Harper's Coat of Many Ideologies

To the right, to the centre, or nowhere in particular? Five years after his election the pundits speculate on where the prime minister is taking the country.

Stephen Harper is a bred-in-the-bone conservative who’s pushing the country to the right, argues the Globe and Mail’s Lawrence Martin, who continues to expound on the characterization of Harper he outlined in his biography Harperland. “The rightish trends are many and are undeniable,” he says, pointing to the Conservatives’ tough-on-crime policies, increased military spending, unequivocal support for Israel, shrinking of the tax base, rejection of national policies like the Kelowna accord, and attack ad campaigning. Not sure that last one is a conservative characteristic per se, as opposed to something Martin just doesn’t like about Harper.

In a companion piece to Martin’s column, the Globe's Margaret Wente says Harper has found the “sweet spot” of Canadian politics, evidenced by the fact that “for everyone who’s attacking Mr. Harper for being too conservative, someone else is attacking him for not being conservative enough.” Wente observes, as have others, that Harper’s stimulus spending looked a lot like a liberal policy, and he’s also declined to pursue major conservative causes like reinstating the death penalty and criminalizing abortion. If anything, Wente says, he’s moved the party towards the centre rather than moving the country to the right. We in the Newsroom can see her point, but if his spot was so “sweet,” wouldn’t Harper be polling at more than 37 per cent right now?

The Montreal Gazette editors compare Harper to Lester Pearson, who until Harper surpasses him next month is Canada’s longest-sitting minority government prime minister. While Pearson had many landmark achievements like introducing the Canadian flag and modernizing health care, Harper “registered his most notable political achievement before he took office by uniting the divided conservative ranks in the country into a viable alternative to the Liberals,” according to the Gazette. Since then he’s managed to stay in power largely because a “succession of uninspiring Liberal leaders.” The “Harper-is-strong-because-the-Liberals-are-weak” argument is popular these days, but at the risk of defending a PM who we still have some reservations about, couldn’t it be said of any successful politician, at any point in history, that he’s only successful because he exploits the weakness of his opponents?