Sunday, August 26, 2007

What a Sorry Loss This Will Be


First Lady Laura Bush has informed Janette Howard that, sadly, she will be unable to attend the upcoming APEC summit due to a pinched nerve. However will the show go on?

Janette Howard is of course the wife of Australian Prime Minister John Howard, who will be hosting George W. Bush and other regional leaders at the APEC meeting in Sydney this September. Howard has for the past few years been living in the shadow of Tony Blair as one of Dubbya's international cadre of professional bootlickers. He gained some notoriety recently when he quite gratuitously offered up his thoughts on Barack Obama's presidential candidacy.
"If I were running al-Qaeda in Iraq, I would put a circle around March 2008 and be praying as many times as possible for a victory not only for Obama but also for the Democrats."
On the domestic front, Howard is feeling some political heat. Richard Farmer (former advisor to PM Bob Hawke) has offered Howard some perspective...with a Canadian twist.
[In 2004] Minority government seemed comfortably within the Conservative grasp. So, there was plenty of egg on lots of faces, especially those of political journalists and pollsters, when the [Paul Martin] Liberals were returned to office, albeit with a decline in members, having gained 37 percent of the national vote. That six percentage point error, where the predicted vote of 31 per cent became 37 per cent, is the kind of boost John Howard needs.
Keep plugging away John, but don't think about the Canadian election of 1993 when a Conservative Government did the same thing and ended up with two members in a Parliament of 295!

Farmer's examples are a tad on the irrelevant side. Although both had to battle voter fatigue with their respective parties, neither Martin in '04 nor Campbell in '93 were in the same situation as Howard, who is currently vying for his own 5th term as PM. But isn't it interesting that the debacle of Kim Campbell's campaign trainwreck, fourteen years later, still manages to echo in halls of punditry down under?

16 comments:

Bowler said...

It was a great trainwreck, wasn't it? In fairness she was saddled with the track record of Lyin' Bryan and the rise of Reform and the BQ. Remember that election night, and the suspense of whether Pressed-on Man Thing would do well enough in BC to edge out Lucien Bouchard as Leader of the Official Opposisition? Yeesh.

Red Canuck said...

Bowler,

Yeah, no question about it. She was definitely running on Lyin' Brian's record. But she also ran a spectacularly bad campaign in her own right. I think we all remember those ill-conceived TV ads showing Jean Chretien's face and asking "Would you want this man to be PM?".

Interesting times though...an overnight gargantuan shift in our political landscape. One has to wonder if we're any better off for it...

Anonymous said...

Yup, that ad about Chretien's face finished her - and you know who worked on that campaign and approved the ad? John Tory folks.

Anonymous said...

I think the Stepford Wife, Laura's pinched nerve's name is George.

Red Canuck said...

you know who worked on that campaign and approved the ad? John Tory folks.

Anon@9:41 - Yes! I had forgotten about that.

Oldschool said...

The "Progressive Cons" trainwrecked because they talked, acted and performed exactly like the lieberals they replaced . . . conservative Canadians walked away from them.
Question: How come lib supporters are so dumb? They continue to support the LPC den of thieves with conspiracy nut Dion at the helm . . . says a lot about the libs does it not!!!

Bowler said...

The "Progressive Cons" trainwrecked because they talked, acted and performed exactly like the lieberals they replaced . . . conservative Canadians walked away from them.

RC - Does this drivel answer your question?

Yes, I would say in many ways we are worse off...

Red Canuck said...

The "Progressive Cons" trainwrecked because they talked, acted and performed exactly like the lieberals they replaced . . . conservative Canadians walked away from them.

NoSchool - What a brilliant and nuanced analysis. So in your esteemed opinion, conservative voters in 1993, suddenly dissatisfied with the PC's for being "too Liberal", walked away from their party, en masse.

And proceeded to vote in a landslide Liberal majority.

Amazing.

Red Canuck said...

Yes, I would say in many ways we are worse off...

Bowler - Agreed. Although I suppose we should be somewhat thankful that Pressed-On Manthing isn't our PM.

(Do you remember that hilarious picture in the Golden Words of Ali Velshi shouting down some old nutter during Manning's speech at Queen's? It still makes me laugh...)

Bowler said...

Even better RC, have you seen Ali Velshi on CNN? Local boy makes good, as they say. The funny thing is, I think he was just as bald in 1991 as he is today.

Bowler said...

Although I suppose we should be somewhat thankful that Pressed-On Manthing isn't our PM.

It might have happened, had he not made an even worse gaffe with his campaign ads. Remember the one cautioning people not to vote for Chretien because he was from Quebec?

Red Canuck said...

Remember the one cautioning people not to vote for Chretien because he was from Quebec?

Yes. For all their former bluster about Liberals pandering to Quebec, the CPC have essentially done just that ever since they took power. They are as unabashed about their desire for Quebec votes as the Liberals ever were (if not more so).

Red Canuck said...

Oh, and I have caught a few of Velshi's rather underwhelming reports on CNN. If I recall correctly, I think he might Susan Lisovitch's bitch on the biz beat.

Anonymous said...

Here's here too? Oldschool spends his whole day trolling the liberal bloggers and re-uses the phrase lieberals and thinks he's original and/or funny.

Put him on ignore - he's a useless tit with nothing to add to the conversation.

MD said...

Red Canuck. It is interesting that you think we may be worse off as a result of the decimation of the PC Party in 1993. I'm not entirely sure things would have been much different. Even if the Campbell campaign had gone well, The PC's were destined for another long hibernation in opposition. It would have taken a long time to live down Brian Mulroney, quite possibly the worst PM in the nation's history. And no one can predict what sort of PC party would have emerged at the other end.

Remember how quickly the Ontario PC Party, which had created the province's public utility, public universities, and public infrastructure, morphed under Mike Harris into Thatcherite ideologues. Similarly, the federal PC's have been profoundly different parties each time they went into opposition. (Consider the difference in Meighen, Bracken, and Diefenbaker conservatism).

Most conservative parties in the country became much more stridently right wing in the 90's, and suspect a stronger federal PC party would have been no different. I think it likely would be quite similar today to the Harper conservatives.

Red Canuck said...

MD - You make a valid point. I suppose it is a bit difficult to speculate about what might have been had the PCs put in a respectable showing in 1993. Had they survived to the present day, their ideological makeup would likely have depended significantly on the fate of the Reform Party.

With regards to the right shift of conservatives, I would add that this phenomenon was taking place across the entire political lndscape during the '90s. Paul Martin, for example, could very easily have fit into the PC party, and the Liberals of the '90s were a far cry from their Trudeau-era counterparts.

Finally, regarding your comment about the worst PM in our history, with all due respect to Lyin Brian, the current guy is also putting in a mighty strong bid.