Shortly before the latest federal election call, Canada's PM suddenly popped up in ads trying to show him up in his (ahem) best light. Apparently I'm not the only one disturbed by the strained warm fuzzies of the infamous blue sweater vest, bringing out the warmth of his zombie-blue eyes and fetchingly setting off his Fiberglas® hair. I guess the idea was to tell us Steve is badly misunderstood, and the private man is really a charming, pinano-plunkin' family-dad type, not a robotic freak who can't smile for a TV camera without grinding his teeth to powder.
Apparently it has escaped spin doctors that Canadians are not voting for a private dad. They're voting for a public Prime Minister. This one's public performance has been that of a vindictive, over-ideological control freak who is not above the, ummm, occasional fib to gain elected office, or the occasional cheap partisan potshot once he gets there.
I'm disturbed by the contempt with which this warm fuzzy ploy holds voters. Apparently, a few weeks of stilted advertising should be enough to blot out all memories of the man's smirking yet paranoid performance in front of a minority Parliament he called 'dysfunctional' because: a) his own partisan maneuvering made it that way; and, b) it wouldn't do exactly what he wanted.
Coyotes may be fuzzy-headed - and largely missing from Elections Canada voter lists - but I don't believe democracies usually work that way for minority governments. Maybe, as cowboys from my old stomping grounds used to yell as they took potshots at me, I have shit-fer-brains. Or maybe the PM blatantly maneuvered into place for a quick potshot at a majority government before a global economic malaise, largely caused by a Neo-Con to the south that he seems to admire, starts to really mess up his electoral chances.
What baffles my fuzzy head about the PM's claims to strong leadership, is that his own tax cuts and benefits have been cosmetic pandering that - according to many economists, even conservative ones - are not good governance. What concerns me even more is the fact that top ministers in a pretty thin cabinet - Messrs Baird, Clement and Flaherty - all sat on the inner circle of Mike Harris' provincial government. You know, the one that not too long ago, about burnt Ontario to the ground on the basis of ideology. Warm fuzzies, indeed.
