If he can keep his head

Say what you like about the Tories -- you can never count them in. The party has succeeded in gathering together right-of-centre opposition to the Liberals, after many years of fractiousness. It came within a few percentage points of tossing the heavily-favoured Liberals out of power in the last election, scant weeks after the party’s first convention. And it came within a single bought vote of toppling the Liberals over last month’s budget.

And how does the party celebrate its return to contender status? By casting stones at the leader who, more than anyone else, is responsible for bringing it back from permanent loserdom, feeding reporters with anonymous comments to the effect that “Harper can’t win,” even -- if some reports are to be believed -- plotting his downfall. And why not? After all, the polls are down this week. Time to engage in a massive bloodletting that will divide the party and dispirit its followers, just in time to prop up another unknown, untested leader in his place to be mowed down in another snap election.

It is all too sadly predictable. Political parties are manic-depressive creatures at the best of times, forever panicking at every twist in the polls -- recall the “nervous Nellies” Jean Chretien had to stare down in his own party mere months before the 1993 election that vaulted him to power -- but only the Conservatives, who have preserved a long and cherished tradition of futility through all their many incarnations, have proven quite so adept at stabbing themselves in the back. This is the party that, as the Canadian Alliance, tossed Preston Manning overboard at the very moment he was at last beginning to get a respectful hearing from the central Canadian media -- and replaced him with Stockwell Day. Is it possible -- is it conceivable -- that they could make the same mistake again?

It is, if they listen to some in the media, including my employers. To be sure, the Post did not explicitly call for Stephen Harper’s resignation -- only that he should “contemplate his future.” But mutinous Tories, of which there is never a shortage -- the sinking ship is always the one with the most captains -- cannot fail to see the flag that has been run up, in the country’s leading conservative newspaper. On the expectation the government survives last night’s confidence votes (a safe assumption, at time of writing), expect a long summer of Tory infighting -- riding presidents signing open letters, MPs solemnly declaring that Mr. Harper has “earned the right to make up his own mind,” the whole depressing ritual. That is, unless everyone comes to their senses pronto.

None of this is to say that Mr. Harper does not have failings, or that he has not made mistakes. He does, and he has, as all leaders do and have. I’d even agree with the critics as to what some of these are. He does need to loosen up, to enjoy himself a little more and allow the public to see a warmer, more humorous side. He probably does need to expand his circle of advisers (though the same complaint has been made about every political leader since Creation). And there’s little doubt that some files have been mishandled, occasionally -- the Grewal tapes come to mind -- catastrophically.

At the same time, he has borne himself with immense dignity and class through one of the most testing periods any Canadian political leader has ever had to face. What the Liberals have done over the last several weeks, from the NDP budget deal to governing outside the Constitution to the Belinda Stronach purchase to the abortive Grewal negotiations and beyond -- has violated every convention of political decency, every standard of responsible government and every rule of fairplay, with possibly one or two laws broken in the bargain. Opposition leaders are prone to foaming outrage at the merest dropped ministerial pencil, most of it phony. But Mr. Harper seems genuinely appalled at the Liberals’ behaviour, and for this he is pilloried in the press, accused of emotional incontinence, even of having provoked the Prime Minister’s “seedy vote-buying” (The Toronto Star, in a truly prize-winning editorial).

And he remains, for all his faults, head and shoulders above any likely rival: sounder on policy, sharper on tactics, stronger under fire. The most adolescent part of the Tory character is its perpetual tendency to keen after Mr. Right, that perfect leader who exists … somewhere. Even Mr. Harper’s worst critics must surely sober up, if they have any sense, the moment they consider the alternatives. Who, precisely, is it proposed should replace him? Peter MacKay? Bernard Lord? Maybe Belinda, in a bold recrossing of the floor? I know, let’s bring back Joe Clark: the old man, the old flag, the old non-policy.

For Mr. Harper, I prescribe a daily rereading of Kipling’s If. All about are indeed losing their heads, and blaming it on you. Don’t lose yours. The Grits may have repelled your last assault, and are now reaping the rewards in the polls (everybody loves a winner). But they have done so at the cost of immense long-term damage to their reputation, and especially that of their leader. Over time, that will tell.