If today was your last day and tomorrow was too late
Could you say goodbye to yesterday? Would you live each moment like your last?
Leave old pictures in the past, donate every dime you have?
If today was your last day?
Stephen Harper is leaving politics. I've waited a decade to type that sentence, and I bet most of you have waited nearly as long to read it.
I can't say it comes as much of a surprise: Former Prime Ministers (especially defeated ones) carry a rank smell with them wherever they go. They are suddenly a specter, haunting Parties who are eager to move on after an election.
The clock has been ticking on Mr. Harper's departure since shortly before 11pm on October 19th but due deference must be paid to the riding and the few thousand voters who actually elected him, and Stephen Harper has been present (if silent) in the Commons for the last six months. Finally, however, the jig is up: He will sit there no more. Nobody wants another Diefenbaker, some wizened old imp wandering the halls of the Centre Block terrifying young MPs like a Mad King stalking the ruins of his old palace. No, it's much better to leave now...especially now that the trial of Mike Duffy is finished and he no longer needs Parliamentary Privilege to protect him from involvement in that court case. It's funny how timing works out, no?
I will always remember him as the man who could drive his opponents into a mad animal frenzy, barking and frothing at the mouth, just by affecting that attempted half-smile of his and calmly saying one of his pre-loaded phrases like "My friends, that's simply not true." Oh, how they hated him; they still do: even now, months after his defeat, you can easily find a pack of rabid Harper haters on Twitter at any time of the day or night.
He is moving on to become a "public intellectual". I'm not sure what that means but I can only imagine the kind of ad he'd run against anyone else who deigned to style themselves like that. It apparently involves setting up a Foreign Policy institute. Hah! From the man who threw a temper tantrum by locking himself in the closet of the Brazilian foreign minister; the man who blew off the UN to deliver a partisan attack speech at a Tim Horton's, and then blamed the opposition for Canada losing a Security Council seat.
Foreign Policy Institute? Jesus, best of luck with that, my friend. I hope somebody's told him it's going to involve more than just driving four-wheelers up north.
Abacus has him as the least popular former Prime Minister of our times: I won't begrudge anyone their feelings for the man. After all, his premiership was marked by more than his fair share of fell deeds, and his bastardly attitude ensured he would have no bridges left to cross at the end. For all of our howling and rending of garments at mere mention of his name, his mark on this country is hard to find.
I promised myself that some part of this column would be more than just the simple shitstorm of a long-blocked colon suddenly released. So I will muster some nice things to say about the 22nd Prime Minister of this country. Stephen Harper is a master politician who played the game well, it can not be denied. I have said many things about him these past ten years, but I'd be damned fool to argue his skill as a political actor: He forged a new political party, held it together through sheer force of will, led it to big electoral successes, and nearly succeeded in killing and supplanting the Liberal Party.
But the price of his power was to lose any semblance of a national vision. Once, in beta-testing, it's possible he had Big Ideas for this country. By the time he arrived at the Langevin Block, however, they were watered down to pablum. Stephen Harper's great plan for Canada seemed to be a slightly more dysfunctional version of the country as it is today but with him at the centre of it forever, and for me that lack of imagination is the truly unforgivable part. He was content to remain a tinkerer, fiddling with little knobs here and there in the relentless pursuit of electoral wedge issues he could exploit to remain tinkerer-in-chief for a few more years.
All governments in power long enough become obsessed with nothing other than remaining in office, but the Harper Conservatives arrived in Ottawa in 2006 with the attitude and contempt of old hacks. The only thing he seemed to delight in, the only vision he truly tried to enact, was the conversion of our political landscape into a nuclear wasteland. Carpet bombing opponents years ahead of elections with nasty negative ads questioning their intelligence, patriotism, and masculinity.
Eliminating the per-vote subsidy to exacerbate the power of wealthy donors in political campaigns, gaming the contribution rules to screw with their opponent's leadership races, gutting the power of Elections Canada to promote the very act of voting...none of his most egregious crimes were about reshaping the country, they were always just about keeping him afloat and In Command for another election cycle.
When even they weren't going to be enough to stop Justin Trudeau, the Conservatives finally took a hard right turn and began shoveling the years of goodwill they'd built up in immigrant and minority communities into the boiler. Running back to their bigoted, small minded base with xenophobic nonsense like a national dress code, 'Barbaric Cultural Practices' hotline, and their contemptuous response to the international refugee crisis.
For all his skills in the Dark Arts, for all of his willpower and personal strength, the speed with which the current Liberal majority has been able to begin rolling back the Harper legacy is a testament to just how shallow and ineffectual it was to begin with.
Indeed, years from now Stephen Harper will be remembered most as a caretaker Prime Minister whose chief accomplishments, aside from a remarkable record of fraud and skulduggery by his administration, will be the elevation of a new generation of unprincipled cutthroat politicos in the Conservative party like Byrne, Soudas, and Novak. It will be the legitimization of asinine fuckwits like Rebel Media. It will be the fracturing of the Conservative party which now runs frantically, arms flailing, from the policies and record they were so quick to defend just a few months ago and into the political doldrums for the foreseeable future.
That is the legacy he has left us with. We've been stuck in an isolation chamber for ten years and have reemerged with nothing to show for it but complete exhaustion and the unshakable feeling that the whole experience has just been a complete waste of our time and energy.
The man was so uninspired it's taken me two weeks to finish writing this column. We lost a decade to his mediocrity and I continue to be drained of my Chi just trying to recount it here, so I will leave you simply. It was time for you to go away a long time ago, Stephen, but I suppose better late than never.
