Just Read John Raulston Saul's Book:

The Collapse of Globalism in which he refers to one of my favourite US presidents, Theodore Roosevelt, as "a one man NGO." I think this is a perfect analogy: At times infuriateing at times inspiring, totally reliant upon public support for sucess, yet totally unwilling to be subservient to those he deigns to represent. Truly an Edmund Burke style representative.

I've come to a somewhat sad conclusion:

The Liberals are going to lose. Chretien will cause this loss. But not due to la scandale, rather, the 2000 mini-budget which slashed taxes and government revenue has eliminated the moral authority of the Liberals to say that they will defend the public purse. If its a choice between the GST and income taxes Canadians will choose the GST out of spite and they wont hurt themselves too much as the debate between an incremental cut in the GST and an incremental cut in income tax are both stupid and expensive ideas that will do nothing to cut enforcement costs and will narrow rather than broaden the tax base.

People won't vote out of anger but rather ennui and so the vote will be perilously close. The Liberals will lose big in Ontario, win small in BC, and in Saskatchewan. Brian Mulorney will be very happy as well, because when he appointed that raft of Quebec Conservative senators, he never dreamt that they'd become cabinet ministers.

You see John Duffy refers to this at the pre-writ campaign and its one that the Liberals started losing in 2000 and reinforced during this parliament by coming out with tax cuts. They could have been courageous and said we're not touching your tax rates, but instead they tried to out bid Harper and trying to out bid a governmental minimalist is a real mug's game. By approaching the Conservatives in generousity, the Liberal platform blurred the difference between the two leaders and thus allows people to choose on stylistic issues. I hope we send a couple of Progressive Canadians to parliament, because this parliament is going to need some MPs willing to defent the power of the federal government.

Oh would that you would govern!