08 September 2008

Election 2008: Day 2

Still not a candidate to be seen in Halifax. I did, however, have a city councillor come by my door yesterday; they must feel bad that they're now the second-place election of October 2008.

Hats off to the Greens for throwing money down a black hole as penance for their carbon emissions during the election. It's a special kind of self-loathing to want to tax yourself, and luckily they'll forever be unable to inflict the same wallet-thrashing on the people of Canada.

We're still looking for a major theme or central issue to this election. Leadership is a word that has often come up in discussions. But there's so much more to good governance than the leader of whatever party is elected. The Liberals have portrayed Stephen Harper as a bully who muzzles his own Cabinet ministers and snuffs all internal dissent, which they say is bad leadership. The Conservatives have much more successfully shown Dion to be an ineffectual leader, replaying over and over the clip in which Dion says, "Do you think it's easy to make priorities?" Obviously, after the dithering of the previous Liberal leader, the Tories feel the current Liberals will offer little better as evidence of leadership. And somewhere in all of this, Jack Layton is saying they're both bad and only his type of leadership and strength is what's good for Canada. Strangely absent from this "leadership" talk is the discussion of actual priorities and policies for Canada as we move forward.

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