Posted on 01/09/2006 4:36:19 PM PST by Pokey78
Been following the Canadian election campaign? Whoa, come back, no need to stampede for the exits screaming in terror. The Canuck angle is just an opening sentence: if I'm still yakking on about swing voters in Yellowknife and turnout in Moose Jaw at the foot of the page, feel free to turn over to our exclusive excerpt from The Boris Johnson Illustrated Guide to Lesbian Movies.
But here's my point: right now the polls in Her Majesty's snowbound dominion show the Conservatives are ahead and poised to topple the incumbent Liberals on January 23. And what's the name of the glamorous metrosexual matinee idol who has brought the Canadian Tories to the brink of electoral triumph?
Well, he's a guy called Stephen Harper and he's widely agreed by all the experts to have "negative charisma". Think how you felt about my opening sentence and then multiply it a thousandfold. Mr Harper is unexciting even by Canadian standards! He's unflashy, unflamboyant, unshowy, unspectacular, unmodish, uncool - except in the sense that the Yukon in January is cool. He is, in other words, the anti-Cameron. And he's on course to win.
Now consider two other conservative leaders, America's Bush and Australia's Howard. Bald and bespectacled, John Howard looks like a more nondescript version of Iain Duncan Smith. He has terrible body language: his endearingly stiff victory gesture makes Nixon's arm-raising seem as graceful as Dame Margot Fonteyn in her prime. Yet, unlike IDS, "Little John" (as he was once sneeringly known) has led his party to four election successes in a row.
For his part, George W Bush doesn't have Howard's accountant's mien, but he's certainly defiantly untrendy. Unlike David Cameron flaunting his in-depth knowledge of the pop combo Girls Aloud, a Bush interview on Radio One's Colin and Edith Show would be short. In the 2000 campaign, he was given a "verbal Rorschach" test on American pop culture by Glamour magazine. What comes to mind, David France wanted to know, when you think of Madonna?
"I'm not into pop music," replied Governor Bush.
What Bush, Howard and Harper have is not hipness, but the sense of being at ease with themselves and secure in their philosophical moorings. Harper's conservatism is a bit cautious for my tastes and Bush's is a bit profligate, but all three know where they want to go and how they're planning to get there - and Bush and Howard will go down as transformative leaders. By comparison with their anglosphere cousins, British Tories seem mired in the shallows - and, if Cameron's first utterances as leader are anything to go by, they're happy to gambol there indefinitely.
Insofar as Mr Cameron has a (dread word) ideology, it's this: "I am an instinctive libertarian who abhors state prohibitions and tends to be sceptical of most government action, whether targeted against drug use or anything else." But how are we to square his "instinctive libertarianism" with his attack on chocolate oranges? "As Britain faces an obesity crisis," fulminated Mr Libertarian, "why does WH Smith promote half-price chocolate oranges at its checkouts, instead of real oranges?"
Gee, I dunno. There oughtta be a law or somethin'. Did they focus group this one? "The Conservative Party, where the Campaign for Real Fruits isn't just about gay outreach." So, if I understand correctly, in Cameron's Britain it's okay to light up a post-coital spliff with your civil partner, but not to unpeel a post-coital chocolate orange.
On Saturday, my colleague Charles Moore, reflecting on Cameron's public performance, wrote: "I do recognise that I am not the target market here." As I recall, a couple of leadership elections back, Charles was said to favour David Trimble. From the Orangeman to the Chocolate Orangeman is not what he would regard, in ideal circumstances, as progress. But he's going along with the Colin-and-Edith shtick because he thinks it's a winner. This is dangerously close to the rationale of Democratic primary voters in 2004, when they told pollsters that what they liked most about John Kerry was his "electability". Sadly, electability isn't enough to get you elected.
The Cameron attack on half-price chocolates suggests his "instinctive libertarianism" goes no further than the fashionable causes of sex, drugs and rock'n'roll - civil partnerships, marijuana decriminalisation and which member of Girls Aloud is most shagadelic. In the many more critical areas of British life, where the balance between state power and individual liberty is way out of whack, Cameron's "libertarianism" appears to be indistinguishable from the Labour nanny state.
Tories say, oh, well, it's way too early to talk about "policy" - and, if they mean pledging to reduce this or that tax by 2.8 per cent, they're right. But it's never too early to let folks know what you stand for, and today's Tories are awful short of big broad themes. That leaves Glamour Boy, and glamour is a very over-valued commodity in politics. In the 2004 Canadian Tory leadership election, the glamour vote went to a bubbly blonde called Belinda, who had the additional advantage of being a "close friend" of Bill Clinton. Having lost to Mr Dullsville, she's since quit the party. In the 2004 Australian election, all the adjectives now applied to Cameron -- "young", "fresh", "charismatic" - were applied to a fellow called Mark Latham, who was thought to have it all over bald boring squaresville Howard. He has gone now. When everything else about his party was old and stale, being young and fresh availed Latham nought. Glamour ungrounded in ideas is rarely enough. Whereas ideas without glamour seem to do just fine. Indeed, politically speaking, ideas are what's really glamorous.
More to the point, a leader prone to pandering to trendies is likely to find it hard to stop at sex'n'drugs. The fads and fashions of the world aren't confined to the hit parade. Politics is full of it - modish environmentalist humbug like Kyoto, kinky transgressives like Hamas, the sentimentalised corruption of the UN, all are "fashionable" with the world's leaders.
It takes a bold man to face down Kyoto and the UN, as Howard does time and again. All politics is local and perhaps the experiences of the three other leading anglophone democracies are not relevant. But by the end of this month, all their conservative parties will be in power and Britain's won't. And, until the Tories get some glamorous ideas, that's the way it will stay.
Not in the US. Glamor ALWAYS wins elections.
Glad you're back in the 'ping' business!
"I'm not into pop music," replied Governor Bush.
Just one of the many reasons I love President Bush!
ROTFLMAO!!!!
Can you add me to your Steyn ping-list, please?
Steyn on Canadian elections, for your ping list...
Its good to know that the ontario liberals heads are about to explode
I agree they need ideas. they missed the gay marriage issue in favor of cleaner hospitals last time. Yawn.
Thanks for the ping!
Almost an interesting article. It would bereally interesting if Canada, England and Australia weren't quite so irrelevant to the rest of the world. But steyn has convered that elsewhere.
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie. Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
bttt
BTTT
Ping!
I wish he would have made this piece a little longer and worked in some comments on Tony Blair. He was a bit of a glamour boy too, but he also had new ideas, revolutionary ideas for "new labour". Maybe Steyn doesn't want to give our Dims any good ideas.
Sadly, I think the other poster may be right, in America you seem to need some touch of glamour to win. I think Nixon may be the last real nerd to be elected president, at least in my lifetime. And I'm not sure that's the best thing for our nation, a lot of good candidates may (MAY) prove unelectable due to their nerdiness.
(Can you tell I was a Steve Forbes gal, back in the day?)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.