Harper Really Doesn't Want to Debate

It seems PostMedia has received its marching orders from Harper's election campaign headquarters.  How else to explain Shelley Fralic's op-ed column in the Vancouver Sun contending that political debates are meaningless, a waste of time.

You see, Stephen Harper isn't running like a panicked schoolyard bully in full flight from something relevant, something important to voters.  Ah, forget about it.  It's meaningless.   Steve is just saying "no" to meaningless.  Nothing to see here, move on.

It begins with a dismissive headline, "Ego-stroking leaders' debates offer little of substance to voters,"  a theme boldly carried on in the text

...why are the media, who cover politics like internecine warfare, so insistent that a showdown at the OK Corral, or more likely an air-conditioned television studio, is good for democracy?

Is it because voters, the ones who count come May 2, will learn anything from a televised debate?

No.

As political debates in years past have demonstrated, there is little to be gained from watching a politician sling an arrow in the hopes it will pierce a weak spot in an opponent's armour.

Debates shed even less light on the issues, and the chances of a contrived to-and-fro swaying voter opinion, much less an election outcome, is negligible.

So, why do I think Shelley has been pressed into service by Harper's crew - other than that she gets her paycheques from PostMedia?   Well because her point, while a grand apolgia for Harper, isn't true and she knows it.

This is British Columbia and she's a British Columbian.   As an astute observer of politics she must remember the province's once dynastic Social Credit Party that ruled the place through two generations of Bennets.   I'm sure she remembers what happened to the SoCreds when an upstart unknown named Gordon Wilson, representing the long dormant BC Liberal Party, showed up to debate the SoCred and NDP frontrunners.   Wilson's Libs didn't pull an upset - not in that election - but they left the SoCreds fatally gored.

She might ask Gordon Brown about the significance of debates.   His dismal performance in the last British election doomed both Brown and Labour to defeat.  Plenty of us remember Kennedy versus Nixon and Mulroney versus Turner, Chretien versus Campbell.   

Shelley Fralic knows as well as anyone else that leaders' debates are anything but exercises in ego-stroking.   She knows that her entire premise that these debates offer nothing meaningful to voters is rubbish.   So if it's not true, then ask yourself whose interests she's working so hard to help that she'll spew out utter nonsense?  There's only one answer - Stephen "Comrade Joe" Harper.

This is a shill job and a haplessly transparent one at that.  It's pure Tory party messaging by its dutiful media scribe.   Isn't that original?  But that doesn't answer the last question, why?  Why do the Tories want to downplay the debate issue?

Maybe the boys in the Tory bunker have discovered that Steve's bullyboy antics and cowardly retreat this week have harmed their campaign more than we yet know.  

Maybe it's Steve's failure to frame the campaign narrative that has them panicked at the thought of a real debate.  Steve has succeeded when he was able to frame the election issue.   With Martin it was Liberal corruption and the sponsorship scandal.  That kept the Liberals on the defensive and let Steve get away with platitudes passed off as policy.   With Dion, Steve worked even harder.  Ignoring his own fixed term election law (think the Ardennes campaigns), Steve caught the opposition unprepared by calling a snap election.  Then he exploited the early confusion to frame the election as a referendum on Dion and his carbon tax policy, avoiding entirely having to campaign on his own dismal record and the scandals that plagued the Tories prior to the summer break.

Steve tried for a hat-trick this year, he tried really hard.   Steve, in classic form, tried to frame this as an election between the reliable Tories and those unscrupulous coalition plotters seeking to take down Canadian democracy.   Oh, how he tried.   And it flopped.   And then he tried to make Iggy look all wobbly by calling for a one on one debate and, lord, did that ever backfire in a spectacle of cowardice.

Now Steve finds himself in a jam.  He didn't get to frame this election, it's not on his terms, the opposition aren't on the defensive and it may be time for a little payback.   Instead of having to defend themselves against vicious smears, the opposition can finally hold Harper's feet to the fire.   They can talk about the guy who locked down our Parliament twice solely for his personal advantage.  They can talk about the secrecy and manipulation.   They can chronicle the scandals.  They can revisit Harper's record, month by month, since he first took over from Martin.   All of those outrages that seemed to just fall away into oblivion, they can all be refreshed.   And, if it's done well, relentlessly well, the Canadian people  who think they like Harper are apt to see a different Steve altogether, one that he's been struggling to ensure they not see.

My sincerest hope is that Ignatieff and Layton don't drop the ball.  Policy initiatives are great.  Roll'em out and move on.   The real game changer here won't be in health care or pensions or education.   The game changer is in seizing this golden and fleeting opportunity to take down Harper.    Put Harper on the defensive.  That is what he fears most.  Stephen Harper's Achilles' Heel is none other than Stephen J. Harper.