In the lead-up to the 2006 election, Liberals and other opponents of the CPC wanted to believe that Stephen Harper would suffer a "meltdown" before the campaign was over; that some trivial question from a reporter or challenge from one of the other parties would send him into a tirade manifesting intolerance and a meanness of spirit that Canadians would reject totally. There was much disappointment when Harper emerged as "Mister Control" holding himself and his caucus, following the election and his ascent to government, in check.
In the past month, it seems, while he has almost everything under control and the voter preference polls are all moving in his favour, the PM is publicly showing signs of his famous temper and "my way or no way" attitude. With the vote to extend the controversial detain-and-hold provisions of the Anti-Terrorism law our of the way, taking a moment to examine the PM's behaviour is worth a few moments.
Certainly the PM's attacks on the Liberal Party and Stephane Dion as supportive of terrorism were unsupported and unwarranted by any interpretation of the facts. A government that truly was serious about fighting terrorism would be looking at the report of the parliamentary committee on security and working with the opposition parties to amend the existing laws to comply with court decisions that have annulled certain provisions adopted in haste after September 2001 and to replace provisions that were deliberately sun-setted because it was unknown if they were necessary or would achieve the intended effects. [I am still having a difficult time with journalists and commentators who state the Liberals defeated anti-terrorism legislation when, in fact, it was the government that failed to make a case for re-enacting constitutionally questionable laws known to circumvent basic democratic rights and freedoms in the name of fighting a possibly greater evil.] The PM claims to believe extraordinary powers are necessary to carry on the fight against terrorists but he has not been able to convince Parliament or the judiciary.
So how does the PM respond? Well he goes into an ad hominenm attack on the Leader of the Opposition, he accuses the Liberal caucus of hiding terrorists and he disparages an MP and his family, He even fires CPC senators from their committees because, in carrying out their duties, they have noted certain shortcomings in Canadian policy and he accelerates the politicization of the judicial appointments process in the expectation that he can change centuries of tradition in which the Courts have defended the rights first established with habeas corpus and other fundamental principles of democracy. Far from attacking just the Opposition, he has taken the fight into his own caucus.
In recent polls, Canadians gave the PM a high "leadership" rating. How long can that be sustained, when he launches a brutal and unfounded attack on the Opposition Leader's personal integrity? when he starts shoving popular Senators in his own party (Segal and Meighen) like they are mere members of the media?
Is it that, while the polls are favourable, they do not portend a majority CPC government anytime soon? So the bully-boy in the PM comes out. The temper which has been under control starts to boil-over. As John Ibbitson notes in today's The Globe and Mail, there is little or no reason for an early election, so the PM has to invent controversy and dissent in order to generate a crisis and precipitate cause for a premature vote.
It's the kind of thing to which Canadians do not respond favourably and may indeed lead to what many still believe to be the inevitable meltdown of Stephen Harper.
