Harper's ambition
Sep. 19th, 2011 10:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jsburbidgeI have seen several articles over the last few months setting out Harper's ambition as being one of reformulating the Canadian political dynamic to that Conservatism becomes the dominant/default ethos.
I'm going to translate that into practical terms as "he'll view himself as successful if he retires while in office and if his successor wins at least one election at a majority level following his retirement (with no intervening losses, but an intervening minority government is OK)" (a nice concrete metric).
How easily is this achievable?
Wel'l let's take a look at, oh, the last seventy years. At the federal level, we have, hmm, King (followed by St-Laurent, check) and Pearson (followed by Trudeau, check). That's it.
At the Ontario level, we don't do a lot better. Frost (followed by Robarts, check), Robarts (followed by Davis, check).
Both during the same time period of WWII followed by extended economic expansion (at end of term, for King, who started much earlier).
This is not that easy to do -- but it's effectively what Harper's ambitions translate to.
(Social change is probably way beyond his reach. Government tends to follow social change, laggardly, rather than vice-versa, and social change is driven by a mass of factors most of which are beyond government (especially the Federal Government, given only s. 91 powers plus the spending power).
I'm going to translate that into practical terms as "he'll view himself as successful if he retires while in office and if his successor wins at least one election at a majority level following his retirement (with no intervening losses, but an intervening minority government is OK)" (a nice concrete metric).
How easily is this achievable?
Wel'l let's take a look at, oh, the last seventy years. At the federal level, we have, hmm, King (followed by St-Laurent, check) and Pearson (followed by Trudeau, check). That's it.
At the Ontario level, we don't do a lot better. Frost (followed by Robarts, check), Robarts (followed by Davis, check).
Both during the same time period of WWII followed by extended economic expansion (at end of term, for King, who started much earlier).
This is not that easy to do -- but it's effectively what Harper's ambitions translate to.
(Social change is probably way beyond his reach. Government tends to follow social change, laggardly, rather than vice-versa, and social change is driven by a mass of factors most of which are beyond government (especially the Federal Government, given only s. 91 powers plus the spending power).
