Post by Moses on Jan 11, 2006 18:01:03 GMT -5
Is what you see what you'll get?
Image-makers have repackaged Harper, but he is still a neocon in Tory garb, writes Eugene Lang[/size]
Jan. 11, 2006. 01:00 AM
Lately the Conservative party has done a masterful job in projecting an image of Steven Harper as a leader with sensible, middle-of-the-road, common-sense ideas that appeal to a broad range of Canadians.
Gone is the blunt-spoken, edgy, combative Harper of old. In is a new Harper, with unshakable composure, measured tones, and seemingly moderate policies.
Harper is being cast as a "traditional Tory" leader, in the mould of Brian Mulroney or Bill Davis.
Strategists who know what it takes to win elections have skilfully crafted the new Harper persona. These are people like Senators Hugh Segal and Marjorey LeBreton, both of whom played key roles in the Mulroney government. The media have been seduced [likely they haven't been "seduced" but are consciously orchestrating the false image to put one over on the Canadians] by this Conservative "image machine" and have conveyed the new Harper to Canadians, largely uncritically.
Yet the reality of Harper's brand of conservatism is somewhat different.
He is not a traditional Conservative or a Red Tory like Mulroney, Davis, or Joe Clark. He is not even a Conservative-Populist like John Diefenbaker.
Rather, Harper and his policy brains trust, people like academic Tom Flanagan, can best be described as neoconservatives. They have very firm beliefs about economic, social and foreign policy, views that deviate radically from historical or traditional Canadian Toryism.
And, his election image notwithstanding, Harper is not likely to abandon his beliefs if he is fortunate enough to form a government.
Neoconservatives have a deep faith in the superiority of the unfettered and unregulated marketplace, and see little role for government beyond correcting so-called market failures, which are judged to be very rare. They are tax-cut and balanced-budget crusaders, even if the two goals conflict, as Mike Harris, Ontario's first neoconservative premier, found to his dismay.
When these two goals collide, neocons will favour the tax cut over the balanced budget in the short run, on the grounds that the former will eventually lead to the latter by starving government of money and thus reducing its size.
Neocons are highly skeptical of redistributive social programs, like equalization, on the grounds that they undermine economic incentives. They are proponents of decentralization, in which the national government is largely confined to foreign affairs, defence, justice, and macroeconomic management.
Neocons advocate a robust military with an assertive posture, and view the U.S. as by far Canada's most important relationship, to be preserved at almost any cost.
And they have a built-in impulse toward more aggressive government intervention in matters of public morality and justice.
The neoconservative agenda is anything but traditional or Red Tory.
In fact, Mulroney's Progressive Conservative party split apart in the early 1990s when the neocons within it could no longer abide its social liberalism and fiscal profligacy. This faction went on to create the Reform party, Canada's first federal neoconservative political party.
Some of the economic ideas of the neocons became mainstream in Canada in the 1990s, as governments of varying stripes tried to come to grips with Canada's fiscal crisis by cutting budgets deeply. These were the halcyon days of Reform, of which Harper was a central figure.
During those years, he let his neoconservative hair down for all to see. Later, Harper left the Reform party, apparently because the purity of its ideology was being watered down by those craving electoral success.
He went from Reform to lead the National Citizens' Coalition, one of Canada's only neoconservative advocacy groups.
Harper's Tory image-makers would like Canadians to believe he has moderated his views from those of the 30-something firebrand he was a decade, or even five years, ago. Preston Manning, founder of Reform and Harper's erstwhile mentor, recently wrote that Harper is more a pragmatist and technocrat than an ideologue.
Canadians should be skeptical of these claims.
Many politicians change or moderate their positions on issues for reasons of political expediency.
That is partly because most Canadian politicians lack a theory of government from which they derive their ideas.
Our politicians are chiefly pragmatists, rather than theoreticians. As a result, changing a position here or there on discrete issues does not necessarily undermine the coherence of their agendas.
Harper does not suffer from this intellectual shortcoming. For him, it all fits together into one logical whole, and thus certain elements of the grand plan cannot be jettisoned for political expediency or the entire edifice crumbles.
For those Canadians craving visionary leadership, Harper has "the vision thing" in spades. And, years ago, he deserved credit for being forthright with Canadians about his ideas for the country.
Unfortunately, now his image-makers have chosen to conceal his vision from the public.
But Canadians should be under no illusion. Harper's objective of a neoconservative Canada in all likelihood still burns bright in his mind and looms increasingly large on the horizon.
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Eugene Lang worked as economic policy adviser to former deputy prime minister Herb Gray and as senior economist in the federal finance department. He is co-author (with Philip DeMont) of Turning Point: Moving Beyond Neoconservatism.
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