Low Blows

Well, our prime minister wasn't too quick on his metaphorical feet when he responded so lamely in response to Quebec's arts community complaining about cuts to the arts. They have taken it personally, as is their wont, in La Belle Province. But really, Mr. Harper, to piffle about with claims of rich galas and parties and taxpayer subsidies, is just a bit much. A clumsy rejoinder. You're capable of a more thoughtful, balanced and credible argument.

Mightn't you just have reminded the voting public that under your stewardship of the national purse overall funding through the Department of Canadian Heritage and their various agencies has increased? Far more sensible. This isn't a street fight, you know, it's an election process. Try to refrain from bridling overmuch in indignation over unbalanced reportage by responding like a pit bull.

And don't, for heaven's sake, whine. "When the NDP runs an ad like that, it just shows the extreme side of the NDP, a side of the NDP that has no serious economic program at all for the country, just a whole bunch of promises without limit, without any idea of how they're going to pay for them." Mr. Harper, you've indulged in hysterics.

What the NDP is resorting to and indulging in is the opportunities that avail them through the process of conducting a pre-election campaign. This is reflective of the available modes of impressing upon the voting public some opposition-discomfiting factoids - or perspectives thereof - while enhancing their own reputations.

In other words, what resonates with you as false and misleading is simply par for the course in an election campaign, as you well know in your more rational moments. It's just tough to battle bad optics. Of course, you can't think of everything, but it would help if you tried, and made an attempt to think ahead about how these things will redound on you.

Look, for example, at what's happening in Quebec, where you've coddled and wheedled your way to some measure of electable popularity. All for naught, now. Sarcasm will sometimes get you everywhere, and viewed interminable times on Internet sites. Take "Culture in Danger", a bitterly divisive Quebecois rant against Anglophones. Who seek to control and deny Quebec culture.

And you're the man. See what I mean?