‘You Can't Be Terrified of a Coalition and Comfortably in Control at the Same Time’

On Stephen Harper's mixed, self-defeating messages.

While many pundits have accused the Conservatives of sullying political debate with baseless attack ads against Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff, the National Post’s Chris Selley thinks a more convincing argument to pull the ads is that they run so counter to the Tories’ campaign message. With a healthy lead in the polls, all Stephen Harper needs to do is stay the course, and appear confident and in control. “But every time I see a Conservative attack ad against Michael Ignatieff, which is often, I marvel at how noisily it grates against this staid message,” Selley writes. “The ads smell of desperation and panic … You can’t be terrified of a coalition and comfortably in control at the same time.”

The Toronto Star’s Chantal Hébert writes that by being “blatantly creative with the facts” and demonizing his opponents as a reckless coalition-in-waiting, Stephen Harper “has risked turning the election into a debate on his character, a huge gamble for a figure that has been shown to have a higher-than-average potential to polarize.” Given the divided nature of the Canadian left, polarization would not be a bad thing for the Conservatives, but Hébert thinks it could backfire. If the Liberals can get within striking distance of having enough support to form a government, Harper’s dependence on Canadians’ mistrust of a Liberal-NDP-Bloc coalition will be knocked out from under him, leaving him no actual issue to stand on. Of course, the Liberals are nowhere near that popular at the moment.

The Post’s Conrad Black says he is not paying attention to the 2011 election. “My view will change only if there emerges a serious discussion of policy matters,” he writes, “including … the philosophical views that underpin them.” A lofty goal, no doubt, but a small sample of Black’s prose is proof of why the type of campaign he’s imagining would be disastrous for voter turnout. “Concerns that the bourgeois values and religiosity that accompanied 19th-century industrialization and provided some conscientious limits to it, or at least a receptivity to reform at times, are routinely dismissed as atavistic humbug better ground to powder in the gears of competing political and economic interests played out in the political process,” he writes. If you’re still awake, congratulations.