The potential mental picture is delightful.
In a room are Prime Minister Trudeau and newly-elected United States president Donald Trump.
And Trump looks at our prime minister and says,”Hey, kid, get me a coffee.”
Well, it likely won’t be that bad and while millions of Americans are hoping the Trump part is wrong, the Liberal election victory makes for some interesting scenarios.
First, the blame game.
There never has been an election loss that the media hasn’t been assigned at least some of the blame.
And, to some degree, it might well have some traction. But the simple truth is voters are much smarter than to be led by media.
I think very few people indeed have their vote influenced by media. It simply doesn’t happen.
The other side of that coin is control.
Every politician and bureaucrat loves control. If they have complete control then the results will always be what they want and there will be no embarassing hiccups along the way. Which again brings us to media because bureaucrats and politicians can’t control media so, to their thinking, that means media can’t be trusted.
And if politicians and bureaucrats can’t trust media, then I think that’s a blessing for us all.
It’s often been said that Tory leader Stephen Harper is a control freak, and I think that showed during the election campaign.
Never once did I see genuine enthusiasm for the job, for the campaign or even for the country.
I had the feeling that, to him, the prime minister’s job was an organizational task that he undertook, and me and the media simply wouldn’t understand.
The simple truth is the Liberals ran a better campaign than the Tories.
I always have a problem with the control exercised by the Prime Minister’s Office and the national offices of political parties.
Tory candidates were told to avoid all candidate forums as best they could for the simple reason that there was no control over crowd or questions.
You’re my age or better if you can remember when polticians used to answer to the people they serve – now they answer to the mandarins in Ottawa.
There is nothing more fatal to a government in power than the perception that the voters are irrelevant, and I think that was one of the contributing factors to the Tory demise.
You could confirm this by phoning Jim Prentice.
There were lessons to be learned but maybe that’s asking too much.
Alberta Premier Rachel Notley had absolutley no impact on the federal election.
She witheld the provincial budget – deliberately or not – and it made absolutely no difference.
The bureaucrats no doubt thought that was a brilliant move, but voters could have cared less.
In every election post-mortem there’s the won-and-lost thing.
I think it was about even.
The Tories didn’t make many friends with the PMO’s heavy-handed handling of the niqab and refugee issue, but we must give the Liberals credit for bringing some enthusiasm and excitement to the race.
That wasn’t a great challenge because Harper and his crew were about as exciting as watching paint dry.
The popular thought following the election is that Canadians obviously felt it was time for change, that 10 years was enough.
That’s certainly part of it. But I also think it was an opportunity for younger voters to poke a stick in the eye of the establishment and vote for a young guy.
And, really, what difference does that make?
Is there really any significant difference between Liberals and Conservatives, other than keeping the socialist hordes at the gates?
Maybe the younger generation of voters realized that and it has yet to dawn on the rest of us.
No one can argue that Oct.19 was not an exciting day in Canadian history.
Yep, it was a day we’ve been anticipating for many years – the Blue Jays won a playoff game.
And there was an election.
