Maritime Morning - Andrew Krystal

Goodbye Condoleezza, hello Taliban!

The shuffled cabinet deck chairs yesterday were less titanic than expected. We knew foot-in-mouth Defense Minister O’Conner was going. He was about as effective as an electric car dealership in the Middle East; replete with misquotes, PMO contradictions, obfuscations, and overlaid with a gruff inarticulateness, O’Connor stumbled and mumbled his way through question period and bluffed and huffed around rapacious reporters. So, Peter Mackay now has the Defense portfolio and will leave Foreign Affairs. Is this a demotion? No. It is a lateral move. Harper is saved the embarrassment of O’Conner who bungled and botched everything that was difficult: the Afghan detainee scandal, the length of the Afghan mission, and general weirdness in the Commons. 

Can Mackay sell Afghanistan better? Sure. Will he make a good Defense Minister? No.

It’s not Peter’s fault. Stephen Harper micro-manages every portfolio except anything Jim Prentice (whom he trusts) does. There are no Ministers except Harper. The rest are players on a very tight script upon a very narrow stage. No Minister will talk to the media unless Stephen says so.

So, how good a Minister-of-everything is Stephen Harper? The Tory’s are stalled in the polls. Furthermore, polls show women and urbanites are bailing on the Conservatives. It is both about the message and the messenger. It is about the PM as casting director, director, script writer and producer. Fatal Attraction, where Stephen plays both lead roles and eats his own boiled bunny.

I’ll bet Peter Mackay is regretting not having his own movie.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 15th, 2007 at 9:19 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.