In politics, a week is a long time!
Not only is a week a long time in politics, but it sure has been a long week for the Prime Minister hasn’t it? He goes from celebrating and being “somewhat celebrated” for a fiscally prudent budget containing a creative surprise tax shelter for average Canadians, to the Cadman affair, to Nafta-Gate, all in just over a week and the Dion Liberals are loving it hoping that the next round of national polling resurrects their election prospects as a result.
In the last week alone, the Prime Minister he has had to defend against allegations his party attempted to bribe a dying M.P. to bring down the Liberal government of Paul Martin as claimed by Chuck Cadman’s widow and daughter. He’s had to explain his own admission in a tape recorded conversation that party officials did indeed pay a visit to Cadman just before the Liberal budget vote and that financial considerations were to be discussed. And now his own chief of staff is being fingered as the source of information that is rocking the U.S. Democratic Presidential Primaries.
Untill now, Mr. Harper has been able to keep a lid on his simmering minority government’s agenda partly by stigmatizing Stephen Dion and partly by keeping his own people quiet, but the heat has been cranked from simmer to boil and Stephen Harper is about to learn what P.M’s before him have all endured: The Loneliness of Leadership.