Revolutionary Moderation

Bad news for the government. Oh, wait - that government. Not us. We're all-new!



(Cross-posted to the group election blog)



The A-G report on the Quebec advertising contracts is out, and as was no secret to anyone paying attention, it's scandalous. (I'll leave the details to be hashed out by the CBC, and other, smarter bloggers.) The Prime Minister, reeling from the shock of the report (apparently he wasn't paying attention) called a public inquiry into the affair... because, you know, the A-G apparently didn't supply enough information to already know what happened.



Martin's election strategy is becoming increasingly clear to me. For all the talk last week about the Liberals extending their ideological footprint toward the left or the right, what Martin is really doing is plotting an election campaign against the previous government. It's a strategy that worked extremely well for Ralph Klein in Alberta, inheriting a struggling government from the unpopular Don Getty. It worked extremely poorly for Al Gore, however, when he ran away from Bill Clinton's record, and voters decided that if they wanted a change, no point in going with the guy who was there all along. How will it work for Paul Martin? Time will tell. But we should certainly consider the models of success and failure.



Notwithstanding those who mention Jean Chretien's three majorities, I don't think the man had the personal popularity of a Clinton, but rather had the generous electoral situation of a defeated and divided right - a situation Martin won't have. On the other hand, Don Getty came within about five points of letting the NDP form a provincial government. In Alberta. If Chretien had been carrying around that sort of unpopularity, Stockwell Day would be Prime Minister today.



I think the first situation is probably more the model here, primarily because Martin was a central figure in Chretien's government, however much he avoids mentioning the fact. It seems disingenuous to claim he had no idea what was going on with these millions of dollars while he was Minister of Finance, but believing that he had no control over what went on under his watch may be equally damning.