It is rare that I find myself in agreement with Andrew Coyne about politics in Canada, although I do (sadly for me, I guess) find him to be one of our better political writers. Maybe the best. And I do not know Andrew Coyne personally, although we have met a few times and I now have a quite hilarious story that goes along with one of those encounters. Yet, occassionally, I seriously worry for the man because he seems to get rather depressed when he thinks too much about the way in which the Conservatives' are governing our country.
The latest examples are here, here and here. I hope someone in the Rogers/Macleans world is checking in on Mr. Coyne regularly because his usual cynicism seems to be venturing near the deep waters of depression.
I will say this, however, from my own limited experience that I too am shocked and a little depressed by the way this government manages its business. It's not so much the cynicism of their behaviour, as Coyne seems to worry most about, but rather the incompetance, depravity and vidictiveness that seems to characterize their outlook on the world and response to events. They seem to continue to behave as though they never won an election and power might slip away at any second (depending on whether they are reading polls on Monday or Wednesday one can imagine how this aspect at least would be prone to a certain type of manic reaction). This seems to lead to a constant state of message control, domination and bullying of those people and agencies that are within their grasp. This is true whether it's the PBO, Canada's nuclear regulatory agency, assinine comments from Ministers caught on tape, the information commissioner or any number of things. Perhaps it's just that they had very little collective experience governing prior to winning and so they feel the need to squeeze every second from the experience, but they handle themselves almost without a modicum of grace. Worse still perhaps, they seem quite alright with such an existence. It seems to me that they cannot see the carrot for the stick.
How could they possibly see a tree, let alone the forrest?
