Big Daddy, JC and the Spook

      Whether for good or for ill, I suspect the lion's share of what Chantal Hébert argues in this piece is true. Would the big JC have survived the McSquinty Factor? Who knows. Chrétien would, however, have been much more tenacious -- and much more politically astute. Say what you will, Chrétien was a formidable campaigner, and it's hard to imagine him making the same mistakes that Martin has made-- or, rather, that Martin's idiotic Earnscliffe handlers have let him make. Martin, it seems, is a senior-aged Hamlet-- trying too desperately to live up to a dead father's image, while trying to escape the shadow of a King he disdains, and his uncertain definition of himself is causing him more problems than he can handle. He may eventually get the job done, but if he does, it will certainly be at much greater cost than he originally thought.