I’ve read William Johnson’s column in The Globe and Mail before, but his real talent shines here in Stephen Harper and the Future of Canada, this account of Harper’s road through to the role of Leader of the Official Opposition. Can I expect Johnson to write another volume on Harper’s years as Prime Minister? I would eagerly anticipate it.
Johnson describes Harper as an honest conservative — perhaps the first truly conservative Prime Minister that our country has ever seen. Harper is an intellectual, interested in conservative policy and ideals, and is a politician more comfortable in a library than networking a social function.
I also like Johnson’s take on Parliament:
In a vindication of Reform’s prophetic insistence on retrenchment, the Liberal budgets would actually cut $3 billion more than Reform had proposed. Reform had helped make the Liberal pirouette possible… The dynamics in the Commons, where the NDP and the Tories had collapsed while the Bloc’s economic policies were not credible, meant that the threat to Liberal dominance was on the right, not the left. So they could veer sharply to the right without being attacked for it by their chief opponents, the Reformers. The dynamic was the opposite of what it had been when Mulroney tried to cut spending and the Liberals howled. (261)
By this logic, it is incredible that Harper has been able to govern as conservative as he has. Perhaps because of a lack of a credible opposition? He is smart. Possibly the smartest politician Canada has seen in a long time.
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Image by Conservative.ca
