An election would be like spring cleaning

A spring election? Why not? It won’t happen, of course: there’s just no percentage in it, for anyone. Not even the Bloc: Though they might hope to use the Gomery inquiry to lock in their gains from the last election, that only works in the event a majority government is returned -- and the better they do, the less likely that is to be the result. As for the Grits and Tories, they might win more seats, but then again they might win fewer. Being the risk-averse creatures they are, neither federal leader would be likely to pull the ripcord unless he had a strong sense the polls were moving in his direction. All the same, the possibility of an election has been discussed in recent days in tones of historic inevitability -- the air is thick with talk of railway schedules and assurances of Belgian neutrality -- as if to suggest the two leaders could not help themselves. The implication is that this is some sort of calamity, as if an election were the worst possible thing that could befall the country. For as we all know, “the public doesn’t want to be put through another election.” This is one of those gems of journalistic wisdom that is so obvious to all as to require no supporting evidence of any kind. Yet it isn’t obvious. That the media would not like to be put through another election may well be true: they are tedious, time-consuming affairs, from which we generally emerge with an abiding sense of shame -- we fell for their tricks, again -- and a strong desire for a hot shower. But the average voter’s involvement in an election generally extends to lining up for a few minutes at the poll station. I don’t think most people regard that as too much of an imposition. What would upset people is if they thought an election would interfere with the business of governing the nation -- if the opposition were seen to be preventing the government from “getting on with its agenda.” Pause, two, three, four... What agenda? Good gracious, you mean that the vital work of foot-dragging and poll-taking and running around in circles would be interrupted by weeks and weeks in which nothing was done? That dilly-dallying would take the place of shilly-shallying? God forbid. If this government had anything resembling an agenda, there might be some substance to this complaint. Leave aside whether it has accomplished anything significant in the nine months since the last election: If it had even given us an inkling of the mighty deeds to come, of the course it intended to take in future, that would be enough. But this is a government that can’t even make a few lousy Senate appointments without agonizing over it like a chess grandmaster. The foreign policy review is now officially under review, before being reviewed in preparation for further review. That puts it further ahead than the expenditure review process, which never really got around to reviewing expenditures, as such -- though it was very keen on process. And as for the rest of that bold, visionary, destiny-is-ours-to-hold stuff that was so urgent it demanded the government of the country be tied up in knots for two years while Paul Martin forced a sitting Prime Minister from office -- well, let’s just say destiny needs a hug. What we have seen is the most feckless, poll-driven government in a generation, driving around aimlessly throwing money at the provinces and rubbish at the Americans like drunken teenagers in their father’s car. Jean Chretien’s governments were at least deliberately inert: it was their policy to have no policy. This one has no policy because it has hundreds. Paralyzed with indecision, obsessed with short-term tactics, desperate to be liked, this is a government whose only guiding principle seems to be a determination to renege on every one of its previous commitments. Remember the “democratic deficit”? Or how they were going to “get to the bottom” of Adscam? And what about that unshakeable commitment to spending discipline? You know, the one they ran on last election, before letting spending overrun the budget by $10-billion. An election, in the circumstances, would be a soothing balm of relief. At the worst, we would end up with the status quo -- and even this would do some good, if it hastened Mr. Martin’s exit. It isn’t because it’s in a minority that his government has spent so much time frantically spinning its wheels -- other governments in the same situation have done more, and this one behaved much the same way when it had a majority. But a second minority would mark him ineradicably as a loser: the worst of sins, in Liberal eyes. A majority, on the other hand, would at least deprive him of the minority-government excuse, and might even give him a renewed sense of direction. And if it were a Conservative minority? All sorts of creative possibilities open up. Anything is better than stumbling along as we are now. Alas, it isn’t going to happen. Mr. Martin and Mr. Harper will find some way to avert a vote, until the electoral portents are more clearly favourable to one or the other. Even defeat on a budget bill needn’t force an election, if the Prime Minister were indisposed to call one. He need only declare the budget vote was not a matter of confidence, call for a vote that was, and dare the opposition to force the issue. But a man can dream, can’t he?