The Burden of Neglect

The reaction last week to The Harper-Ignatieff agreement to study Employment Insurance -- and thus avoid a summer election -- has been all over the map. Norman Spector, in The Globe and Mail, cheered: ". . . we are blessed," he crowed, "in having two potential prime ministers who, at the end of the day, know how to behave as mature adults."

Tom Walkom, on the other hand, was not impressed. "Who are these ludicrous Liberals?," he asked in The Toronto Star, "And what exactly is it that they want?"

It was Susan Riley, in The Ottawa Citizen, who came closest to the truth: "As he has repeatedly shown, compromise is a strategy, not an instinct, for Harper. This time it was easy. He gave Ignatieff nothing but the time of day, staved off an election until (he hopes) the economy is improving and earned bonus points for looking accommodating. All Ignatieff did was rekindle doubts about his integrity, values and his political acumen. . ."

Riley's last comment was a little harsh, although she is voicing a commonly held belief which the Conservatives intend to exploit during the next campaign -- whenever it occurs. But the simple truth is that the uncivil war, which has consumed the Liberal Party for the better part of a decade, has left it unprepared to enter an election campaign. If Stephane Dion proved anything, it was that.

And, as I have written twice before in this space, the Liberals need time to reevaluate and rebuild policy. The EI Commission is a step in that direction. The problem is that last week's outcome offers cold comfort to the unemployed, whose numbers are growing.

The Prime Minister and his government will eventually fall, victims of their own carefully crafted inertia. However, as Jean Chretien reminded his party in 1990, there is a lot of work to do. It's time for the Liberal Party of Canada to stop blaming Mr. Harper and start proposing solutions, not strategy.

Still, at the end of the day, we get the politicians we deserve. Both Mr. Harper and Mr. Ignatieff know that Canadians do not want a summer election. We didn't want the one we got before last week's agreement. We bear the burden of our own neglect.

Naked Balderdash

Lisa Raitt's apology last week to those Canadians awaiting cancer treatment may have been heartfelt. I do not doubt the pain the disease has inflicted on the minister and her family. After all, it killed both her father and her brother.

The problem, as Lawrence Martin, wrote last week, is that the apology was "too long in the making;" and it was an abrupt about face. "You can bet," wrote Martin, "that the prime minister's office instructed Ms. Raitt to get out before the microphones yesterday. You can bet that the day before, the same operatives had instructed her not to give an inch."

The problem for the last Conservative MP from Halton was that he refused to do the PMO's bidding. Garth Turner was infected with the novel idea that he was answerable first to his constituents and then to the Prime Minister. For this heresy, he and fellow MP Bill Casey were ejected from the Conservative caucus.

As James Travers also wrote last week, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is in trouble because his own caucus has been infected by the same virus. It occurs -- or should occur occasionally -- in true parliamentary democracies. In 1990, Travers reminded his readers, "Conservatvies tossed Margaret Thatcher for the very minor John Major."

For all his wonkishness, in any situation, the prime minister's first principle is crass political calculation. Is that surprising? Or new? Or limited only to the present government? No.

But what is surprising is that a minority government -- caught in the grips of the greatest economic downturn since the Great Depression -- should display its ambition so nakedly. To Ms. Raitt, the shortage of medical isotopes -- caused by problems at the Chalk River nuclear reactor -- was a "sexy" chance to take control of a situation and make a name for herself. The obvious question is, "Whose interests are being served?"

The present government has operated from the beginning on the logical contradiction that self interest is in the public interest. That contradiction is at the heart of the financial meltdown and the devastation of Canada's manufacturing industries.

The real question is how long will the victims of this quackery tolerate such balderdash? Today Mr. Ignatieff will provide us with an answer.

Sixty-Five Years Later

This past Saturday marked the 65th anniversary of the Invasion of Normandy. It was a long time coming; and there were those who felt that the Allied Commander, Dwight D. Eisenhower, had spent too much time cooling his heels in Britain. But Eisenhower was a shrewd judge of battlefields; and -- as later conflicts in Vietnam and the Suez Canal would prove -- when it came to going to war, he did not believe in rolling the dice. Moreover, the shear size of the operation -- 160,000 troops and 5,000 ships landed and anchored along a fifty mile stretch of French beachfront -- was staggering.

Despite the force which the allies brought to bear, they faced no easy task. The weather proved to be an obstacle; and the Germans -- who had been preparing for such an event for four years -- were ensconced in heavily fortified positions.

As Barack Obama reminded his audience this weekend, "It was unknowable then, but so much of the progress that would define the 20th century, on both sides of the Atlantic, came down to the battle for a slice of beach only six miles long and two miles wide."

It was an immense task; and it needs to be remembered by each succeeding generation. For, as Obama also told his audience, "As we face down the hardships and struggles of our time, and arrive at that hour for which we were born, we cannot help but draw strength from those moments in history when the best among us were somehow able to swallow their fears and secure a beachhead on an unforgiving shore."



It is also important to remember that "the best among us" were ordinary people -- from all over the world, from city and farm, from a plethora of backgrounds -- who worked together for a good that was more important than their own self interest.

Most of the soldiers who landed that day -- including those who did not come home -- achieved no notoriety. They have been lost to the culture of celebrity. And, as their dwindling numbers attest, there is a danger that what they did will be forgotten with their passing. We must not let that happen. For their sake and for our own.

"I Have the Tapes"

When the opposition demanded the Finance Minister's resignation last week, the prime minister had a curious response. "I cannot fire the Leader of the Opposition," he opined, "and with all the tapes I have on him, I do not want to." When under pressure, Mr. Harper displays his dark side. He is a man who sees enemies on all sides -- a man who likes to portray himself as a victim -- a mean spirited man, who has always had a chip on his shoulder.

Given the job the Conservative War Room did on Stephane Dion, the current round of attack ads -- which rely heavily on clips of Ignatieff functioning outside Canada -- were to be expected. What they reveal, however, is not an arrogant Leader of the Opposition, but a government which is intellectually bankrupt. Like the Fathers of the Church, when presented with Galileo's evidence that the universe did not operate on the rules they assumed were self evident, the Conservatives have retreated into noisy denial and attacked the man, instead of rethinking their theology.

For the real issue, as Lawrence Martin wrote last week in The Globe and Mail, is credibility. "In the case of the Finance Minister," he declared, "it's hardly in abundant supply." One only needs to add that Mr. Flaherty has been absolutely true to form. As Ontario's Minister of Finance -- despite his assurances to the contrary -- he left the province with a $5.5 billion deficit.

It's true that making predictions in a recession is difficult. As Bob Rae has testified, the numbers at least at the beginning -- keep getting worse. The problem has been that Flaherty refuses to acknowledge that fact. During the election campaign, and immediately after it, he refused to acknowledge that there even was a recession.

The truth, of course, is that Flaherty is a front man. It is Harper who considers himself the government's economic guru. And it is Harper who has failed to understand what is happening. So there will be no resignations. Faced with immediate execution, the Prime Minister might change course. But his behaviour in November suggests that he would rather prorogue Parliament than face it. Until then, his defense will be to call Mr. Ignatieff names -- the same technique he used against Mr. Dion.

Mr. Harper, according to some, is a very smart man. Unfortunately, his education has been very narrow and not very deep. He is not a man given to critical self examination. He embodies Franklin Roosevelt's definition of a conservative -- someone, "with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned to walk forward."

Such Men Are Dangerous

In the wake of the debate last week between President Barack Obama and former Vice President Dick Cheney, what was remarkable was not the reaction from the left -- which was predictable -- but the reaction from folks on the right, who used to be ardent supporters of both Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney.

In the New York Times, David Brooks wrote, "But the bottom line is that Obama has taken a series of moderate and time-tested policy compromises. He has preserved and reformed them intelligently. He has fit them into a persuasive framework. By doing that, he has not made us less safe. He has made us more secure."

While Brooks praised Obama, Andrew Sullivan -- in The Atlantic -- lambasted Cheney. Cheney's speech, he wrote, was ". . . not a patriotic defence of what he thinks is best for the country; it was a vile and deliberately divisive attempt to use the politics of fear and false machismo against the stability of the American polity."

Most damning of all was Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson's take on Cheney. Wilkerson is a former assistant to Colin Powell. After the shabby treatment Powell endured at the hands of Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, Wilkerson, in the Washington Note, came out swinging. "When will someone of stature tell Dick Cheney that enough is enough? Go home. Spend your 70 million. Luxuriate in your Eastern Shore mansion. Shoot quail with your friends -- and your friends. Stay out of our way as we try to repair the extensive damage you've done -- to the country and to its Republican Party."

For even more abhorrent than Cheney's defense of water boarding is his assertion that, in the present circumstances, those in charge can throw the checks and balances in a democracy out the window. Cheney maintained throughout the time he spent in his "secret, undisclosed location" that the president need not be bound by the messy business of oversight. All he needed was a legal opinion that "enhanced interrogation techniques" were acceptable. Likewise, the FISA court could be bypassed when wire tapping was required.

In the end, it is Cheney's contempt for democracy which historians will remember. Unlike Cassius, he is not noted for his "lean and hungry look." But the second part of Caesar's admonition to Mark Antony bears repeating: "Such men are dangerous."

Oh, What a Tangled Web

I stopped feeling angry about Brian Mulroney a long time ago. I should note at the outset that I never voted for him, so I never felt a sense of betrayal. But, because he came to office with the greatest parliamentary majority in Canadian history, I can understand why he infuriated so many of his supporters.

In fairness, Mr. Mulroney did a number of things which stood him and his country in good stead. Last week, CBC journalist Brian Stewart -- who spent most of the Mulroney years in Europe -- recalled how in 1984, after consulting his UN ambassador Stephen Lewis, Mulroney helped mobilize relief for victims of the Ethiopian famine. He asked Lewis if the UN planned to do anything about the disaster. When Lewis replied that, thus far, nothing was on the horizon, "there was a pause and a quick lets-do-it commitment from the prime minister that would launch both men onto the world stage."

Likewise,when Ronald Reagan -- fearing Communist agitation in South Africa -- refused to condemn apartheid, Mulroney spoke unequivocally against it. He stood firmly against capital puishment. And, as others have noted elsewhere, he did more for the environment than any of his predecessors.

Still, there was something unsettling about the man. He was always trying too hard to please -- like the rising young man trying to impress the boss. He was given too often to hyperbole and self promotion. And he wore the signs of his success a little too conspicuously. In the end, it was Mulroney's talent for exaggeration and self aggrandizement which did him in. Canadians always suspected that, behind the good deeds, he was looking out for his own interests and the interests of a select group of supporters, who the late Dalton Camp referred to vaguely as "offshore money."

Appearing before the Oliphant Commission last week, Mulroney dredged up all of that. Oliphant will probably agree with his claim that he has done nothing illegal. And, in the end, Mr. Schreiber will probably be extradited to Germany. But, as Jeffrey Simpson wrote in The Globe and Mail, "There is the law and there is ethics. What might be legal sometimes is not ethical. What might be legally defensible, in a hair splitting or tightly defined way, does not pass a reasonable smell test of proper ethical conduct."

And that is how the public will remember Mr. Mulroney -- as a gifted but ethically challenged prime minister. The Schreiber affair has eclipsed the times he stood for compassion and justice. He will be remembered for the three envelopes which Schreiber stuffed with cash and handed him. It's a tragic tale, ending not with a bang but a whimper.

Eye Candy or Education?

Appearing before a convention of electronic journalists in 1958, Edward R. Morrow said, "Our history will be what we make it. And if there are any historians about fifty or a hundred years from now, and there should be preserved for one week the kinescopes of all three networks, they will there find recorded in black and white or color, evidence of decadence, escapism and insulation from the realities of the world in which we live. If this state of affairs continues," Murrow added, "we may alter an advertising slogan to read: LOOK NOW, PAY LATER."

If recent events prove anything, we are now paying for what we have refused to watch for a long time. It is true that there are more networks than there were in Murrow's time. But they operate on the same principle: television's prime directive is to sell. This is particularly true with over the air broadcasting, which now largely distributes infomercials, a plethora of television justices, and Jerry Springer-like freak shows. The so called "quality" programing has migrated to cable or satellite, where viewers pay for what they watch.

Recently, Canadian broadcasters have complained that the old "free" model of television broadcasting is broken. They claim that some kind of pay as you go system is the only viable broadcasting model. This is a curious argument, given that the medium itself -- the airwaves they rely on to make their profits -- are owned by the public.

Digital television promises many more channels. But more channels -- like more networks -- do not guarantee better quality. And, if people want to pay for schlock, I have no desire to prohibit their choices. However, it is worth remembering that Murrow's appearance before his fellow journalists was the opening salvo in the battle to establish the Public Broadcasting Service in the United States.

American public broadcasting chose the BBC as a template for its operations. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation was originally founded on the same British model. But, over the last forty years, it has increasingly looked to William Paley (who founded CBS) and David Sarnoff (who founded NBC) for inspiration. And, as Canadian governments of all stripes have cut funding for the corporation, the CBC has increasingly relied on cheap, commercial American programs to fill its time slots.

If government can find money to bail out banks and the automobile companies, it should be able to find money for public broadcasting. Public broadcasting is also an investment in the future, because it is an investment in education. As James Travers wrote last week in The Toronto Star, "Education isn't just a competitive fix; it's the only available magic elixer. Among so many other things, it lets us wisely weigh the safety of what we eat, the wisdom of corporate investments, and the profound implications of sending Canadians abroad to serve and die. Education not only helps makes sense of testing times and a chaotic world order, it puffs up every part of life."

Over two hundred years ago, Thomas Jefferson warned that democracies which lack a passionate commitment to public education will wither. In recent years, public schools have suffered the whips and slings of government neglect. If private broadcasters have their way, public broadcasting will suffer the same fate. Both institutions deserve better.

As Murrow said, "This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is only wires and lights in a box. There is a great and perhaps decisive battle to be fought against ignorance, intolerance and indifference."

That battle continues. It will not be won without a strong, unwavering commitment to public broadcasting.

Starting at the Bottom

The Liberals have left Vancouver, with instructions from their leader to sell the party to the country. In the words of Jean Chretien -- almost twenty years ago -- they "have a lot of work to do." The most important work they have before them is to review and rebuild their policy platform.

For the last thirty years, the conventional way of doing that has been for a leader to gather a brain trust around him or herself, and -- after solving the problems of the world (as they perceive them) -- to issue marching orders to the rank and file. In Canada, this has resulted in the concentration of power in the Prime Minister's Office, where a handful of unelected bureaucrats dictate policy.

The result, as Toronto Star columnist James Travers has noted on several occasions, has been that, "Prime Ministers now rule between elections with the near absolute authority of monarchs." Our salvation does not rest in the hands of a benevolent dictator. For, we face more than a financial crisis. At the heart of the economic meltdown is a crisis of democracy.

Power and wealth are inextricably linked. And, as wealth has increasingly been concentrated at the top of the social pyramid, so has power. That was crystal clear when Detroit's auto executives flew to Washington in corporate jets to beg for public assistance; it was clear as bonuses were handed out to AIG executives; it is clear in the present torture debate in the United States. The powers that be want to avoid prosecutions, because they will inevitably lead back to Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney.

Until very recently every policy announcement in Canada was made by the prime minister, while members of his cabinet nodded approvingly in the background. It is only as the economy has gotten worse that Mr. Harper has allowed his ministers to tout government largesse. Power enjoys the spotlight, until the refuse of bad policy decisions -- the decisions made by that small, self assured phalanx of "smart" folks -- hits the fan.

In truth, the policies were bad because they were made by a small group of technocrats. Democracy -- true democracy -- is a self cleansing and self correcting mechanism. That is why any true democracy has a set of checks and balances -- opposition parties, government committees, and regular communication channels between the people and their representatives -- to test and reformulate policy before it is given the force of law. The problem is that these processes take time; and they are messy -- some would say inefficient -- two phenomena which are supposedly roadblocks to true happiness.

There was talk at the end of the Liberal convention of an imminent election. That would be a mistake. What the Liberals need now is time to formulate policy -- not by turning to a small band of experts, but by heading down the pyramid and consulting ordinary Canadians. In the process, they can advocate for changes in Employment Insurance -- for those changes are sorely needed. But, until they have a plan to deal with the world as it is, they are not ready to return to power.

Such a plan needs to move wealth -- and power -- down the pyramid to those at the bottom. That will necessitate a whole series of carefully thought out policy changes.

Mr. Ignatieff likes to refer to himself as "a Roosevelt Liberal." If he is who he says he is, his policies will move wealth and power into the hands of ordinary folks. Like Roosevelt, he may draw the ire of his own social class. But things will not change unless -- and until -- that happens.

The Liberals made a step in that direction this weekend when they moved to a one person one vote system, which gives every member of the party a say in choosing their leader. It was a good beginning. But, as Mr. Chretien said, there is still "a lot of work to do."

Torture and Obsession

President Obama found himself in the middle of a crossfire last week, when his administration released four memos written by Bush administration lawyers, in support of what Dick Cheney has called "enhanced interrogation techniques."

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman insisted that "the only way we can regain our moral compass, not just for the sake of our position in the world, but for the sake of our own national conscience, is to investigate how [torture] happened, and, if necessary, to prosecute those responsible." Meanwhile, in The Washington Post, David Broder wrote that, while Krugman's argument is "a plausible sounding rationale, . . . it cloaks an unworthy desire for vengeance."

And, as the week went on, the rationale for using such techniques became increasingly clear. As Frank Rich reported in Sunday's Times, " . . . Major Paul Burney, a United States Army psychiatrist assigned to interrogations in Guantanamo Bay that summer of 2002, told Army investigators of another White House imperative: 'A large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between Al Qaeda and Iraq and we were not being successful.'"

The Bush White House was certain there was a link between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden -- they sold the invasion of Iraq on that claim -- and they were convinced that, if they simply kept applying the appropriate pressure, that link would become clear. They needed that link to justify what they planned to do, something former Secretary of Commerce Paul O'Neil confirmed was part of Bush's first cabinet meeting, eight months before September 11th. Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney entered office obsessed with the idea that there was unfinished business in Iraq and -- come hell or high water, or "enhanced interrogation techniques," -- they were going to arrange a do-over.

The job of administration lawyers was to provide a legal rationale for those interrogation techniques. With law degrees from Harvard, Yale, Stanford and Michigan, they could be counted on to deliver. And, as the memos make clear, they did. Their defense now is, essentially, "it seemed like a good idea at the time;" and, anyway, they did not torture; they were merely offering policy options. Countless policies have been abandoned in the light of history and experience.

The problem is that others have been prosecuted and vilified for implementing those policies. Ordinary enlisted soldiers like Lynddie England and Charles Graner found their names placed in the docket. They were then court martialed, imprisoned and labelled "just a few bad apples." What is required is not vengeance, but justice.

The torture debate reveals a recurring pattern -- whether on Wall Street, in Washington or -- for that matter, as the Omar Khadr case make clear, in Ottawa. The folks at the bottom pay for the misjudgments and mistakes of those in authority. And the advantage of authority is that it buys immunity. Mr. Obama -- and Mr Harper -- have been confronted by a call for justice. They may not wish to respond. But the longer justice is denied, the angrier the reckoning will be.

Patrician Patriotism

During the past week, Michael Ignatieff was all over the newspapers and the air waves, promoting his new book, True Patriot Love. It's a catchy title; and it will probably top the Canadian bestseller lists. It is sure to be reviewed in the New York Times. In a difficult period for publishers, it should make money.

But there is more at stake than money. The leadership convention for the Liberal Party of Canada is just around the corner, and -- even though the outcome has already been decided -- Ignatieff is using the book as a means to breathe life into his party and into his bid for the brass ring.

As he told Michael Valpe in the Globe and Mail last week, what he is trying to do is offer his country a vision for the 21st century. And part of that vision is based upon the idea of a National Dream -- in the sense that John A. MacDonald's transcontinental railway or Pierre Trudeau's Just Society were national dreams.

For Ignatieff, it is a shared dream which holds a country together. And it is the reason the federal government exits. "The job description of a federal government," he told Valpe, "is just one job -- hold the country together, make it stronger." To do that, Ignatieff said, "we need a public life in common, some set of reference points and allegiances to give us a way to relate to the strangers among whom we live." Those common allegiances find expression in common projects -- the railway, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, National Health Insurance.

The problem for the present government, says Ignatieff, is that it has no common project. I has nothing big that has yet to be accomplished. "The fatal flaw" of Stephen Harper's government is that it "fits a country that is finished, but it doesn't fit a country that is not yet done."

The problem for Ignatieff is that many Canadians fear that he himself is not yet done.There is much about him we still need to discover. He is no common man. His father's family were members of the Russian nobility. His mother's family are members of what passes, in this country, for nobility -- Ontario's Family Compact. And Ignatieff has spent his whole life coming to terms with that legacy.

Now that he is a potential prime minister, Canadians need time to come to terms with that legacy, too. Most of all, Ignatieff needs to convince Canadians that his patrician patriotism is as unshakable as the patriotism of the common man. And that his return to Canada was not just a career move -- that it was, instead, an act of true patriot love.

Looking for the Exit

Last week, National Post columnist Don Martin suggested that the prime minister might be "polishing his resume." Whether or not that's true, as Tom Walkom wrote in the Toronto Star last Tuesday, "there is a quiet air of desperation around Stephen Harper."

For, essentially, the economic axioms upon which Mr. Harper built his academic and political career have crumbled. In 1991, the year he completed his Master's thesis in Economics, he wrote, "The record indicates that particularly activist Keynesian policy has been rare in the post war period. The results indicated that it should remain so." In the last six months, the prime minister has tried to throw that conclusion down the memory hole. The problem is that this is Canada, not Oceania.

Mr. Harper is certainly not the first politician whose words have come back to bite him. His real problem, though, is that his actions -- more than his words -- have done him in.

Like Richard Nixon, he is his own worst enemy. Taking his cue from Canada's last Conservative prime minister, Brian Mulroney, Harper planned to achieve power by building crucial support in Quebec. But, in the last election, his failure to understand the importance of cultural issues in that province spelled the difference between a majority and a minority government. Then, in November, desperately trying to save his government from defeat, he took direct aim at the Parti Quebecois, who represent the vast majority of Quebec voters. The result was that his support in that province evaporated.

Finally, in an effort to distance Harper from Mulroney -- who is presently in his own pot of boiling water -- the prime minister's office leaked the news that Mulroney had asked that his name be removed from all party lists. Mulroney exploded and called the perpetrators of that information liars. The feud with Mulroney has opened up the old divide between the two wings of the prime minister's party -- the Progressive Conservatives and the hard right Reform Party members.

It comes as no surprise that a man with a talent for wounding himself should be giving interviews to American and international media, singing the praises of Canada's banks -- which the previous Liberal government refused to cater to when they suggested mergers to help them bulk up and play in the same league as their international competitors. These are the same competitors that have received large bundles of taxpayer money, because they have been deemed too big to fail.

Mr. Harper has conceded that, like many of his fellow citizens, he "may eventually lose" his own job. Like any man with a wife and young children, he is looking around for something else before the axe falls. And, not a man to go backwards, Harper is fishing in international waters -- for "something like a lofty academic position at the London School of Economics," Martin suggests,"or a United Nations gig. In other words, he might have to follow Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff's career path in reverse."

As countless party leaders could tell the prime minister, there is life after politics. The trick is finding your way to the exit.

Remember the Studebaker?

The man who taught me high school Physics drove a 1958 Studebaker Golden Hawk, like the car in the picture. It sat in the parking lot, a kind of elegant dinosaur, an emblem of the man himself. To his students, the car was the source of both humour and admiration. It couldn't match the Mercedes 300 SL, driven by another teacher, who was independently wealthy. But it did suggest a kind of dated opulence.

I thought of high school physics, and the chariot which carried my teacher to work, when Barack Obama removed Rick Waggoner from the chairmanship of General Motors last week. Like the Golden Hawk of another time, General Motors has become a symbol of dated opulence -- and, in some ways, GM's demise is emblematic of an age of, according to New York Times columnist David Brooks, "greed and stupidity."

Studebaker is just one of many automotive nameplates which have disappeared over the years. Its sister car, the Packard, died before the Studebaker. My youth was littered with automotive eulogies -- for cars like the Nash, the Hudson and the DeSoto. If memory serves, one of the first automatic transmissions arrived on the 1949 DeSoto. That innovation could not save a car which people did not wish to buy.

Most of these cars died because they could not weather various recessions -- and because the luxury they represented was incongruent with the times. As Frank Rich reminded his readers in Sunday's New York Times, as a culture we have been comfortably deluded, driving "self indulgent, wealth depleting gas guzzlers." And the management of GM drank the Kool Aid. But that delusion, like the economic bubble, has burst. "Any citizen or business that overspent or overborrowed in the bubble, subscribed to its reckless culture," Rich wrote. "That culture has crumbled everywhere now, and a new economic order will have to rise from its ruins."

What is truly sad is that the lives of millions of people have been shattered by the hubris and the stupidity of those in charge. Mr. Waggoner will go into retirement with a pension of $23 million. Like Charles Prince and Robert Rubin of Citi Bank, Angelo Mozello of Countrywide Financial, and Stanley O'Neil of Merrill-Lynch, his empire has crumbled. But, also like them, he rides off into the sunset, with more than enough money to pay the bills. That is how trickle down economics works.

And -- what is even more tragic -- this train wreck could have been avoided. Those who crafted the economic models which underpinned this economy were mesmerized by their own creations, assuming that human beings always make rational decisions. A little knowledge of history and the Greek and Roman classics would have relieved them of that notion. But, like the previous American administration, they considered those deposits of wisdom -- like the Geneva Conventions -- "quaint."

That Golden Hawk struck us as quaint, too. We were comfortable in our ignorance.

Remembering Mary

Mary Saunders died last week. Her name probably has little significance for readers of this space -- except for those who are members of my immediate family. She would be uncomfortable knowing that I mentioned her here. She did not seek the limelight.

But she needs to be remembered here because she touched so many lives. She was the dear friend of my wife's mother. They met each other when they discovered that their children attended the same elementary school. They also discovered that they shared a passion for bridge and parish bizarres. Most of all, they were each other's confidants.

When my mother-in-law died sixteen years ago, Mary stepped in and took her place, as grandmother to our three sons. The picture shows her in that role with our youngest son, who was three months old when it was taken. She sent the kids cards at Christmas and always slipped in money for presents. Most of all, my wife would call her frequently, as she had called her mother, to talk about their mutual activities.

When we returned to Montreal -- usually twice a year -- we would meet Mary at a local restaurant for lunch. The only times we ever disagreed were when it came to paying the tab. We eventually agreed that we would alternately pay the bill.

Mary spent her entire life in Montreal. Despite the political storms of the sixties and seventies, she and her husband Robert (who everyone called Nuffy) continued to live in the house they built at the end of World War II on the western side of the island. They raised two sons there: one who stayed in the city, and one -- who like so many of our generation -- headed down the road to other provinces and towns. She and Nuffy took great pride in their children and grandchildren. She was of that generation who stayed home and raised her children as a vocation. She was no shrinking violet, however. She could spot foolishness long before it arrived; and she could laugh appreciatively at human foibles.

When Nuffy died in the late eighties, she stayed put. She lived on her own, even as her knees made it increasingly difficult for her to walk. And, even though she did not go out regularly for errands, when she did go out, she drove herself to her destination.

The value of a human life is not measured by the money a person makes or the fame he or she achieves. It has everything to do with the intersection of that life with the lives of others -- and in what happens when those lives touch. In her nearly ninety years, Mary touched a lot of lives. All of us in this family were blessed because our paths crossed hers. We miss her terribly; and we still have a hard time getting our heads around the idea that we will no longer be able to meet her for lunch. But the good news is that -- as my sister-in-law reminded my wife -- her mother has her bridge partner back.

They've Had Enough

In his book, The Assault on Reason, Al Gore quotes James Madison, one of his country's founders, and one of its first presidents: "A religious sect may degenerate into a political faction," Madison wrote. It is for that reason that "the variety of sects dispersed over the entire face of [the nation] must secure the national councils against any danger from that source." Hence, it was essential for any democracy to establish a separation of powers; and to build in a system of checks and balances to guard against the concentration of power in fewer and fewer hands.

The rise of neo-conservatism has been couched in religious language, says Gore. But, essentially, the goal of the movement has been to wed wealth to power -- something not new to human history. Before the rise of Reagan and the two Bushes, there was the unmitigated frenzy of the Jazz Age, which ended in The Great Depression, and the rise of Franklin Roosevelt. Before that there was the Gilded Age, and the countervailing forces put in place by Roosevelt's cousin, Teddy.

Wealth seeks Power as a consort. And so it has always been. The difference now, writes Gore, is that an "informed citizenry," which the founders saw as the antidote to concentrated power, now relies on television as its main source of information -- not the printed word. The problem with television is that it is a one way medium. Information is passed down from elites to ordinary -- as in "undistinguished" -- citizens. There is no opportunity to carry on a two way conversation. Democracy is founded on the principle of reciprocal communication between those who govern and those whose consent makes that government possible. That is why the notion of a legislature -- whether it be the Mother of all Parliaments in London, the federal and state governments in the United States, or the federal and provincial parliaments in Canada -- is at the center of those democracies. And in those legislatures, decisions are supposed to be made on the basis of collective reason.

One way conversation makes it easy to concentrate power in the hands of those who view themselves as a special, gifted class. The last fifty years has seen a shift away from decision making by the peoples' representatives to what David Halberstam in the 1970's called "The Best and the Brightest," or what later day journalists have called "The Smartest Guys in the Room." Our reliance on these so called experts has led to the general certitude that they know better than the uninitiated what is best for their country.

But this first decade of the new millennium has proved that the best and the brightest can be breathtakingly stupid, whatever their supposed area of expertise. Whether it be the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq or the global financial system, the people who have been in charge have left ruin and chaos in their wake.

That is what the furor over executive bonuses at AIG or the protests in France last week were all about. Venality piled on top of incompetence will no longer get a free pass. The "undistinguished" are taking their cue from the movie Network. Like Howard Beal, they have declared that they are "mad as hell" and they're not going to take it any more. They are insisting that they be heard, and that communication become a two way street again.

Those in power who misread their anger will reap the whirlwind. As Frank Rich warned in Sunday's New York Times, "in the credit mess, action must match words." And, as James Travers wrote in Saturday's Toronto Star, "sooner rather than later" the Prime Minister "must tell the country what this government will do for ailing industries and their workers." If Mr. Obama, Mr Harper or Mr. Sarkosy get it wrong, they will be washed away in a tide of public anger which the world has not seen in a long time.

The Angry Right

David Frum -- who has been burnishing his conservative credentials for two decades now -- has recently found himself the target of attacks from the political party he supports. Frum has written several books; he has written for William F. Buckley's National Review; he has written speeches for the second President Bush (it was Frum who coined the phrase "axis of evil"); and he has been a resident scholar at The American Enterprise Institute.

But, as he revealed in a cover article for Newsweek, his credentials are being questioned by some who consider themselves true believers. On March 3rd, radio talk show host Mark Levin was apoplectic. "There are some people who have claimed the conservative mantle . . ." he fumed. "They're so irrelevant . . . It's time to name names . . .! The Canadian David Frum: Where did this a-hole come from? . . . Hey Frum: you're a putz."

Frum, like many Canadians, has dual citizenship. His father is Canadian; his mother, who worked for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, was an American. But Frum has had the audacity to question the wisdom of some of his party's loudest voices -- particularly Rush Limbaugh. Limbaugh, wrote Frum, is "a man who is aggressive and bombastic, cutting and sarcastic, who dismisses the concerned citizens in network news focus groups as "losers." With his private plane and cigars, his history of drug dependency and his personal bulk, not to mention his tangled marital history, Rush is a walking stereotype of self indulgence." The problem for conservatives, Frum contended, is that Limbaugh appeals to the shrinking Republican base. "From a political point of view, Limbaugh is kyrptonite, weakening the GOP nationally."

Frum has been joined in his criticism by New York Times columnist David Brooks. "Let's face it," wrote Brooks in the Times last week, "the current Republican response [to the economic crisis] is totally misguided. The House minority leader, John Boehner, has called for a Federal spending freeze for the rest of the year. In other words, after a decade of profligacy, the Republicans have decided to demand a rigid fiscal straitjacket at the one moment in the past 70 years when it is completely inappropriate."

If the angry white men who have become the party's spokesmen take the time to peruse Brooks' birth certificate, they will discover that he, like Frum, was born in Toronto. No doubt, some will question whether both pundits are "real" Americans. These are the same folks who wondered if Barack Obama was truly an American because he was born in Hawaii; or, if John McCain was truly an American because he was born in the Panama Canal Zone. (American law stipulates that, to be president, you have to have been born in the United States.)

What all the noise indicates is that, like the financial system which modern conservatism did so much to engineer, the movement itself is now intellectually bankrupt. Frum and Brooks are questioning the only thing the movement has left, which is dogma. They are asking the movers and shakers in their party to rethink their view of the world. Unfortunately, the old adage is still true: empty barrels make the most noise.

Of Trains and Automobiles

Outside the train station, in Belleville, Ontario, there is a plaque. It proclaims that the building was erected in 1841 -- more than 25 years before Canada officially proclaimed its existence in 1867. The nation was born in the 19th century, during the first attempt at globalized trade -- a period which roughly corresponded to the reign of Queen Victoria. One hundred and fifty years ago, railroads formed a loosely woven quilt which covered all of North America. They symbolized the riches produced by the Industrial Revolution; and they were the source of treasure for a few of the robber barons who bestrode the era.

Canada had three railroads: The Grand Trunk Railway -- which built the station in Belleville -- joined two countries, Canada and the United States. Most of the track was laid on Canadian soil; but the two terminuses were in Portland, Maine and Chicago, Illinois. The Canadian Northern Railway stretched from Quebec City to British Columbia, cutting a wide swath through Northern Ontario to Winnipeg, then heading northwest through Edmonton, and on to British Columbia. The most storied, and the longest of all -- The Canadian Pacific Railway -- stretched from coast to coast and symbolized the country's motto, "from sea to sea." Every small town in Canada had a station, or at least a grain elevator, and was connected to the main route by a branch line. In a large, sparsely populated country, railroads were the heart which pumped the nation's economic blood.

But when the world economy came apart -- in the aftermath of World War I -- railroads were in trouble. Canada never needed three railways. One century built too many railways. The next built too many automobiles. When the Grand Trunk and the Canadian Northern declared bankruptcy in the early 1920's, the Conservative government of Sir Robert Borden nationalized them, blending the two into one. The government dubbed the new entity the CNR -- Canadian National Railways. And, throughout the Depression, Canada was served by two railroads -- from sea to sea.

But after World War II, transportation shifted away from the railroads to the passenger car and the transport truck. In the United States, the Eisenhower administration built the Interstate Highway System; and, by the mid sixties, the Canadian government completed the Trans Canada Highway. Passenger service on both American and Canadian railroads dried up. Tracks were abandoned or "rationalized," with two or more railroads sharing the same tracks. And, on the Canadian prairies, trucks pulled up to the grain elevators which stood beside abandoned railroad tracks. The governments of both countries took charge of what passenger service remained -- in short busy corridors between New York and Washington or Quebec City and Windsor.

If railroads were the symbol of 19h century prosperity, the passenger car was the symbol of 20th century prosperity. And, as the second attempt to globalize trade has come to a standstill, the automobile -- like the steam locomotive before it -- is about to be metamorphosed. But, just as railroads did not totally disappear, automobiles -- and the companies which make them -- will not go the way of the dinosaur. We got a peek at the future last week, when auditors for General Motors -- which fifty years ago was the world's largest industrial corporation -- concluded that the company would have difficulty remaining "a going concern." The company which Walter Chrysler built -- a company once noted for state of the art engineering and innovation -- is about to go under.

As it did for the railways, government will have to become a major stakeholder in a radically transformed automobile industry -- an industry which will no longer be the economic engine of both Canada and the United States. There will be howls from market fundamentalists, who will claim that government should not stand in the way of what the economist Joseph Schumpeter called "creative destruction." But because cars and trucks -- like the railroads -- touch the lives of so many people, a smaller government supported transportation industry -- an industry which will include heavy investment in urban mass transit -- is just around the corner. It is a construct which has been adopted in the past -- and which is about to be adopted again.

Now For the Hard Part

British economic historian and Harvard professor Niall Ferguson was in Ottawa last week. In an interview with The Globe and Mail, he predicted that the global economic crisis is far from over. In fact, he said, things could get pretty nasty. "There will be blood, in the sense that a crisis of this magnitude is bound to increase political as well as economic [conflict]. It is bound to destabilize some countries. It will cause civil wars to break out, that have been dormant. It will topple governments that were moderate and bring in governments that are extreme. These things are pretty predictable. The question is whether the general destabilization, the return of, if you like, political risk, ultimately leads to something really big in the realm of geopolitics."

And from Europe this morning comes a story, in The New York Times, that things could be falling apart in the European Union. "The leaders of the European Union gathered Sunday in Brussels," ran the lead, "in an emergency summit meeting that seemed to highlight the very worries it was designed to calm." The economic crisis has driven a wedge between the countries of what Donald Rumsfeld called "new and old Europe." The problem, according to the Times, is that "the 16 nations that use the euro -- introduced in 1999 and one of the proudest European accomplishments -- must submit to the monetary leadership of the European Central Bank. That keeps some members hardest hit by the economic downturn, like Ireland, Spain, Italy and Greece, from unilaterally taking radical steps to stimulate their economies." And newer members of the Union, "including Hungary, Romania and the Baltic states, are in a state of near-meltdown."

The crisis is forcing countries to reach across cultures and political systems. And this is particularly true of the United States and China. Ferguson believes that what he has dubbed "Chimerica" -- the fusion of the United States and China -- "really is the key to how the global financial system works." The United States is the major market for Chinese exports; and social stability in China rests on the system of factories which export to America. The Chinese are the major holders of American debt, which is growing astronomically as the United States seeks to stimulate and stabilize its economy. Despite the deep seated distrust which has existed for sixty years between the two nations, it is essential that they work together.

Unfortunately, says Ferguson, even if Europe and Chimerica manage to finesse their differences, "This is a very unfair crisis. The epicentre is the United States, but the rest of the world, and particularly America's trading partners, will get hit harder than the U.S." That includes Canada. But because our economy -- unlike the economies of Asia -- is not wholly focused on exporting to the United States, things will not get as bad as they could get. That is small comfort.

We now know the downside of globalization. The brave new world of globalized trade hangs by a thread. As Ferguson has been warning for years, "it's a fragile system."

Mr. Obama Comes to Ottawa

Some of us -- who are old enough to remember -- might be forgiven for thinking that there was something retro going on in Ottawa last week. At times, it looked and felt like the Second Coming of Trudeaumania. Canadians greeted Barack Obama with open arms. It has been forty years since we greeted a politician with such joie de vivre.


Not that there weren't skeptics. National Post columnist Don Martin proclaimed "Obama Conquers 51st State," and in The Toronto Star, Tom Walkom asked, "Is Obama a closet conservative?" Walkom's skepticism ranged from Obama's commitment to clean energy, to the war in Afghanistan to his financial support for hedge funds. South of the border there was a much louder chorus of skeptics. Rush Limbaugh, not exactly a fountain of wisdom, accused Obama of being a "fascist;" and some Republican governors -- most in the states of the Old Confederacy -- announced that they would not accept all or some of the stimulus funds Obama signed into law last week.

But such was not the case in Ottawa. Canadians showed Obama boundless good will. From the moment he stepped off Air Force One and was greeted by Governor General Michaelle Jean, to his handshake with Stephen Harper, to his stroll through the Byward Market in search of souvenirs for his children, Obama never hit a sour note. In fact, he showed a remarkable familiarity with the issues at the top of Canada's agenda. It would appear that his Canadian brother-in-law, his Canadian staff members -- and maybe even the Canadians who worked for his election -- had manged to catch his ear.



His knowledge of this country is no guarantee of sweetness and light. As Martin warned his readers, "If that sounds like a perfect pairing, well, that too will change." After all, Trudeaumania eventually wore off and was replaced by a shrug and a middle finger. Yet, even today, despite the well deserved criticisms of his obvious failings, most Canadians still regard Trudeau as one of this country's great prime ministers. When push came to shove -- during the October Crisis of 1970 --Trudeau remained true to his vision -- and he did what had to be done. The War Measures Act was a cruel and blunt instrument. But -- always a proponent of individual liberties and Canadian Federalism -- Trudeau gave us the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, a document which ensures that the abuses in the War Measures Act can't be repeated.



There is room for skepticism. It may be that Obama has raised impossible hopes. But, once in a great while, history and one human being come together to change the world -- for better or worse. I have felt for some time that Obama can change the world for the better. The reaction in Ottawa last week merely proves that, in this country at least, there are many of us who share that belief.

A Realist's Optimism

There is something refreshing about Barack Obama's candor. First, because one did not hear it from his two immediate predecessors; and, second, because they give some insight into how the man might play the very difficult hand he has been dealt.

When Tom Daschle, Obama's choice for Secretary of Health, was forced to resign because he had neglected to pay his taxes -- and the various perks he had received since leaving public office became public knowledge -- Obama used the vernacular to admit his mistake. "I screwed up," he said. And last week, while generating support for his economic stimulus plan -- in the face of an almost solid wall of Republican opposition -- he told an audience in Fort Myers, Florida that, if he couldn't fix the economy, "you'll have a new president."

Some have taken that candor to be weakness. In fact, the chattering classes have already started to write his political obituary. As Frank Rich pointed out on Sunday, Newsweek declared in the first week of February that Obama "had all but lost control of the agenda in Washington"; and Politico claimed that he was "losing the stimulus message war." However, as Rich also pointed out, the pundits wrote the same kind of things when he was vying with Hilary Clinton for the Democratic nomination; and they predicted that John McCain -- the bus driver on the "Straight Talk Express" -- would run him over.

For while Obama has made mistakes, he is a quick study -- and he is not hide bound by ideology. In fact, he sounds a lot like Franklin Roosevelt. "We will do what works," he has said. That "will require re-evaluation" and "if that doesn't work, we'll try something else." You can bet that Obama has learned something from the Republican threat to filibuster his stimulus package and Senator Gregg's decision to walk away from his nomination for Secretary of Commerce.

At the end of the week the president had his stimulus package. As Paul Krugman points out in today's New York Times, that package, while absolutely necessary, may not be enough; and his bank rescue package leaves out a lot of details. But Obama does not suffer from the self delusion that most Americans have been living with for a long time. "The bottom line," writes Krugman, is that, according to the Survey of Consumer Finances, "there has been basically no wealth creation at all since the turn of the millennium: the net worth of the average American household, adjusted for inflation, is lower that it was in 2001."

The problem is that "until very recently Americans believed they were getting richer, because they received statements saying that their houses and stock portfolios were appreciating in value faster than their debts were increasing." The whole economy was built on the Bernie Madoff model. It was a Ponzi scheme.

Obama -- perhaps because of who he is and where he has been -- is no fool. As he told a group of reporters aboard Air Force One, enroute to Chicago at the end of last week, "You know, I'm an eternal optimist. That doesn't mean I'm a sap." Those who confidently boast that they have cut the young, green politician down to size should engage in their own re-evaluation.

Idiocy Dies Hard

Last week, Bob Rae wrote an open letter to the prime minister: "I am writing you in my former role as Deficit Poster Boy and Punching Bag," the letter read. "This title was bequeathed to me by Pierre Trudeau and Brian Mulroney when I became premier of Ontario, and I have been carrying it around on my back since 1990."

It was time, said Rae, to pass the torch; for Harper -- even though he inherited eight years of surpluses -- was about to enter a time warp. "You will learn, as I did," wrote Rae, "that the estimates of Finance officials are never quite on, that as the layoffs and bankruptcies pile up, government revenues collapse and expenditures grow. . . . You will regret that your every prior thought is in print. Your old copies of Milton Friedman and Hayek's Road to Serfdom will somehow seem less relevant and helpful."

Yet, surprisingly, as Friedman and Hayek become less and less relevant, modern conservatives continue to quote chapter and verse from these sacred texts. When we learned on Friday that Canadians had lost over 129,000 jobs in January, Mr. Harper stoutly proclaimed that his government would not be "blown off track." This from the man who also stoutly proclaimed in October that there would be no recession in Canada -- and who foresaw slim surpluses in late November.

And south of the 49th parallel, Republicans -- under the banner "The New Deal Didn't Work" -- have railed at President Obama's stimulus package. Nobel laureate Paul Krugman is furious -- particularly at the centrists who have managed to cut $100 billion from the Senate version of the legislation. The proposal was already too small, he wrote in today's New York Times. "Even if the original Obama plan -- around $800 billion in stimulus, with a substantial total of that given over to ineffective tax cuts -- had been enacted, it wouldn't have been enough to fill the looming hole in the U.S. economy, which the Congressional Budget Office estimates will amount to $2.9 trillion over the next three years."

But, taking their cues from Friedman and Hayek, those who crafted the compromise bill made cuts precisely where they were not needed -- at the bottom. "The original plan also included badly needed spending on school construction -- $16 billion of that spending was cut. It included aid to the unemployed, especially help in maintaining health care -- cut. Food Stamps -- cut. All in all, more than $80 billion was cut from the plan, with the great bulk of those cuts falling precisely on the measures that would do the most to reduce the depth and pain of this slump." And, railing against the cost of the bill, "36 out of 41 Republican senators voted to replace the Obama plan with $3 trillion, that's right $3 trillion, in tax cuts over 10 years."

This was the approach John McCain advocated. He advanced a plan which would cost a little more than half the Obama plan; and most of that would be devoted to tax cuts. Clearly McCain still doesn't understand why he lost the election. It's worth remembering that his chief economic guru, former Senator Phil Gramm, confidently asserted six months ago that America was in a "mental recession." That conclusion surely must soothe the suffering of those two and a half million Americans who have lost their jobs since he made his pronouncement.

The problem, however, goes beyond Phil Gramm. As Jeffrey Simpson reminded his readers three weeks ago, Republicans have been in office for 20 of the last 28 years. They ran deficits for all 20 of those years. The exception was Bill Clinton's presidency. He spent his first five years digging out of the hole the Republicans left him; and then he piled up surpluses for the next three years. His successor started digging again -- and he left Mr.Obama an even deeper hole.

Mr. Harper disposed of the proportionately larger surpluses he inherited. He surely deserves the award which Mr. Rae assures him "is on its way." Modern conservatism has always been a faith based movement. Facts cannot dent its armour. In the late 19th century, British political philosopher John Stuart Mill wrote that Great Britain's Conservative Party was "the stupid party." Modern conservatives appear to have returned to form. They offer proof of an age old maxim: Idiocy, like the cockroach, dies hard.