Angry in the Great White North

A political party ought to act in the best interests of that party.

Not in the interests of the country, nor of the voters, but it's own best interests.

This really should be obvious, but in case it sounds cynical and self-serving, I'll explain. A party has a platform rooted in an ideology that purports to organize society in a certain way, and that defines in particular the role of government in that organizational structure. As a member of that party, you truly believe that, in the long run, the country and its citizens would be better off if it followed your party's plan.

So when you preserve the party and work to strengthen it, you are investing in a better future. If you are in opposition, and you avoid a situation that could spell the end of your party, you are making a decision to save the country...later. An election in which your party would be decimated means handing the country over to another party which you believe has a platform that is based on an incorrect premise or on a fundamentally unrealistic ideology. But in this case, the other side would have the run of the place for a decade or more as you pick up the pieces. On the other hand, a short term retreat allows you to build your strength for a vigorous fight in the near future.

So when the opposition Conservatives allowed a government to stand, was that OK? Of course it was.

So when the opposition NDP allowed a government to stand, was that OK? Of course it was.

So when the opposition Liberals allowed a government to stand, was that OK? No. Absolutely not.

OK, so what gives?

It is simply this. The premise of my argument is that the party making a strategic decision to retreat from a potentially disastrous election in order to preserve its existence is doing so in order to preserve the ideological option for Canadians to choose from in the future.

In the case of the Conservatives and the NDP, the ideological roots are clear. But with the Liberals, it has never been so. Despite the name, the Liberal Party in Canada in recent decades has acted not as a vehicle for classical liberalism or neo-socialism or the so-called Third Way. It has been observed by a lot of people as acting only in the interests of the Liberal Party...and nothing else. Andrew Coyne discussed the Liberal Party and their policy of clientism in May 2005, when Paul Martin and the Liberals were holding onto power in a minority government:

There are many ways in which the Grits have set about barricading themselves in power over the years -- we are about to see this taken to its almost literal extreme, with the party declaring it will refuse to recognize a non-confidence motion as a motion of non-confidence -- but what is common to all is a strategy known as clientism: the cultivation of a vast array of dependent client groups, who in exchange for regular infusions of federal cash can be counted on to tout the party's cause at critical moments. Like, say, an election.

The system of clientism has been built up over many decades. Its fingers now reach into every corner of the country, securing loyalties, creating dependents, buying silence. I do not know if they can ever be removed.

Clientism is not really ideologically driven. It is driven by considerations of wealth and power. A potential client with interests that would be at odds with what the Liberals seem to stand for will be happily accepted as a client as long as it can can deliver the money, the endorsements, and the votes. Indeed, clientism becomes the ideology, which is to say, no ideology at all.

I've written recently on how the Liberals don't have an ideology, but take from the left and the right whatever platform planks might seem popular, that might please the clients that have come to support the party in return for funds or special treatment.

This is not just groundless speculation. The Liberals have clients in the environmental movement, and simultaneously clients who are major polluters in the energy sector. Indeed, we have an example of a Liberal who was simultaneously courting favour with people strongly believe in the Kyoto Protocol and with people who were vigorously resisting strong climate change regulation.

Clientism taken to its logical end point. There is no ideology, just people who will help keep the Liberal Party in power in return for the comfortable fiction that the Liberal Party has really adopted their concerns and is working in their interests. As a result, we have seen Stephane Dion as environment minister sitting back as greenhouse gas emissions climb year by year (pleasing industrial and energy sector clients who don't want to deal with the regulatory overhead), but then as opposition leader trying to get back into power, we now see Stephane Dion as the defender of the Kyoto Protocol (pleasing environmental groups whose public support plays much better in the media than the support of Big Oil). But both remain as clients because both get what they want (no real action on climate change for Big Oil, and money to conduct studies and issue reports for the environmentalists), and the Liberals reap the benefits. Bereft of any real ideology, there is no discomfort experienced by a Liberal in playing both sides in this debate or in any other.

So when the Liberals under Stephane Dion retreat from an opportunity to bring down the government in order to avoid an election that could well destroy the party, they are doing the smart thing. No doubt about that.

It is the same thing the Conservatives and the NDP have done in the past and will do so again in the future.

But when it comes to the Liberals, there is no good reason to preserve that party, and for that, Stephane Dion gets no credit for doing the smart thing, and never will.

Addendum: I can't help but note that when I talk about preserving the Conservatives and the NDP, I treat them with equal respect. Though I think socialism is fundamentally flawed and ultimately unworkable, I don't think the NDP and its supporters are evil for fervently believing that they have the recipe for making a better Canada. Their hearts are in the right place, even if I think their ideas will do more harm than good. It's too bad that, with a few notable exceptions, people having discussions like this one on NDP boards don't seem to give Conservatives the same credit. I guess it comes back to that old saying: Conservatives think liberals are wrong, while liberals think conservatives are evil. I hope that attitude changes one day, and we just think of each other as being too dense to see what is blindingly obvious, but not as bad people.