With Stephen Harper and the Conservatives heading for a possible majority government later this month, talk has inevitably turned to uniting the progressive parties. The progressive vote is split among the Liberals, NDP, Green Party and Bloc, and the suggestion is to do what the Conservatives did a few years back: unite with the Reform party. I’m not usually a proponent of combining the left parties, but it’s starting to make more sense to me now.

Mind you, I don’t think it makes sense to do it just to win. That’s a cheap political tactic, and suggests it’s more important to win than to do what’s right. I’m just suggesting that three at least two of the progressive parties have too much in common to be separate. The Green Party can take solace in the fact that environmental matters are now part of mainstream political debate and a centerpiece of the Liberal platform, and send their votes back to the Liberals and NDP. Those two, I think, are different enough to remain separate, and ostensibly the Bloc exists solely to create an independent Quebec, so rightly or wrongly they remain ideologically distinct from all other parties and unlikely to form anything other than a voting alliance.

All that said, you have to consider the possibility that it doesn’t really matter. The reason Harper may win again — apart from an opposition leader with the charisma of a wet dishcloth — is that he hasn’t really buggered anything up, and he’s successfully neutered (some might say “betrayed”) the far-right elements of the old Reform party. Witness this week’s unequivocal statement by Harper that the abortion law will not be raised again. Meanwhile, gay marriage is legal in many provinces, the environment is front and center in political discussions (even the Conservatives have an environmental platform; criticism seems to center on it not going far enough) and gun control laws exist which Harper, for all his campaign promises, is unlikely to overturn.

Even when the government’s Conservative in name, this country is progressive in nature. So long as the sitting Conservative government doesn’t act noticeably different than the long-sitting Liberal government which preceded it, I don’t think most people will really care.

Except maybe Jack Layton.

[tags]canadian election, liberals, conservatives, nsp, bloc quebecois, green party, abortion law[/tags]

Yesterday on esquire.com Ron Suskind wrote an excellent little piece about the legacy of President Bush the second entitled What Bush Meant. The first problem with his presidency is summed up in one paragraph:

George Walker Bush is not a stupid or a bad man. But in his conduct as president, he behaved stupidly and badly. He was constrained by neither the standards of conduct common to the average professional nor the Constitution. This was not ignorance but a willful rejection on Bush’s part, in the service of streamlining White House decision-making, eliminating complexity, and shutting out dissenting voices. This insular mind-set was and is dangerous. Rigorous thinking and hard-won expertise are both very good things, and our government for the past eight years has routinely debased and mocked these virtues.

The second problem was, essentially, a refusal to acknowledge the first:

President Bush was unmoved by any arguments that challenged his assumptions. Debate was silenced, expertise was punished, and diversity of opinion was anathema, so much so that his political opponents–other earnest Americans who want the best for their country–were, to him and his men, the moral equivalent of the enemy. It is important to note just how different such conduct has been from the conduct of other presidents from both parties.

Anyone who has drawn this sad conclusion has been dismissed as a “Bush hater” by those who defend the president.

It seems overly simplistic to narrow everything down to these two self-reinforcing problems, but I believe this is the basis for what’s befallen America these past eight years.

There’s a George Bernard Shaw quote I’ve always liked: “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” This morning it occurred to me that Shaw’s statement is incomplete. Technically all change depends on the unreasonable man. If the change is for the better, then it’s progress; if not, we’re left with the task of repairing the damage he’s done.

[tags]george bush, ron suskind, george bernard shaw, esquire[/tags]