Serving the party, not the nation

On June 20, 1791, Louis XVI of France, finding his once unchallenged powers constrained by the National Assembly and tiring of the unceasing attacks on his prerogatives and person, resolved to make a break for it. He and his family fled Paris in disguise, hoping to rally the other European powers to their side.

It was, as we would say now, a colossal gaffe. The royal family were arrested at Varennes, and returned to Paris as prisoners. All that he had achieved by his desperate gamble was to confirm before all that he was not, as he had pretended, a friend of the Revolution, the guiding hand of liberty, but was interested only in sustaining himself in power.

Nowadays, political leaders in trouble are not so gauche as to flee the capital. These days, they ask for time on television.

All you had to ask yourself, as you listened to Mr. Martin speak, was: What is his purpose in speaking to me? What is his point? Is his intent to make a clean breast of it: to answer, once and for all, the many ethical questions surrounding him and his party? Has he decided, at last, to forswear spin, and salesmanship, in favour of transparency and openness? I don’t mean this in a moral sense, or not only so. I might wish that all parties would do so of their own accord, but I would expect that a party in as much trouble as this one is would realize that was its only chance.

But no, that was not his purpose, was it? You only had to consider the format of the occasion. It hardly bespeaks a commitment to transparency to make your statement, not in Parliament, not at a news conference, but on videotape, recorded in some airless bunker sealed off from inconvenient questions, then couriered to the networks. That is the technique of fugitives.

Even then, he might have saved the day had he had something of significance to say. If you are going to commandeer the nation’s airwaves, after all, it is usually expected you should have some message of extraordinary urgency to impart -- a declaration of war, a major legislative initiative, a snap election. But to do so for no reason other than to deliver a plainly self-serving defense of your record, coupled with a no less self-serving appeal to stave off an election, is all the illustration you need of the basic problem facing this government.

That problem is this: They do not, even now, understand the situation they are in. As it is said of the Bourbons, they have learned nothing and forgotten nothing. They still think it is a matter of tactics, of finding the right communications strategy, of “getting their message out.” The notion of simply laying before the public everything they know about what their party has been up to all these years -- not waiting to be supboenaed, not evading simple questions of fact, not smearing those who ask them, but just levelling with folks -- would not occur to them if it fell on them from a great height.

I grant that Mr. Martin gives every appearance of sincerity. He always does. There was even an acknowledgment that he should have been more vigilant, as the Finance minister, about the hundreds of millions of dollars -- at least -- that was sloshing about the province of Quebec. But viewers could be forgiven for asking themselves: which Paul Martin is this? Is it the Paul Martin who was “mad as hell” about the corruption unearthed by the auditor general, or the one who dismissed it as the work of a few rogue bureaucrats? Is it the Paul Martin who vowed to “get to the bottom” of the scandal, or the one who shut down the Public Accounts committee? Is it the Paul Martin who was “personally offended” at how senior members of his party had carried on, or the one who led a standing ovation for Jean Chretien in caucus after his contemptuous appearance at the Gomery inquiry?

I think this disastrously misjudged performance will be seen as Mr. Martin’s flight to Varennes: the moment when it finally became evident that there was no prospect of cleaning out the rot in Canada’s government so long as the Liberals remained in power. But perhaps he was doomed all along. I have said since the scandal broke that everything Mr. Martin said or did in the way of presenting himself as the solution, rather than the problem, was belied by a single, fateful choice: his decision to call a snap election last spring, before anyone had any idea how far the corruption spread, or whether members of his own camp were part of it -- before, indeed, the Gomery inquiry had heard a single witness.

That underlying contradiction has only grown more marked since then, and it was significant to see Stephen Harper, no fool, home in on it in his response. Mr. Martin now says there should be no election until after the Gomery inquiry has reported? It’s a little late.