Play Nice, Children...

Let me speak, let me spit out my bitterness....
            --- Joni Mitchell, "The Sire of Sorrow" (Job's Sad Song) from Turbulent Indigo (1994)

      Some of you, I'm sure, wonder why I possess so much vitriol for Paul Martin, and why the possibility of his being elected with a majority government appals me, especially because I proclaim to be (and generally think myself to be) apolitical. Well, as most of you know, there are a few things that always get my goat, among them blatant hypocrisy, pandering cynicism, phenomenal stupidity, self-indulgent acrimony, fundamental disloyalty and baldly-manipulative grandstanding. Martin and his martinets frankly sicken me for so many reasons, but not least of which is this: that while making pretentious overtures about democracy and unity, he can't -- won't-- even patch the wounds within his own party, most of his own creation in his rather neck-slitting drive to replace Mr. Chrètien, to organize and to lead. There's a disgusting, to say nothing of desperate, air of Maoism to Martin's leadership, a childishness (or is that churlishness?) more indicative of a sore-winner than a statesman. Yes, he's leader now, but what does this really mean? And what are the implications of the ways in which he's risen to office, and the ways he means to employ to return him there?

      I'll begin with this jaded assessment, that Martin's commitment to his own election is greater than his commitment to govern. I say this because bills supposedly important for Canadians will die on the order-paper because he feels the need to go to the polls now before anything else can go politically wrong (and, in part, to use the election to oust most of the remaining figures who were loyal to his predecessor). His importing of so-called "celebrity candidates" for the election, the latest of whom is former hockey player Ken Dryden, suddenly has, at least to this mind, more than an echo of the Maoist letting of a thousand blossoms bloom which, we all know now, was nothing more than a dangerous pretext for the consolidation of power. Martin, far from being the policy wonk that he used to be, is now a celebrity cliquist more interested in demonstrating who his friends are (including a cadre of former-separatists) than in dealing with issues directly and perspicaciously. He relies, it seems, on a cult of personality (and protestations of blind fealty to it) rather than legitimacy, and thus he seems to me a Bolingbroke finally come to power with little idea what now to do with that power. He has caused more rifts within his own party than he has mended; he made grand promises that he has waffled on or otherwise betrayed in a fashion that would make John Kerry seem absolutely decisive by comparison; he has chosen the political strategy of negative-attack for the coming election instead of the affirmative-assertion approach he promised for so long; in short, he has discovered, as Bolingbroke as Henry IV learned, that uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.

      There's another light in which to see this. Martin reminds me of all-too-much of the Robert Redford character in The Candidate: he's photogenic, a good speaker when he wants to be, and there's even an air to which he seems sincere in some of his posturings, but when it comes down to it, when he wins that for which he jostled so long, he's lost; as Redford's character asks Peter Boyle after winning the election, "So what do we do now?" Martin, like a child, has no idea what he wants to do now that he has what he most coveted, and the last thing he wants to do is to play nice with the other children in the neighbourhood. It's a simple question that no one has yet posed to Mr. Martin: how can you expect us to believe that you can govern Canada wisely when you can't even keep order within your own party? Similarly, how can he ask us for a mandate when his tack is not to offer a specific parliamentary agenda, but rather to participate in a process of political demonization? Further-- in another question that dodged Bolingbroke for the rest of his days-- how can we trust a leader whose method to accession was that of the conspirator (and which explains his insistence upon a "Team Martin" rather than a Liberal Party proper)? If he could pose answers to these questions, if he would at least define himself and his party according to a specific agenda (however wise or unwise), he might have a legitimate claim to election. But no, and his failure do these fundamental things, or to address these questions, makes him, in my eyes, the most insidious leader in recent memory. His protestations of integrity ring hollow; his calls for political vision are farcically ironic; and his promises of parliamentary competence are meaningless, especially given his spectacularly unimpressive appointments to cabinet. In sum, he's become the epitome of all those qualities that I cited at the beginning of this entry as decriable. This has little to do with politics proper: it has to do with hypocrisy, stupidity, cynicism, disloyalty, acrimony, and generally adolescent behaviour. It has to do with issues of character that have played out with astonishingly vapidity on a scale only satirists could fathom.

      This leads me to the question of me, and why I let myself rant like this, all the while aware that I'm probably pissing in the wind and annoying people with my own protestations on this subject. Why, after all, do I not let this slide by as I have with previous politicians? Why does Martin so get my goat? Part of it I'm sure has to do with my own principles, of which betrayal and hypocrisy are cardinal sins (and, like Dante, I reserve a special place in hell for such people). Another part of it, though, is the capacity for duping that I see at play in so many circles, as so many of my compatriots seem to settle into a decision of apathetic resignation that rubs abrasively against one of the last streaks of idealism that I possess. Another-- and perhaps the telling part-- is that when I look at Mr. Martin, I don't see a leader of inclusion and reconciliation, but a leader of exclusion and antagonism, a leader who manufactures consent in a way that Noam Chomsky never quite described. In Mr. Martin, I see a spoiled child who refuses utterly to play nicely with others. And perhaps that's what I despise most, and why I rant-- vent?-- here. History may finally (hopefully) prove me wrong on this, but I see in Mr. Martin qualities that not only appal me personally, but which seem to me ominous of even more insidious things to come. This too, I'm sure, needs some explanation. However much I may have agreed or disagreed with previous leaders, I've always been able to allay my own concerns that they ultimately believed that what they were doing was in the best interest of the country. Not so with Martin. Martin's desire to be Prime Minister wasn't (and isn't) his dangerous flaw. No, it's his vanity, and in the face of such vanity I can't bring myself to believe that he would do what was best for the country if it threatened his vanity. No wonder he so egregiously surrounds himself (and stuffs his party) with yes-men and acolytes. Vanity cannot brook dissent or indifference, let alone insolence, and it's this sort of vanity that rests behind the image of Nero fiddling while Rome burned. I don't think Martin will be another Nero, though perhaps he'll be a kindler, gentler version of the archetype. Instead, Martin's vanity has already declared his own vision of a country and a political system remade in his image.

      Frankly put, I listen to Martin and his sycophants and I hear hear little more than ten words, all from a song we all know too well: It's my party and I'll cry if I want to.... Well, yes it is, but pardon me if I don't celebrate. I'm too worried about those thousand blossoms blooming.