy afoot. I figure that those three ballots belonged either to people who were too stupid to get them in the slot or to people who couldn't bring themselves to do what they promised to do months ago.
I just watched Iggy get cornered by CBC's Julie Van Dusen. She asked what his reaction was to the first-round results. Iggy said that his first-round results were lower than expected because he spoke last, which meant some of his delegates didn't get a chance to vote.
If that's the best line the Iggy brain trust can come up with, that camp is in serious trouble.
PALAIS DE CONGRÈS: SECOND BALLOT
Iggy looks visibly shaken. I think he should compose himself and take this moment to reflect and enjoy the experience. After all, after this vote it will be a long time before he sees his name on a ballot again (barring, of course, the annual sexiest professor poll at Harvard—his name goes on that ballot the minute he signs his new contract). It's times like this that a candidate should show grace under pressure, and I think it was beneath Iggy to accuse Gerard Kennedy of committing a war crime by throwing his support to Dion.
The Ignatieff delegates I've been talking to have that tragic air of someone in palliative care eating applesauce and making big plans to run a marathon.
It's understandable that the Ignatieff people are having a hard time dealing with this; they felt that Iggy's actually winning this thing was just a technicality. Now they are willing to grasp at any straw available. Soon after the second-ballot results came in, an Ignatieff delegate grabbed me and waved his BlackBerry in my face and shouted, “Dryden is about to announce he's supporting Iggy.”
The words were not out of his mouth before another delegate started waving his BlackBerry around and shouting, “Dryden went to Rae.”
In this room, if you wave your BlackBerry as you speak it carries the same weight as waving a Bible at an evangelical conference. It's in the good BlackBerry—it must be true!
The only guy having a good day at this point is soon-to-be leader of the opposition Stéphane Dion.
FOURTH BALLOT
Before the results were announced, my friend Mike and I spent twenty minutes working our way to the middle of the room so we could be surrounded by a mix of Dion and Ignatieff supporters.
It was tightly packed there. Looking around and seeing the desperate look on everyone's faces reminded me of the Ayatollah's funeral. I was happy to observe all weekend, but at this moment I really felt like an interloper. This was their party, and they had invested everything in it. For these people the stakes don't get any higher.
When the results were finally announced and it was immediately clear that Dion had stolen the race from Ignatieff, people all around us basically melted. To the right of me a guy with a Dion bandanna around his neck burst into tears and started cheering like peace on earth had been declared. On the other side of me there were tears as well, but the other kind.
Michael Ignatieff was gracious in defeat. It's pretty ironic that this experience, which has to rank up there as a personal worst for him, may in fact have been his finest moment in public life.
Dion's victory speech was very good, but all it really did was confirm everyone's preconceived notions of the guy. Liberals see a saviour who will bring them back to power, and the Tories are rubbing their hands in glee over the prospect of heading into battle against a French guy who has a dog named Kyoto. Dion is an enigma to most Canadians, and that's not such a bad thing. He takes over the Liberal party as a relative unknown, and as a result, people have pretty low expectations of him. This is a good position for a politician to be in; he has nowhere to go but up.
At the end of the day, though, watching Dion on stage, I couldn't help but be amazed at his physical presence. The Liberals went into this convention with a host of choices. They could have gone with a battle-tested politician, a former athlete, a world-famous academic or a food-bank founder from the west; at the end of the day they chose the nerd. That's pretty Canadian.
DOGGING DION
In Montreal with
Stéphane Dion and Kyoto.
Broadcast Jan. 9, 2007
MERCER: And here we are with the most famous dog in Canada now—Kyoto. How long have you had Kyoto?
DION: We chose to have a dog last January, after the defeat. Because we knew that the Conservatives would not be very good about planet change, we thought that a dog of the north, the Arctic, would be a good choice, a kind of symbol for us. And we called the dog Kyoto indeed for that.
MERCER: And did Stephen Harper neuter him?
KYOTO: Whimper.
THAT OTHER GUY, AGAIN
TALIBAN JACK | JAN. 16, 2007
So the NDP gathered in British Columbia this past week for their annual national caucus retreat. Traditionally, when the big parties get together like this, it's a time to roll up their sleeves and make big plans for the future. Now, of course I have no idea what went on behind the closed doors, but I think if the NDP are making plans for the future, they might want to look into the concept of a prearranged funeral. Because that smell that's coming out of their caucus room, that's an electrical fire in Jack Layton's head.
The prognosis is not good. They're in serious trouble, they are tanking in the polls, and so far the only way they can figure out how to survive is if the NDP props up the Conservative budget. Which is kind of like being told that if you really want that new kidney, you're going to have to give up your lungs. It's desperate. They can't even make the issue of the environment work for them. Meanwhile, the new leader of the Liberal party's out there running around, and he's wearing so much green he's looking like some sort of demented Keebler elf. And then when poor old Jack tries to talk about any other issues at all, Canadians basically just point at him and they laugh. Like when he suggested that Canada should be sponsoring peace talks with the Taliban.
Ah, that was a really good idea. Especially if you think “Taliban Jack” is the name that should be ringing in people's heads as they head into an election. Now to be fair, Taliban Jack did say that as long as the troops were at war, he would stand behind them. Which I'm assuming is only because it's a lot safer than standing in front of the troops. Although the way things are going now, I would say his odds of surviving that, or a general election, are pretty much the same.
THE RISE AND
STUMBLE OF
STÉPHANE DION
Canadians love to root for an underdog and the Liberals showed their true Canadian colours in the way the voting went that December. Stéphane Dion was the underdog from the moment he launched his campaign, and the fact that he pulled off a fourth-ballot victory against the establishment front-runner was nothing short of miraculous.
What followed was a little less amazing.
NOT AGAIN | JAN. 30, 2007
If you talk to the crowd in Ottawa these days, whether they're Liberals or they're Tories, they're all gearing up for another election and that's exactly the way they like it.
Now personally, I can't believe this is actually happening. The Conservative government is just twelve months old. The Liberal government it replaced was just eighteen months old. I've got a box of baking soda in my fridge that's now older than two consecutive governments. And yet there's Harper and Dion, chomping at the bit ready to go to the polls. And why? Because that's what they do. They can't stop themselves. They're like sled dogs: their brains are wired for one thing and one thing only, and that is running. They'll stop occasionally to lick themselves or to put their stamp on the Ministry of Public Works, but other than that it's all about running with these guys.
Harper I understand. The man wants a majority so bad he can taste it. And he doesn't care if Canadians have to suffer through another election so he can get one.
But for the life of me I can't see why Stéphane Dion would want another election. For starters, nobody knows anything about this guy. The Liberals just had their big retreat in Quebec City. As far as I can tell the only thing that came out of that was that Dion got a new haircut and he's still upset about Kyoto. Stéphane, would it kill you to talk about something else for two minutes?
Last week the minister of defence came out and said the real reason he thinks we're in Afghanistan is as an act of retribution for the attacks on the twin towers. And the Liberals, they just sat there like a bunch of slack-jawed yokels.
Stéphane, here's a little tip. When the minister of defence publicly contradicts everything the prime minister has ever said about why we are in an actual war, you might want to send out a press release. Maybe that's not the day to talk about polar bears.
Until you get your act together, Stéphane, let's just hold off going into an election. Because Canadians, whether you like it or not, look at governments just like we look at that box of baking soda. We get a new one, we slap it in the back of the fridge, we forget about it. We don't even think about changing it until it starts to smell.
INSULTING OUR INTELLIGENCE | FEB. 6, 2007
Like most Canadians, when I see a glaring difference between American and Canadian culture, I like it when Canada has the edge. But it doesn't always work out that way. Take the Super Bowl commercials, for example. In the United States, millions of people gather to watch the Super Bowl, but also to watch the flashy new commercials. And then after the game, guys sit around and talk about the game, and about the size of the hooters on that girl in the Doritos ad. That's America for you.
In Canada things are a little bit different. In Canada, the only time they actually talk about commercials on the news is when the Tories launch a series of attack ads on the Liberals out of the blue.
Now, don't get me wrong, Stép
hane Dion looks pretty sexy in those ads, what with his nice glasses and all. And personally I'm glad that the attack ads have started. I find it refreshing to see a prime minister give up that whole “dignity of the office” routine and devote a big chunk of his time on the job to campaigning in a campaign that apparently doesn't even exist. What upsets me is how wimpy everyone's acting. The election hasn't even been called yet and already everyone's saying their feelings are hurt.
There's no room for feelings in politics. The Liberals are upset because Harper says Dion is not a leader and the Tories are upset because Dion called Harper overweight. This is shaping up to be a real intellectual battle of the Titans, isn't it? You got one guy saying, “You're not the boss of me” and the other guy coming back with, “Oh yeah—you're fat.” I had better debates with my brother in grade three.
Unless these two guys start talking about some real issues and acting their age, come election day voters might decide to take a pass on both of them, pull the car over, reach into the back seat and just knock their two heads together.
NEGATIVE MOMENTUM | MAR. 13, 2007
The Liberal leadership race was one of the longest in Canadian history, and by the looks of it, it's about to get a heck of a lot longer. Because there's no doubt about it, the knives are out for Stéphane Dion.
Now I have no idea what happened at that convention in Montreal, but I'm startin' to think that Dion might have spiked the Kool-Aid, because here it is, three months later, it's only dawning on the Liberals now that they went out and picked the guy that can't really communicate.