PM PARTISAN, PASSIONATE AND PROFANE
Political crisis reveals a man who still finds it difficult to take counsel or admit his mistakes
"He just can't help himself."
So says one of Stephen Harper's long-time acquaintances, wryly noting the Prime Minister has few friends.
As Harper struggles to contain the national psychodrama he sparked, the amateur psychoanalysis is reaching a fever pitch.
No less a political sage than former Progressive Conservative prime minister Brian Mulroney has privately told at least two of his vast network of friends that he is disappointed in the man who was briefly his protegé.
Several sources told the Star that Mulroney, virtually excommunicated from the federal Conservatives over the lingering Airbus scandal, is flabbergasted over Harper's tactical blunder last week and not just because it recalled Joe Clark's miscalculation that cost the Tories power in 1979.
Mulroney's tutelage, especially his shrewd counsel on the electoral realities of Quebec and Ontario, helped sweep the Conservatives into office in 2006.
But in the subsequent estrangement comes this assessment:
"There's always been this concern that Harper believes he's the smartest guy in the room and that, no matter what, he's never wrong," confides the Harper acquaintance (who's also a Mulroney friend).
In interviews with federal associates of Harper, past and present, a picture emerges of a bright and driven man who does not take dissenting counsel especially well and is prone to profane outbursts.
"The people around him, the stable, has generally been bred for obedience, so that's what you get," says a confrere.
Another insider agrees "there's no question the Prime Minister rules by fear," which is not always productive.
"At some point, you know, you get up every day and you get kicked in the balls and, you know what, you get tired of it. So when people stop fighting back, I'm telling you, that's a most dangerous, dangerous, dangerous day," he says.
It was Harper who insisted that the Nov. 27 economic statement be used as a political weapon to bludgeon the Conservatives' foes.
While sources claim his chief of staff, Guy Giorno, and Finance Minister Jim Flaherty – seasoned veterans of government at Queen's Park – were less hawkish, the Prime Minister, ever the chief strategist, was convinced the provocative measures could withstand any challenge from the three opposition parties.
Harper was sure the Liberals, mired in a leadership contest, and the NDP and Bloc Québécois could never unite against him.
"Why let a good crisis go to waste when you can use it to hobble your opposition?" says a party insider.
That's how Flaherty wound up deriding "the free ride for political parties" last week and pledging to eliminate their $1.95-per-vote funding subsidy. That would have crippled the Liberals and the Bloc (to say nothing of the Greens).
Flaherty also vowed to "temporarily" suspend the right to strike of federal public servants and curb their ability to make pay-equity appeals through the courts, an anathema to the NDP.
And if that were not enough, there was no significant economic stimulus package to match what other countries have been implementing.
After that triple-whammy enraged and emboldened the Liberals, NDP and Bloc, the Tories retreated last weekend, but the coalition government-in-waiting had already been forged.
Conservative MPs this week publicly supported Harper's sharp criticism of the NDP-Liberal coalition, and prominent ministers such as Environment Minister Jim Prentice and Transport Minister John Baird took their message to the media. Some, like Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan, voiced support for Harper.
But inside and outside the party, Harper was being blamed for precipitating the storm.
"It's not that he's never made mistakes before. He actually has made a number of them, but ... there's always been handy staff to blame it on," says a Tory.
"The big difference here is that the big flaming pile of s--- is squarely ... at his doorstep."
Sources say Harper was visibly shaken earlier in the week, angrily flouncing around his Langevin Block office, eyes reddened and battling a bad cold exacerbated by a lack of sleep.
He has displayed that almost adolescent blend of petulance and stubbornness before in his political life.
During the 2004 election campaign, the Conservative war room issued a news release suggesting then Liberal prime minister Paul Martin "supports child pornography."
Instead of immediately retracting and apologizing for the over-the-top attack, Harper stuck to his guns.
The controversy contributed to his defeat and Harper descended into a summer-long "funk," sulking about the outcome even though he had propelled the fledgling united Conservatives to the brink of government by reducing an 11-year Liberal majority to a minority.
The Prime Minister regained his stride late Monday. Infuriated by the Liberal-NDP-Bloc signing ceremony on Parliament Hill, he was in fighting form at the Conservatives' Christmas party that night, rallying dispirited MPs and staffers.
He further recovered with an unrepentant videotaped address to the nation Wednesday night and a successful plea Thursday to Governor General Michaëlle Jean to have Parliament suspended.
Yet even though he bought his government time until Jan. 26, his loyalists worry that he has done himself irreparable harm.
"He truly is ... politically brilliant, but he's also pathologically partisan. So he just can't help himself. It's a deadly combination. You know that you're a smart guy and you're pretty sure you can outsmart everybody and you never miss an opportunity to poke an opponent in the eye," says an insider.
An acquaintance agrees Harper's partisan blinders are self-destructive. "He cannot abide by the Liberals. He finds them indecisive, he finds them pandering, he wants to destroy them. He can't help himself – he just can't help himself."
Liberal MP Ken Dryden (York Centre) echoed that sentiment in the Commons on Wednesday.
"He cannot stop himself. He has this pathological inability to put aside politics – too bad for him and for all of us," Dryden said.
Indeed, Harper's hubris led to the disastrous decision to cut $45 million in arts funding before the Oct. 14 election, which resuscitated the Bloc, costing the Tories Quebec seats and any chance of a majority.
One associate rejects the charge from some Liberals and New Democrats that Harper is an unwavering neo-conservative hampered by his ideological rigidity.
"He is a pragmatist. There is some ideology there, of course, but he's always looking ahead," he says, emphasizing that the Nov. 27 economic statement seemed like a good idea at the time.
"You can screw the Liberals in the process and show leadership – and on paper the Conservatives are taking the biggest (funding) hit so you can certainly sell it to the public," the associate says, adding the change would have cost the Tories $10 million, the Liberals $7 million, the NDP $5 million and the Bloc $3 million. "But what he underestimated was just how bad off the Liberals actually are financially. If they didn't have that money, the banks would be in the next minute."
The fallout within the Prime Minister's Office has not been pretty.
"He is a yeller and certainly longshoremen could take language lessons from him. The backrooms are blue but it's not cigar smoke; it's four-letter words," says a Tory.
"I'm sure this is killing him in some ways. If he doesn't turn it around, if he doesn't pull it out of the fire then ... he goes down rivalling Joe Clark for the biggest boneheaded move in Canadian history."
Still, the fact that so many Conservatives would speak out about Harper only if their identities were protected is telling.
"That's an indication that people aren't quite willing to count him out just yet," says one such Tory. "He's still jumping around saying, 'I'm not dead yet.' "
Even if he is, as another party insider admits, "he's not Superman any more."
