It takes about a day to read Harperland, and so Globe and Mail columnist Lawrence Martin serves Canadians well chronicling the abuses of power, connecting the dots, building the narrative with momentum to Harper’s second prorogued Parliament, and beyond. Written in straightforward English, this reader yearned for a subordinate clause or two but delights in the many rich quotations of sources, from those once inside government, along those outside of it.
Harper is described as a man who viscerally hates Liberals (too prone to moral ambivalence), proud to be a “movement conservative,” and – in his ever-strategizing mind – one who loves to resort to wedge politics in order to divide and win. Acknowledging William Johnson’s earlier biography (Stephen Harper and the Future of Canada, 2005), Lawrence Martin selects from the latter three succinct sentences to nail down the Prime Minister’s flaws, which resonate: “He constantly displays an excess of partisanship. From the time he was elected to the Commons, his attacks on Chrétien, and now Martin, have been over the top. There is harshness, a lack of humour, humanity and moderation that disregards the traditions of Parliament where all members have a right to be treated as honourable.”
Everyone knows Harper is a control freak, and it is amusing to read how, in the early years of his government, some Conservative MPs fretted over what colour tie to wear to work. Compare this to the era when Pierre Trudeau liked to wiggle his toes freely in sandals without socks. But there is a serious side to this development, apart from secret government handbooks. Judge John Gomery, who presided over the Sponsorship Scandal (about which Lawrence Martin had much to say as a journalist) explains, rightly so: “there’s more concentration of power in the Prime Minister’s Office than we’ve ever had before ....” Moreover, the anonymous members of the PMO “are not subjected to any rules of law ....” In reading Harperland, there was certain pleasure in discovering I was not alone in likening our Prime Minister to Vladimir Putin.
When in Opposition, Harper once wrote in the Montreal Gazette: “Information is the lifeblood of a democracy.” Yet why do we witness a volte face when in government? Why all the censorship with regard to the Afghan detainees, for example? In order to explain Mr. Harper more fully, we need to move from his political mind to his economic training. One weakness in Harperland is that Mr. Martin does not consider Harper’s background as an economist. Similarly Dion makes this mistake by characterizing Harper as a (so-called politically illiberal) “Straussian”, after Leo Strauss, the late German-Jewish political thinker at the University of Chicago. In other words, Mr. Martin should have looked at Dion’s characterization more carefully - and not have accepted this particular idea at face value.
To put it simply, Harper is an economist. Yes, he actually read Friedrich von Hayek, whom Margaret Thatcher admired, keen as she is on things Austrian. He likely read (or followed) Milton Friedman, but the association of Harper and Strauss is a bit thin (and, thus, so is Dion’s assessment of Harper). In other words, I am inclined to agree (and only once in a lifetime) with Harper’s erstwhile mentor, Tom Flanagan: Harper was not a “Straussian” even though he may have mimicked some attributes.
What is missing from our understanding of Harper is his predilection for game theory, something he would definitely encounter as a student of economics. Consider the 1944 classic Theory of Games and Economic Behaviour by John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern. Or consider John Nash, once inspired by Neumann, subject of the book A Beautiful Mind who also made brilliant advances to game theory at Princeton – and is best known for the concept known as “Nash’s Equilibrium.” Neumann taught that Poker (as opposed to chess) was a game where there was never any perfect information: good Poker players are supposed to bluff, and Harper is an optimal bluffer, who in his vast spare time, teaches card games to his children.
Ken Binmore’s book, Game Theory: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2007), explains that it is best that information be restricted: “Better knowledge is only sure to be an unmitigated good to a player if it is secretly acquired.” In other words, Harper is not contradicting himself in the light of all his government secrecy; he was simply deceiving us earlier, performing when in Opposition. Game theory can be found in Harper’s love of sport (namely hockey); it can be seen in his disregard for Parliamentary conventions and procedure; it can be seen in his use of a religious reputation; it can be seen in his implicit socio-biology, as game theory has infiltrated Darwinian evolution. And, again borrowing from Binmore, it can be seen in Harper's hypocrisy (and hysteria) over the Dion-Layton coalition (with Bloc support): “ ... there remains a great deal about coalition formation that we do not yet understand.”
Game theory aside, Harperland is an important work for Canadians still needing a picture of just how bad (and consistently bad) Ottawa's Parliamentary life has become over the last four years. Read it and be critically informed. “Peace order and hood government,” indeed!
No comments:
Post a Comment