The Long And Winding Home Stretch

Jean Chretien's coda as Prime Minister is becoming fascinating to watch: ever the political player, he remains more capable as a so-called lame duck than many PMs were in their periods of greatest power. What does this mean? Imagine a PM stuck in Richard II's position acting like a populist Richard III, carefully and with great calculation dragging out the period prior to his abdication, all the while laying the groundwork for a very, very difficult time for Paul Martin and his followers, Canada's Bolingbroke and company. Martin and his team have won, so to speak: they've forced Chretien to abdicate, eventually, but Chretien will not go easily, and not without making sure that the head that soon wears the crown will indeed weigh very, very heavy. Martin thinks he can come in with a budget surplus? Nah, JC will make all the allocations before he retires. Martin thinks he can come in with an unrivalled governing party? Nah, the PM has delayed things so long that the opposition parties are slowly starting to organize themselves, and the Liberal party monopoly on popularity seems to be shrinking. Martin wants to be able to distinguish his agenda from Chretien's? Well, okay, he can do it, so long as the first thing that he does when he takes over as PM is to undo all of the pre-abdication promises, like the proposed millions for VIA Rail.

The interesting thing is this: Chretien is not so much razing and salting the ground he's conceding as he is ensuring that Prime Minister Martin will have a bugger of a time following through on his promises, and indeed escaping Chretien's legacy. You wanted the crown, Chretien seems to be indicating to Martin, well, fine, take it and choke on it. Meanwhile, Chretien ambles through his final days, not as Richard II hated by the people, but merely as a dinner guest whose welcome has been overstayed but who is, at last, making his way toward the door. It's brilliant politics, in a way-- and brilliant, especially, in the way that it redefines the idea of the lame-duck leader, and in the way that it exacts a kind of punishment upon the merry band of usurpers.

And we wonder how Chretien, often seeming less articulate even than the epitome of verbal clumsiness George W. Bush, survived so long. He's ingeniously cagey, and yet to the public he never seems so. That sly old bastard.

There's an interesting article in today's Globe and Mail on Chretien's long move toward the door. Yes, loathe him as one might, he is the pro. Martin and his followers are probably wishing they hadn't pushed Chretien's hand so publically: Martin may soon discover that is crown is now lined with thorns.