Goodbye and good riddance

The Ceaucescu moment in Paul Martin’s short, disgraceful career as prime minister, the instant it was clear the jig was well and truly up, occurred not this year but last; not during the long, slow humiliation of the present election campaign, but in his hour of maximum triumph, perhaps the finest achievement of his premiership: the luring of Belinda Stronach, by means of a cabinet bauble or two, into the Liberal fold.

You remember: the press conference, a nervous Ms Stronach, a beaming prime minister. Someone asks about the political impact of her defection, just days before that crucial vote of non-confidence. Mr. Martin replies, briskly, as if announcing the time: This has nothing to do with politics...

And every last person in the room laughed in his face.

Readers of this column will know that I have waffled on Mr. Martin over the years. I think we all did. I was never terribly keen on him, when virtually the entire press gallery thought he walked on water. But neither did I join in the instant chorus of abuse that descended on him in those first hesitant months as prime minister. I thought he deserved credit for licking the deficit, when others tried to minimize it, and I thought he deserved a chance to show whether he was “one of the good guys,” even after his dissembling response to the Auditor General’s report that ignited the sponsorship scandal.

So you will perhaps forgive me when I say that if this election has no other result, if it achieves no other end, but to send Mr. Martin far, far out to sea, it will be enough. Him, and the thugs in his entourage. Changing the government is just a bonus.

I used to look upon the defeat of the Liberals as a grim necessity. I used to believe that Mr. Martin should be held to account for failing to act, before, during or after the fact, but that in essence he and his government would have to pay for the sins of his predecessor. Not even the serial fiascos that marked his time in office -- the health care giveaway, the equalization mess, the asymmetric federalism debacle, the missile defence fumble, the three budgets in two weeks, the attempted bribery of opposition MPs, the defiance of Parliament and of constitutional convention in the face of four consecutive non-confidence votes -- could make the defeat of his government more than a professional responsibility.

But the campaign that he and his minions have waged over the last eight weeks -- by turns empty, dishonest, hysterical, vicious, crude, demagogic, shrill, incoherent, divisive, xenophic, hypocritical, not to say staggeringly incompetent -- makes his impending departure from the scene a positive delight. I am literally counting the hours.

There has never been a campaign to match it -- not even the loathsome show the same team mounted in 2004. John Turner’s 1988 campaign, with its litany of the biblical horrors that free trade would bring in its wake, was as over the top -- but that was about an issue. If it conjured up extreme and absurd scenarios, they were at least attached to something the Tories had actually proposed. They did not consist, as in the present campaign, of fantasizing, with almost pornographic relish, of all the things they might do.

It will be recorded that in this election, the Martin campaign commissioned, produced and ran ads (at public expense) suggesting that his opponent was, inter alia, plotting with separatists to destroy the country, bankrolled by extremist elements of a foreign power, and in a glittering tour de force, bent on imposing martial law. (“In our cities.”) It will further be recorded that when called out on that last bit of filth, he claimed -- without flinching -- that he was just making a point about logistics.

And, to our eternal credit, every last person in the country laughed in his face.

CODA: The most stinging indictment of Mr. Martin cannot come from my poor pen, but from his peers, old warhorses like John Crosbie and Ed Broadbent, who have seen elections come and go and been on both ends of a political punch. It is fair to say they are revolted by what they have witnessed. Here’s the less scatalogical parts of Mr. Crosbie’s assessment, as it appeared in this paper: “I was active in politics for 27 years, 10 as a provincial elected member and 17 as a federally elected member, and I've been interested and involved in it all my life. This is certainly the worst behaviour I have seen of any party leader.”

As for Mr. Broadbent, here he is in his farewell press conference: “The Liberal campaign has been deeply offensive. Offensive to women, offensive to workers, offensive to members of the armed forces, and offensive to all Canadians.”

That’s a Tory and a New Democrat. I was hoping to find a Liberal, but I guess it will have to wait until after the election.