The spell of Grit inevitability has been broken

This is how the world works, my son. A loose tendril of criminality, tugged on by a couple of enterprising reporters and hauled in hand over by fist by the Auditor General, brings to light a vast undergrowth of corruption in and around the Liberal government, the true dimensions of which we are only now about to discover. The man who ran that government skips town, says nothing on his return, and is rewarded with admiring, you-gotta-hand-it-to-the-guy comments about his skills as a "crisis manager." The man who promises to clean up the mess takes all the heat.

Look, I know Paul Martin is himself implicated in all this, to a degree that he has refused to acknowledge: if not by comission, than by omission. It is inconceivable that he did not know what was going on in the government of which he was an integral part, in the party in which his gauleiters control every last poll captain, in the province in which he has spent most of his adult life, and on the file, spending, for which he had primary responsibility. If he did not know, it was only by a herculean effort of unawareness.

And even if it were true, as he claims, that he was so thoroughly excluded from government decision-making as to be unable to learn the truth if he'd wanted to - a marginalization so apparently complete as to call into doubt his ability to take credit for that government's achievements - that only raises the question of why he did not resign, or go public, or at least threaten to, rather than collaborate in the pretense that he was still a member of the team. But he did not resign, you'll recall: not until Jean Chretien told him he could no longer organize openly to depose him.

But that still does not explain why so much of the public fury has been aimed at him - why Mr. Chretien once again eludes all blame, while Mr. Martin wears it like a wet sweater - other than his failure to hire Warren Kinsella, Peter Donolo or any of the snickering pundits who think it savvy to dissect, in world-weary tones, his many errors of tactics and positioning, as if that was what this was about. And the answer, I think, is that Mr. Martin, unlike Mr. Chretien, is not without shame.

Mr. Chretien never worried himself unduly whether people thought he was a crook. Confronted with evidence of his misdeeds, he did not bother to deny them, even if he had denied them every day for a year before that: he simply shrugged, as if to say: And? What's your point? It wasn't that he was asserting his innocence, or denying his guilt. He was denying that guilt mattered. He was ruling right and wrong out of bounds, as criteria by which we assess the fitness of our rulers.

I was there, mid-way through the last election campaign, when the National Post published the sensational revelations of his involvement in the Grand-Mere affair. And I watched as he refused to look the least bit guilty, even as he was acknowledging his guilt. The assembled press fidgeted, and stared at their shoes. They all knew the script. The script called for them to hunt the fugitive to his grave, to tear him to pieces when they found him. But the fugitive wasn't running. And so he got away with it. He lowered our expectations, not just of him, or of politics, but of us.

But Mr. Martin, by his contrite response - well, contrite on others' behalf: theya culpa - to the Auditor General's report, has let right and wrong back on the pitch. He has raised expectations, rather than lowering them. And revolutions, as the historians teach us, occur in times of rising expectations.

Was that a mistake? It depends on your criterion, of course: whether the only object is to cling to power, at whatever cost, or whether, somewhere in the mix, there is some vague ambition of doing the right thing. Whatever may be Mr. Martin's motives, I don't think he had a choice. He couldn't pull a Chretien, both because the facts in this case were too severe, and, more important, because he's not Jean Chretien. He is not without shame. Whether he is any cleaner than Mr. Chretien is not the point: it is that he wants to be seen that way. It matters to him, as to Mr. Chretien it did not.

But now he is trapped. It is one thing to lead the chorus of indignation at what the government has wrought if you can plausibly dissociate yourself from that government. It is even possible to confess to a share of the responsibility for its misdeeds, at least to having known and done nothing, and vow to make amends: the public is endlessly willing to grant repentant sinners a second chance, for who among us would not want the same? But Mr. Martin has denied all knowledge, and no one believes him. He has raised expectations, and fallen below them.

He suffers doubly for having followed Mr. Chretien. Part of the reason the public was so willing to put up with Mr. Chretien is precisely that Mr. Martin loomed so obviously in the offing, and for so long. They had Mr. Martin, as it were, in reserve. Just grit your teeth, people told themselves after each new outrage, he'll be gone soon. Then Mr. Martin will put everything right. Mr. Chretien borrowed heavily on Mr. Martin's credibility, and now Mr. Martin finds his account overdrawn.

This has always been my fear: that Mr. Martin would lose, or be seen to, for having done the right thing. Mr. Chretien's calculated insouciance was galling, it was destructive, but it worked. Mr. Martin's failure can only lead Liberals to conclude, as many already have, that a return to stonewall politics is in order, that indeed that is the only politics there is. But the "problem" is not Mr. Martin's handling of the scandal: the problem is the scandal itself. And in any case, it's too late to stonewall. The wall has already been breached.

This is critical, for Mr. Martin has lost Mr. Chretien's greatest tactical advantage: his inevitability. It wasn't only the hope of Mr. Martin that kept the public quiescent through Mr. Chretien's long dishonest reign, but despair at the prospect of change until then. So long as it seems impossible that things can ever change, people resign themselves, and endure. And so long as it seemed impossible that the Liberals could ever lose, that was what people did. But after the latest polls it is clear to everyone that things can change. The spell of inevitability has been broken.

Is Mr. Martin doomed, then? No, but he needs to act fast. His lack of candour about the past has hurt him badly, but he can still save himself if he can make the case his government will behave differently in the future. That will take deeds, not words: not just the removal of certain corrupt individuals, but radical reforms to the structure and culture of government in which they flourished. I don't say this will be easy, and I don't say it is likely. It would mean a repudiation of the entire history and governing philosophy of the modern Liberal party. But it is the only way. There is a whiff of 1989 in the air, and we know what happened then to governments, even reform-minded ones, that could not get out in front of the marchers.

Which means, finally, that a spring election is out of the question. This is no longer a matter of being fair to the opposition - though once upon a time fairplay was considered important, even in politics. It is in the public interest that the voters be presented with a choice of candidates, and parties, that are at least to some degree known quantities. Yet all three federal parties have, or will have, new leaders; one isn't even a party yet. And, after the Adscam affair, Mr. Martin has a lot to prove.

Another six months - a year would be better - would give us all time, not only to get to the bottom of the scandal, but to form an assessment of who is best suited to the task of cleaning out the Ottawan stables: whether to renew our trust in Mr. Martin, or whether it really is "time for a change."