What would Caesar do in Iraq? I ask not only because it was in that region that Julius Caesar came, saw and conquered. I ask because Imperial Romans habitually thought clearly and acted decisively on geopolitical questions. As democratic politicians too often do the opposite, let me offer a simple, Caesarean solution to cut through the trouble and deliver Western security interests alive and well.

Start by facing unpleasant truths. Hawks need to abandon the Airplane II solution (“Pretend nothing has happened and hope everything turns out all right in the morning”). If nothing else, the 2006 elections should persuade U. S. Republicans of the folly of staying put while Iraqis slaughter one another and kill coalition troops, costs mount, and popular support in the United States falls.

Doves, on the other hand, should not rely on running away. In the wise words of Earl Bassett from the movie Tremors: “Running’s not a plan. Running’s what you do once a plan fails.” And since American Democrats often compare Iraq to Vietnam, they should recall the catastrophic foreign and domestic consequences last time they forced a Republican White House to bail recklessly on an unsavoury Third World ally.

Owls, meanwhile, will hoot at the emerging conventional foolishness, from the bipartisan Iraq Study Group to senior congressional Democrats, that the U. S. should run away slowly. The one virtue of precipitous flight is you might escape. And we don’t need ostriches like incoming U. S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Joe Biden telling President Bush to negotiate with Syria and Iran because “the last thing they want is a civil war” in Iraq. It’s obviously the first thing they want, hence the jihadis and weapons streaming across their borders. Pretending you can’t be running away because you don’t really have enemies, so you must just be out jogging or something, is such an awful plan we’d even be better off consulting journalists.

So here I am. And let me note that on Feb. 7, 2003, I wrote in this space: “Here’s my plan for post- war Iraq: Saddam Hussein’s head on a post, and a ‘Good Luck’ card for the populace.” I even cited a long- forgotten Texas governor who ran for president in 2000 saying nation- building is not a suitable U. S. foreign- policy goal. It’s not much help that if I were you I wouldn’t start from here, since my time machine is broken and so is yours. But possibly I still give better advice than those hawks who, in 2003, imagined Iraq was like Ohio, except dustier and with a tyrant. So here’s my excellent plan that won’t happen, then my adequate one that could and should.

My plan A that won’t happen is the coalition troops grab their stuff and leave ... through Syria. About 200,000 heavily armed, highly trained, really annoyed U. S. and other coalition troops stomp Bashir Assad’s regime flat, hang a left through Lebanon to demolish Hezbollah, then sail home from Haifa waving a sign saying: “Don’t make us come back and do that again.” I call this plan Caesarean because it’s the sort of thing Imperial Rome would have done to extricate itself from Iraq while inspiring salutary caution in its enemies, especially following the provocative assassination of Pierre Gemayel in Lebanon. But you know it’s not going to happen and you know why.

Far from being the ogre of Michael Moore’s fantasies, the U. S. lacks even the hard- headed sang-froid of imperial Britain, let alone Rome. Everybody knows that the United States is too nice to make examples even of tyrants, just as they all know the U. S., like Israel, is profoundly averse to civilian casualties, while their enemies revel in them. Unfortunately, while we all know who the bad guys are, we have to pretend we don’t to take part in “sophisticated” discussions.

I don’t like it. But since I insisted on realism at the outset I must accept it, and devise a Plan B that could happen. Namely that the U. S partitions Iraq into Kurdish, Sunni and Shiite countries and leaves at least the latter two.

This plan is also Caesarean, and not just because Iraq est omnis divisa in partes tres. Yes, I realize it would require some people to relocate, but moving beats dying in a bloody civil war. Meanwhile my proposal has three decisive geopolitical virtues for the coalition (beyond the PR plus that if sectarian violence persists it will be clear who’s to blame).

First, whatever the various domestic and foreign insurgents in Iraq want, it clearly isn’t partition. Second, once done it would be extremely hard to undo. Third, it lets the coalition depart without fleeing, leaving in splendid Roman fashion at least one client state very keen on U. S. support.

Standing at the Rubicon you can neither flee nor remain. So cast the die.

[First published in the Ottawa Citizen]

Based on the record, Stéphane Dion’s victory at the Liberal convention is not surprising. But it is troubling. And yes, I predicted it on the radio beforehand; any fool can be wise after the fact. First, the federal Liberals have not won an electoral majority with an anglophone leader since 1945: before steel-belted radials, TVs in homes, or the birth of any of the eight convention leadership contenders. Liberals’ blithe selfimage as the Natural Governing Party may obscure their vision of this awkward reality. But they must feel it in their guts. And Mr. Dion was the only francophone.

Second, the party leadership alternates between francophone winners and anglophone chumps. Yes, Paul Martin represented a Montreal riding and spoke very good French. But he was as anglo as white socks on a first date. Again, advantage, Mr. Dion.

Third, the federal Liberal party hasn’t picked a leader without federal cabinet experience since Edward Blake in 1880, their only leader who never reached 24 Sussex. Only Mr. Dion among the four front- runners had been a federal minister.

Fourth, Mr. Dion was the only real insider among the frontrunners in a party that values loyalty. Bob Rae and Michael Ignatieff entered trailing parachutes. Former provincial Liberal Gerard Kennedy might one day earn insider status, including federal cabinet experience. But not yet.

So much for his victory. Now the implications. Mr. Dion was both the logical choice for the Liberals and a problematic one, and his party and our country are in more trouble as a result than you’ve probably read in newspapers.

I know, I know. He’s good at being underestimated, a political skill itself frequently underestimated. And I don’t believe the clichés about him being disliked in Quebec; the Québécois tribe prefers its own to anglos any day. Mr. Dion’s problem is the exact opposite. He’s liable to strike Westerners and rural Ontarians as embodying all that’s wrong with this country.

Consider his rocky start regarding his dual French citizenship. It wouldn’t be a big deal if he’d just said: My Paris- born maman got it for me, I never voted there or held a passport, and now that I’m running for prime minister I’m renouncing it because I love Canada so darn much. Instead ( life lesson: It’s usually not the mistake that hurts you, it’s the denial) he haughtily rejected the notion that a man can’t aspire to lead one country while having a membership card in a more sophisticated one in his back pocket in case the rubes don’t perceive his qualities. In the non- post- modern parts of the country, loyalty is not a comical concept. And Mr. Dion’s narrow cosmopolitanism is a potentially huge cultural problem there.

Especially given his determination to implement Kyoto. I strongly advise him to keep in his office one of those late-Trudeau- era bumper stickers: “ Let the Eastern [ bad word] freeze in the dark.” Alberta is bigger, wealthier, more confident and more fed up than it’s ever been, and anything resembling a second National Energy Program, if it tips the provincial economy into recession, could tear the country apart.

I don’t mean figuratively. Stéphane Dion was exactly the right man to humble Quebec separatists with his elegant Cartesian letters, and exactly the wrong man to grasp that if the West ever gets serious about separation, they’ll print the ballots, vote and go while Joe Clark is still telling CBC it’s nothing to get excited about. And if you wanted a man whose attitudes as well as policies could make them get serious, central casting would send Dr. Stéphane Dion with his PhD from the Institut d’études politiques in Paris and his fractured English.

Sure, Jean Chrétien’s English was awful. But so was his French. And his “ little- guy” image made his second language problem inoffensive. Whereas Mr. Dion is an ostentatiously brilliant intellectual who easily could have acquired flawless English living in Montreal. He just didn’t bother. Such a vulgar tongue. Such vulgar people. In isolation it might not matter much. But consider Western Standard publisher Ezra Levant’s point that every 2006 Liberal leadership candidate supported the Canadian Wheat Board monopoly, and not one came from a province whose farmers are subject to it. It’s less a policy than an attitude, and a dangerous one.

Dead in the West since 1958, without a majority of Quebec seats since 1980, basically confined to three big cities, it now takes all the Liberals’ strength just to hold their existing support, leaving neither time nor energy for genuine renewal. Yet one more win the old way could fracture the country.

Does Mr. Dion see any of this? In the mirror? Tradition says no, and makes his selection both unsurprising and highly problematic.

[First published in the Ottawa Citizen]

MONTREAL - As the Liberals gather here to choose a new leader, I hope they’ll also consider having a policy agenda. I don’t mean a public-relations agenda with positions in place of policies. I mean some really substantive thinking about how to do things differently. I modestly suggest “Making Government Work.” Some may doubt the sincerity of such advice from a reactionary who, the cliché has it, doesn’t want government to work. Actually, I want government to do the things it should a lot better than it has lately, in part by attempting fewer things for which it is spectacularly ill-suited. But I’m not here to write about that.

I’m here to give the Liberals some serious advice on a progressive agenda for the early 21st century. And while it is a drawback that my advice is unsympathetic (like Chesterton, I find their descriptions of future happiness don’t resemble any actual happiness I ever had), by the same token it is also dispassionate.

It may prove uncongenial. But it is not put forward as sabotage or parody. I sincerely urge progressives to think less about what they want to do in government and more about how they intend to do it. It’s all very well to say that where there’s a will there’s a way, but it will not do to misunderstand this proverb and think the will is the way.

This point bears stressing. Tell some progressives they need to make government work and they think you mean make it work for people, not corporations, or some such thing. I mean it much more literally. For instance, if I criticize the gun registry don’t start in on l’Ecole Polytechnique, misogyny and those awful Americans. Ponder instead how something so apparently simple could go so expensively wrong in implementation.

Or take socialized medicine ... please. Each Liberal leadership candidate has something resembling a position on Quebec as a nation or on the Afghan mission. But they don’t appear to me willing even to admit what the problems in public health care are, let alone to discuss why they arose and what, therefore, can be done differently to make them go away or at least get less serious.

Then there’s global warming and the Kyoto Protocol. My old friend and Liberal adviser John Duffy just wrote that climate change is as crucial to a Liberal resurgence today as the welfare state was under Mackenzie King or the rights revolution under Trudeau. “Grits have the ideological flexibility,” he argued, “to deliver the mix of public-sector responses and private-sector stimuli that will be required.” But, he admitted, “this writer, along with other Liberals, must contritely acknowledge that while the last two Liberal governments started moving in the right direction, they clearly were not moving swiftly enough or far enough.”

He’s partly right: Global warming is a huge issue if you believe in it. The problem is, the last two Liberal governments didn’t move slowly on Kyoto: They did nothing relevant at all. Back when they thought socialized medicine was a huge issue Liberals created legislation that, for better or worse, did give institutional form to the underlying vision. On Kyoto, they were like someone who announced a piano recital, got up on stage, then went: “Whoa, Nelly, what’s all them white and black things in a row there?”

All the current leadership candidates publicly declare that they intend to do very well indeed on Kyoto next time. And I have no doubt they are sincere. But I don’t hear, or overhear, any discussion of why they didn’t manage to translate their good intentions into good results last time, which raises the ugly possibility that they won’t do any better next time. It could just be partisanship that they denounce the Tories for not implementing a non-existent Liberal Kyoto plan with far more vigour than they devote to developing a real one. But I fear it’s much more deep-seated.

Reading news stories on the latest auditor general’s report, it’s hard to shake the feeling that modern activist governments are preposterously unable to implement even what I consider bad policies. Look at the Liberal record, from Adscam to the rusting out of our armed forces to our aging medical professionals to any important file you care to name. Even the one thing they did right, balancing the budget, included shocking incompetence: A C. D. Howe Institute study (produced by my brother) found that federal budgets from 2000 to 2004 planned for a total cumulative spending increase of $28 billion but it rose $56 billion. Extraordinary. And it hasn’t gotten better under the Tories. With infrastructure, defence and health all desperately needing vast cash transfusions, you should be mighty worried about this bleeding, not oblivious to it.

Guys? Huh? Guys? Can you even hear me over the chanting and techno-pop?

[First published in the Ottawa Citizen]

Is it just me or is Stephen Harper a bit scary? Here’s a guy who was behind the door reading economics when they handed out political cunning, blessed with immense lack of charisma, who wins the Alliance leadership, unites the right then beats the Liberals. Now he’s plunged into the swamp of Quebec’s nationhood and come out dry, smelling like a rose. Sure, many pundits are appalled. But one of Mr. Harper’s strengths is he doesn’t care about pundits. Another, unexpected strength seems to be deft political pre-emption.

Remember his promise of a free vote on same-sex marriage early in the last election? Appalled pundits predicted disaster. But whatever one thinks of the substance, it worked politically. And now his sudden resolution that “the Québécois form a nation within a united Canada” pre-empts a Bloc motion that lacked the last four words. I’m a bit uneasy that earlier this year he dismissed the same issue as pointless, a “semantic debate” and an “absurdity.” But again, politically it’s impressive and surprising.

If you think his motion will bring peace, love and trust, you’re quite mistaken. But if you saw his picture on the front page of yesterday’s Citizen and thought that was his goal, you need new glasses. Whether you’d call it a political masterstroke depends on your expectations. Canada doesn’t really lend itself to such things. But certainly his motion has appealing aspects.

First, it boxes in the NDP. They recognized Quebec as a nation at their founding convention in 1961, for all the good it ever did them (one Quebec MP in the 45 years since, in a byelection fluke). But because they’re firmly federalist, this motion leaves no room for them to do much but vote “aye” through clenched teeth because they just lost a Quebec election issue.

The Liberals are in a worse box. It’s hard to imagine them doing anything but voting “aye” through clenched teeth because they wish they’d thought of this resolution first. But for reasons best known to themselves, they find the issue of Quebec as nation-like object so explosive that their leadership candidates were summoned to an emergency meeting by interim leader Bill Graham to discuss how not to discuss it. Now that choice is gone.

It’s not clear whether Mr. Harper thought a brutal fight on the Liberal convention floor over Quebec’s nationhood would imperil Canada, and acted to prevent one, or thought a brutal fight on the Liberal convention floor over Quebec’s nationhood would imperil the Liberals, and acted to cause one. But why would he care? Whether he saves the nation, causes his rivals to implode, or deprives them of a key election issue in central Canada or all three, he wins. And if he has blurred the line between responsible statesman and sharp partisanship on an important issue, how can the Liberals complain? Except perhaps about copyright violation.

Will this resolution kill separatism?

Of course not. Some Quebecers will blame les maudits anglais for their problems in life no matter what anyone does, while others will see the threat of separation as a good way to pry subsidies out of the federal government.

Meanwhile it leaves the Bloc growling sourly in a corner. But they always do anyway, so who really cares? Except it also makes them look petty, saying “Yes but” instead of “How dare you?” which counts as a minor but distinct coup given the tendency of les purs et durs to complain that when the sun rises it shines in francophones’ eyes, and when it sets it leaves them in the dark. I am sorry that it doesn’t seem to matter that Mr. Harper’s motion is plain common sense.

Who among us, in our hearts, does not think Quebec is not a nation-state but fits the sociological definition of a nation, namely that if blindfolded and dropped off there forbidden to ask “Où suis-je?” you’d know immediately anyway? But dismiss from your mind the fear that it gives greater legal force to Quebec separation. If a majority of Quebecers ever vote “yes” on a clear separation question, legal means will be found to let the province go. If they don’t it won’t matter.

The only genuine downside is that the motion will anger some of Mr. Harper’s hard-core supporters. But he doubtless thinks it’s not a make-or-break issue with them, especially if it can be portrayed as a politically astute way of boxing in the other parties. As for annoyed pundits, if Mr. Harper doesn’t see that as a downside, it’s hard to argue with him. He’s given reasonable Quebecers all he reasonably could without giving the unreasonable ones what he could not responsibly give, and in the process confounded his adversaries without unduly discomforting his friends.

Swamp? What swamp? I smell flowers. How does he do it?

[First published in the Ottawa Citizen]

The election of Larry O’Brien as mayor of Ottawa proves you can fight City Hall. You may not win, but at least you can try. And it shows the seriousness of the crisis of governance in Canada that we no longer simply distrust those covetous of political power. We have also ceased, through bitter experience, to believe that their creepy fascination with government makes them any better at it than rank amateurs. Mr. O’Brien evidently shares the widespread doubt about his ability to function as mayor at all, let alone well, since he’s promised to go and study up on the job now that he has it. He also faces a philosophically hostile council that will prove especially challenging to a political novice. But what’s really interesting is that voters didn’t elect him despite his lack of experience. They elected him because of it.

I do not wish either ousted incumbent Bob Chiarelli or his failed left-wing challenger Alex Munter ill. Public affairs is quite bad enough without gratuitous malice. But I am happy that their political ambitions have been frustrated because they were bad for us and arguably for the men who hold them as well.

In my view Mr. Munter was disqualified for office by wanting it so badly for so long. It has been suggested that wishing to be president of the United States makes you unfit for the job. Certainly running for Ottawa city council at 23, and for mayor before 40, is weird and off-putting. It is long past time he got a life, preferably involving private-sector responsibilities. But it is intriguing that with all that experience he ran such an unfocused, promise-everyone-everything campaign.

I was also unimpressed by Bob Chiarelli’s seeming fascination with the mechanics of political power rather than its possible beneficial uses. But more than that, I was so frustrated by the Chiarelli years that I would have voted for a plastic moose to get him out because with Bob Chiarelli there were always a host of plausible reasons why nothing could ever be done right. Imagine running light rail north-south rather than east-west, in the face of all logic, then not having a station at the airport. Bizarre. Or the megacity: What theory of political economy favoured this thing? But there was no stopping it and, once it happened, no reversing it.

Mr. Chiarelli should obviously not be blamed for all of Ottawa’s problems. Give due credit to the National Capital Commission, city councillors, pressure groups, voters, dysfunctional funding at the provincial level and genuine difficulties in governing cities. But the fact is, our city is a monument to mediocrity. Taxes drift up, services decline, weeds grow on the medians, and you just know whatever gets built on prime downtown sites will be horribly uninspired. Thus familiarity with the way we always do things in Ottawa became an unqualified liability.

Have you ever been to Washington D.C. and seen the spectacular monuments and museums stretching along almost two miles of green space from Congress to the Lincoln Memorial? Why is the area around Parliament Hill so shabby? Who could look at the Parliament buildings, the Château Laurier and even the Mint and put a glass and steel box on the Daly site? As for improving the rest of downtown, let’s not. We like cement.

Don’t say “yes, but the United States is rich.” Canada has a trillion-dollar economy. Our capital could be nice. The conviction that it can’t, so we should be quiet and let the pros bungle things in a suitably depressing and dull fashion, is exactly the spirit we just voted against.

We have always rightly feared to entrust high office to those who too obviously love it. It is far better to be governed by well-rounded individuals so averse to bad government that, though they do not seek power, they will accept it reluctantly, exercise it with humility and retire to their farms at the earliest opportunity.

We have also long understood that governing is complicated in unique and horrible ways that make it very difficult to learn on the job. But evidently we no longer care, given the spectacular ineptitude on every file from recycling to tax policy to global warming to transit at every level of government.

Maybe Larry O’Brien can’t do the job. But at least his promises were attractive, he’ll be genuinely sorry if he can’t keep them, and there won’t be any more talking to us like children about the inevitability of mediocrity.

We’re beset by professional politicians who are laughably bad at governing and we don’t like it. Nor should we. Our property-tax system is a mess and our galloping assessments are scary. Our city is lacklustre and our development plans are third-rate. You say there’s nothing we can do?

Wrong. There is and we did. Take that, City Hall.

[First published in the Ottawa Citizen]

There is clear, uncontested evidence of war crimes in the latest Israeli incursion into Gaza. I expect arrest warrants for the Hamas leadership any day now. Oh, dear. Did I interrupt your chants of “Down with Israel”? But you must have seen news stories about the Israeli Defence Force besieging a group of “militants” hiding in a mosque in Beit Hanoun to lure the infidels into desecrating a religious building. These “militants” were under attack because they’d been firing rockets at Israeli civilians. And Article 51, Clause 2, of the 1977 Protocol I to the Geneva Convention says: “The civilian population as such, as well as individual civilians, shall not be the object of attack. Acts or threats of violence the primary purpose of which is to spread terror among the civilian population are prohibited.” It is difficult to detect significant ambiguity in that language. (The 18 Beit Hanoun civilians just tragically killed by errant Israeli shells are also the legal and moral responsibility of those who fire rockets at civilians from civilian areas.) But wait. There’s more.

News accounts clearly state that in response to an appeal by a Hamas legislator, a group of veiled women deliberately put themselves between the combatants in the mosque siege, some carrying extra garments so the brave strong “militants” could, disguised as women, run away from the weak and cowardly Jews. But under international law it is illegal to use civilians as human shields for combat operations (and under Geneva Convention I, Article 2 if these rules are not binding on the Palestinian Authority they are not binding on Israel either). So the people responsible for this outrage ought to be arrested.

These terrorists should also be held in contempt. To dress in women’s clothing to sneak off because you don’t dare stand and fight like a man, in a bloody battle you’ve spent months calling for, ought to inspire scorn not only in their adversaries but among their supporters. I also suspect these cowards should be sent to hell: I cannot believe God loves a man who will drag a woman between himself and enemy gunfire so he can scurry off to kill other women and their children. But in the here and now, the “international community” I keep hearing about should surely set about enforcing this “international law” I keep hearing about and arrest the perpetrators of what is, beyond rational debate, a war crime.

When I say beyond rational debate, an important caveat is in order. Back in 2003, a number of people and some governments declared the invasion of Iraq illegal. I wasn’t sure what they meant at the time, and it hasn’t become clearer since. Liberals seem very keen on international law understood as “we are truly superior human beings,” but less enthusiastic about it as “something actually written on a relevant piece of paper.”

No one ever tried to arrest George Bush or any American lawmakers such as Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts who voted to authorize the war. And it wasn’t even clear to me which law wasn’t being enforced, unless it was the conveniently foggy Everything Liberals Dislike Is Illegal Act of 2003. You know, the one under which you can’t intern unsavoury persons caught fighting in civilian clothes in Guantanamo Bay, although Geneva Convention III, Article 4.2, specifies that irregular fighters get prisoner of war status only if they “fulfil the following conditions: (a) that of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates; (b) that of having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance; (c) that of carrying arms openly; (d) that of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.” The Guantanamo internees are 0-for-4 on that score.

If we’re going to have “international law” in the abstract, we must have actual international laws and care about what they say. For instance, Geneva Convention IV, Article 28: “The presence of a protected person may not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations.” And Article 51, Clause 7, of the 1977 Protocol I adds: “The presence or movements of the civilian population or individual civilians shall not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations, in particular in attempts to shield military objectives from attacks or to shield, favour or impede military operations. The Parties to the conflict shall not direct the movement of the civilian population or individual civilians in order to attempt to shield military objectives from attacks or to shield military operations.”

What part of that is unclear? Trying to get civilian women killed to save your sorry hide and score a propaganda coup is not merely damnable cowardice. It is also illegal. And we have eyewitness testimony.

Somebody call the cops.

[First published in the Ottawa Citizen]

People ought not to laugh at dinosaurs while putting their faith in governments. For vast and terrifyingly strong but clumsy and incompetent predators, what rivals the modern state? This observation is prompted, this time at least, by Tuesday’s announcement that the Harper Tories will impose a sharp tax increase on “income trusts” to the understandable dismay of many investors and in violation of an explicit campaign promise. To be fair, it’s not actually that bad a policy. But the bipartisan shameless ineptitude required not to see it coming, and prepare for it in a timely and honest fashion, boggles the mind more thoroughly than any carnotaurus.

Allow me to explain. Carnotaurus is the only known predator with horns. No, sorry, I mean the “income trust” is a fairly new form of corporate organization under which companies are essentially obliged to return surplus earnings to shareholders rather than retain and invest them. It seems prudent, especially in mature industries where occasions for substantial innovative investment in the existing line of business are scarce and shareholders do not wish management and directors to indulge in trendily speculative projects unrelated to the core competency. But it should not be the job of government to encourage independently profitable business practices even in the unlikely event that it is generally capable of recognizing them.

Nevertheless, government encouraged “income trusts” by giving them far more favourable tax treatment than normal corporations. And you’ll never guess what happened next. At least you won’t if you’re a politician. When something that was already sensible also became a lucrative and relatively easy way to reduce taxes, a lot of people started doing it.

Now it hardly seems possible that one would pay money to encourage something unless one wished to encourage it and expected subsidies to have precisely that effect. But when it did, it created a crisis for government. So no laughing at spinosaurus.

I have commented before on the mind-boggling incompetence of modern politicians when it comes to the only thing that seems to interest them, namely government. In any other trade it would thoroughly discredit Dalton McGuinty that he promised to shut down Ontario’s coal-fired plants without studying the province’s energy needs, not to raise taxes without studying its fiscal needs, and not to tolerate the “Americanization” of health care through public-private partnerships in hospital construction without studying its capital needs. But is anyone even surprised that the alleged neoliberals in the Liberal party and alleged neoconservatives in the Conservative party acted as if they didn’t know people respond to incentives?

The weird thing is, I know from personal conversations that the Tory caucus includes people who do know it. And they must care, because many gave up more lucrative and less unsavoury occupations to advance free-market ideas in the political arena. But then, having done so, they somehow don’t allow the part of their brain that knows right from wrong and smart from stupid to communicate with the part that decides what to say and do next. For instance, when Jim Flaherty was running for the Ontario Tory leadership, I was led to understand that he was the mega-hard-right ultraconservative slashing right-wing bad person. But now he says he had to break his word on income trusts, trick investors and grab a huge pile of citizens’ money because “left unchecked, such corporate decisions would result in billions of dollars in less revenue for the federal government to invest in the priorities of Canadians.” Out here on the lunatic fringe, those priorities actually include keeping my own money and not being lied to brazenly by politicians. But I digress.

I knew the prime minister when he was a libertarian. How can he not have known incentives matter? How can he not have foreseen the massive move of corporations into income trusts, or the implications for revenue? And didn’t Department of Finance experts see it coming? If so, what can account for the failure of finance ministers and critics of all stripes to heed their warnings? Can’t anybody here play this game?

To be fair, the politicians know they can take our money any time they want, in any amount they want, as dimly and dishonestly as they please, and get re-elected. But it’s not exactly glowing praise, now is it?

So the next time you want to make fun of stegosaurus’ tiny brain, remember, when he saw an allosaurus coming he lumbered away or whacked it with his spiky tail. Whereas when we see the government coming, we just sit there.

[First published in the Ottawa Citizen]

"You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dawg.” Before I became familiar with the oeuvre of the late Elvis Aaron Presley I vaguely assumed this song insulted a woman’s appearance. Later I realized that Mr. Presley would not do such a thing and the song really is about a dog, which he despises because it won’t hunt. I bring this up not only because I prefer culture to politics. It pertains to a recent sour note in Canadian politics. I don’t care for political celebrity gossip, but silly episodes can illustrate serious points. With North Korea testing nukes, Iraq sliding into chaos, government budgets out of control and parliamentary accountability in a shambles, how can our political class go into conniptions over a cheap heckle and come out of it looking so uniformly pathetic?

It’s no big deal that Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay apparently responded to a strangely unintelligent taunt during question period with a low, unflattering comment about the lover who left him for a cabinet post. But his decision to deny everything was unwise given the existence of this here new-fangled recording technology.

His conduct wasn’t high class. That was just a lie. And, while I don’t entertain unreasonable hopes for political discourse, I like to believe that if I couldn’t devise a less conspicuously dim-witted retort I would have kept my mouth shut. And that if I had said it I would have owned up, either to stand behind or repudiate it. But my prospects for elective office remain poor. I am but a commentator.

In that capacity, such as it is, I wonder if I might direct an observation to the opposition parties now baying for ministerial blood: You’re just cryin’ all the time. You ain’t gonna catch this rabbit and you ain’t no friends of mine. Leaving aside more important issues that might engage your intellects, such as they are, politics is a rough sport. Back in the dark ages some semi-evolved hominids even said women ought not to take part in it because it was rough. Ha ha. What fools. Women are just as tough as men. They don’t need protection. Until a man insults one, and then it’s waaa, waaa, waaa.

Ms. Stronach’s decision to mix her personal and political lives may not have been wellcalculated to enhance women’s reputations in politics. But she is past the age of majority and legally competent to manage her affairs. She had every right to run for the Conservative leadership, sleep with the former Tory leader, then kick him in the pants as she sprang from his bed to Paul Martin’s cabinet (talk about three pieces of silver). But it is hardly the behaviour of an ingenue. It’s pretty bare-knuckle stuff. Oh, oh, you brute, a hockey enforcer metaphor.

To do all she did, then swoon into the arms of the nearest gallant when someone slings a rude but not even obscene word her way, is preposterous. And look at all the gender progressives among the Liberals and NDP denouncing Mr. MacKay as a cad for thus insulting a woman, as if their instinct now were to challenge him to a duel. Instead they nag him. But over what?

Back before the left lost its sense of humour, Ambrose Bierce, in his Devil’s Dictionary, wrote: “The woman most eager to jump out of her petticoat to assert her rights is first to jump back into it when threatened with a switching for misusing them.” Spare me the gasps at this apparent reference to patriarchal violence. What he meant is exactly what we just saw: Anything you can do, I can do better … Oh, oh, oh, won’t some big strong man protect me?

The Liberals and NDP happily oblige because it’s one thing they know how to do. The world hasn’t been kind to them lately. On national security they’re floundering, and while the intellectual triumph of free-market economics in recent decades has affected their policies it clearly gives them a stomach ache. But feminism? Denouncing male belligerence? Hey, they’re playing our tune.

The difficulty is that if one man had called another a dog in a question period heckle, or a woman had said it of a man, no one would care. They certainly wouldn’t whisk out the smelling salts for the offended maiden, then threaten to tongue-whip the offender on the wheelchair-accessible ramp of his non-smoking non-private all genders and orientations welcome club.

I think Mr. MacKay comes out looking bad. His insult was juvenile, his denial seedy. But his feminist critics also look profoundly hypocritical. I think most normal Canadians feel that if Ms. Stronach gets insulted for the way she has behaved she ought to, given her behaviour, what’s that phrase, take it like a man. The calls for Mr. Mackay to resign, and possibly undergo re-education, sound more like mean-spirited, boilerplate partisan politics than genuine principled outrage.

Talk about a dog that won’t hunt.

[First published in the Ottawa Citizen]