Stephen Harper has an invisible friend. Known as the status quo, it serves most loyally when least disturbed.
In the absence of a persuasive alternative, even Canadians cool to the prime minister and his policies have no compelling reason to roll the dice on change. A country that considers muddling along a success is content with a Conservative leader taking care of business.
So the going is good for Harper when not much seems to be happening in the national capital. Leader and party climb, point-by-point, up opinion polls toward the holy grail of majority rule.
It’s a familiar pattern. Established early by Harper’s swift growth into a job critics mistakenly thought beyond his reach, it unfolds predictably as well as positively for the ruling party as long as nothing riveting changes the rhythm.
Just for example, Canadians weren’t jarred from their comfort zone by a recession economists saw coming but which took the prime minister by surprise, or by a record deficit driven deeper by tax cuts and wild spending. Misgivings only disturbed the national reverie when, just weeks after winning a second mandate and solemnly promising to lead collegially, Harper precipitated the Christmas 2008 coalition crisis by lunging at rivals’ throats.
It took most of last year and all of the prime minister’s considerable political skills to repair the damage, deflate the related Liberal rise and put Conservatives back on course toward a majority.
Along the way, Harper was so adept at calming the country that his continuing concentration of power in the Prime Minister’s Office and growing contempt for Parliament as well as its democratic safeguards triggered little concern and less outcry.
Chances are that complacency would have continued into a promising new year for Conservatives if Harper hadn’t lost control of his need to control. Instead of acknowledging the imperfections of Afghan prisoner protections inherited from Liberals, instead of praising rather than savaging diplomat Richard Colvin’s work and warnings, the government built a stonewall defence it couldn’t maintain.
This government’s default secrecy was exposed as brick by brick fell, first to Red Cross reports and then to chief of defence staff Gen. Walt Natynczyk’s revelation that Canadian troops witnessed abuse and worried about its frequency. Almost overnight, an easily managed prisoner problem morphed into a difficult test of Conservative commitments to openness and accountability that were pivotal in bringing the party to power.
Fear that his administration is failing that test is a prime reason Parliament will be dark until the worst of this winter is over. As Conservative guru Tom Flanagan observes, having thrown the bread of billions of dollars in stimulus spending at Canadians, Harper is now distracting the country with an Olympic circus.
Fundamentally cynical, the success of that strategy rests on a return to the status quo.
Harper is again creating controlled political space, first to be filled by the presumably feel-good Games, then by a confidence-restoring throne speech and budget and finally, if the government fails to force the election it so badly wants, with the G8 and G20 twinned Huntsville and Toronto summits.
Potions for another self-inflicted wound, Conservatives are counting on those events, and short attention spans, to soothe the nation. For opposition parties, the considerable challenge is to push into that space, rattle apathy and out the prime minister’s invisible friend.
Jim Travers writes for The Toronto Star Syndicate.