The will to believe the Prime Minister

There is a phenomenon known in the intelligence world as “mirror-imaging”: the error of assuming that the person you are dealing with thinks the same way you do, or would act as you would in the same situation. It is a common enough mistake, and one that politicians, no less than intelligence operatives, exploit for a living.

We want to believe Paul Martin, and he knows it. It is just too much to bear to think that those pleading eyes, that soft, patrician face, could be anything but sincere. When he says he wants to get to the bottom of the sponsorship scandal, we assume he means it, because that is what we would think if we were in his shoes.

But we are not in his shoes, nor does anyone survive in politics long, let alone become prime minister, who thinks or acts as the ordinary person does. The politician spends all day, every day of his professional life insisting that everything he does is right and proper, and everything his opponent does his wrong and improper. Whether he actually comes to believe this obvious impossibility is an interesting question, but what is important is that he seems to believe it, indeed must seem to believe it, as a condition of licence. It is plausible to think that, with much practice, he would get very good at it.

And so Mr. Martin comes to us, and asks, in all sincerity, for a ten-month extension before the next election. Why does he want this time? Is it out of a high-minded desire to ensure that “the facts come out”? But that is not in question. Mr. Martin says “Let Judge Gomery do his work.” But Gomery will do his work: the facts will come out, regardless of when, or if, an election is called. An election will have no impact on it one way or the other.

And, election or no, there is nothing to prevent the government getting on with its work, either. Canada would still be governed after a spring election. It just might not be -- gasp -- a Liberal government. Is it, then, the mere prospect of an election that is the impediment? Has Parliament, as Mr. Martin suggests, become dysfunctional? If so, it is an odd argument for sustaining it in this condition for another ten months.

In fact, it has not. Mr. Martin cannot argue that his government is being prevented from going about its business, that its agenda, even assuming it had one, has been thwarted by opposition barracking. Indeed, the most he will say is that it is being “obscured.” Thus: “Initiatives to improve health care, strengthen our economy and ensure for Canada a role of pride and influence in the world are being obscured by partisan jousting.” They’re still happening. They’re just not getting enough publicity.

So if an election is not an obstacle either to Gomery or the government, why is Mr. Martin pleading with us to forestall an election until next February, the date implied by his pledge to call an election “within 30 days of the publication of the commission’s final report”? Partly, it is an appeal to our sense of fairness: without the report, he suggests, it would not be fair, either to him or his party. Partly, there is a suggestion that it is in our own best interest, to have all of the facts in hand before we go to the polls.

Both of these would have been good arguments to make last May, when Mr. Martin called an election without a single witness having testified. A year later, they’re not just hypocritical, they’re preposterous. Is it to be imagined, after all that we have heard, that Judge Gomery is going to exonerate the Liberal party of any wrongdoing? The “conflicting testimony” of Liberal talking points, let us remember, is entirely between rival gangs of Liberals. There is no dispute that public funds were stolen, and by Liberals. The only question is which ones.

Perhaps he will say that Mr. Martin personally had nothing to do with it. But that is not what the electorate is being asked to decide. We need Judge Gomery to assign blame to individuals, for their personal role in the scandal. We do not need Judge Gomery’s report to pass judgment on this government, or this prime minister. It is not necessary to know what Paul Martin did or did not do as Finance Minister -- though the evidence grows more troubling by the day. We have only to consider what he has done, or not done, as Prime Minister.

In any event, it’s not going to happen, and Mr. Martin knows it. As a practical matter, this government is already dead -- not because of opposition obstructionism, but its own corrupt acts. The suggestion that the Opposition should be required to, in effect, stand down for ten months is offensive in principle, and inconceivable in practice. It would require, among other things, that they refrain from voting down any government legislation, since the effect, on a matter of confidence, would be to trigger an election.

So Mr. Martin is not even sincere in his manipulations. He is not trying to stave off the election, not really: rather, he is framing it. He knows an election is coming, and he wants to portray it as the work of a power-hungry opposition, rather than the final collapse of a government in disarray. And he does so at the very moment we most expect him to put aside such dissembling. Even on his political deathbed, he preys on our good natures to the last.