Whither the Senate?
The election has begun. And we’re already being let down by our media and our current Prime Minister. Let’s consider a line of questioning on CTV Newsnet coverage (around the 7:30 mark).
Tom Clark:: In an interview with CTV’s Lloyd Robertson yesterday, you predicted that this campaign is going to get very personal and nasty in terms of [personal] attacks on you…
Let’s consider the exchange from two angles:
First, there’s the consistency angle. As much as Harper dislikes the Senate, he happily appointed Conservative insider Michael Fortier to the Senate in 2006, and then appointed the unelected Fortier to his cabinet. If Harper feels so strongly about the Senate, why is he appointing unelected people to the senate?
Second, let’s consider Tom Clark’s response. Instead of calling the Prime Minister to task on his inconsistency, he happily skates over the statement and instead asks Harper about hypotheticals (and later asks Harper to promise that he won’t get personal).
It’s easy to see why voters become cynical. The Prime Minister has ignored the spirit of his 2006 election platform, and isn’t being held to task for it. In a rare interview, a journalist has the opportunity to take him to task, but opts instead to drop the name of his media outlet, and ask an essentially meaningless question. Reporters have a responsibility to their viewers – they shouldn’t let a politician get away with this kind of dishonesty.
This is going to be a long election.
(Update: Fixed spelling mistake in title)
(note: wither -> whither; also, your captcha isn’t working)
You’re right that Harper has done a lot of things that were contradictory to the 2006 campaign, including he Senate thing you mention, not sticking to the fixed election date, and inviting turncoat David Emerson into Cabinet.
The thing is, for most of these things, the Liberals are in a poor position to criticize Harper. Sure, they could say that these were inconsistent with the Conservative platform, but the fact of the matter is that the Liberals don’t want to abolish the Senate (nor, I think, do they want to migrate to an elected senate), and they likely wouldn’t have instituted fixed election dates had they won in ’06. And if they were to raise the Emerson question, people could easily point to Belinda Stronach or a bunch of others.
I mean, would you really want Dion to complain to Harper “You promised voters that you’d do these things we didn’t want you to do, and then you didn’t do them”?
Any substantive points that the Liberals can criticize the Conservatives on are either minor, technical, or complex–none of which fit into a powerful election soundbite. Harper is very subtle and very clever.