Angry in the Great White North
Insightful political analysis?
Tuesday, March 21, 2006 at 08:00 PM

Read other posts by Steve Janke published by the National Post
Leader

If this is what passes for insightful political analysis on the left, then I can sit back and do some serious relaxing.

Larry Zolf is an award-winning commentator and journalist and a friend of Canada's left. He is also considered a bit of a fool by some observers (see here and here).

Maybe I wil join that list based on this piece from the CBC:

Martin made one particularly fatal blunder. He could have visited the troops in Afghanistan over Christmas 2005, in the middle of the campaigning for the Jan. 23 federal election.

If he had, he would have been the hero of the troops and stolen the campaign momentum away from Harper's one-a-day policy announcements.

Instead, Martin did nothing, letting the Tory leader steal the momentum with military announcements and promises to deploy more troops.

Is this how the left sees an election campaign? As six weeks of campaigning that could have been ignored because the people of Canada would have been utterly captivated by a single photo-op? Canadians would have forgotten Adscam and the Income Trust Scandal and beer-and-popcorn and the non-confidence chicanery and the budget follies and the dithering because Paul Martin would have popped his head out of LAV III?

Is this the opinion the left has of the voting electorate?

Stephen Harper's visit was no stunt. It was a carefully crafted message about the importance of the military and of Canada's foreign affairs and interests. The visit was not driven by polls or by impending votes. In fact, the visit preceded polls that showed Canadians beginning to see the Afghanistan mission in a positive light.

The honesty and leadership Stephen Harper showed is resonating with Canadians and has set the tone for this new government. You can't fake honesty and leadership. The people would have seen through that. The troops would have seen through that.

That is, unless you believe Larry Zolf. If you do, then every Canadian in and out of uniform would have trumpeted the gutsy leadership of Paul Martin because he gladhanded some troops in a tent in Kandahar, despite the months of evidence to suggest he was no such leader, and the campaign would have turned around.

Larry Zolf has seen more campaigns than me. Maybe he's right. But I don't think so. Moreover, I think it reveals a lot about what the left thinks of the rest of us.

To be fair, Larry Zolf makes some other points in the article that make sense. But I can't get past this notion that Canadians would have voted the Liberals back in power if only Paul Martin had done this one photo-op. It makes us sound so...so...infantile.

I guess it's all part of the beer-and-popcorn mindset.

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