Radio Noon's "Cross Talk" today had a great question for listeners: How do we get past the impasse between the Premier and the prime Minister? or words to that effect
Well, the simple answer is that one or both sides have to want to get past it. As long as the parties can't even agree on the need to get past the impasse, there's not much chance of resolving a conflict.
What Canadians learned on Wednesday was that contrary to earlier media reports, neither Premier Danny Williams nor Prime Minister Stephen Harper were trying to bury any hatchets in the Equalization feud except maybe between each other's eyes.
You see the starting point for Danny Williams' definition of a resolution is having Harper accept he owes $10 billion to Danny Williams (listen to Williams' scrums and the whole l'etat, c'est moi thing is really obvious). That acceptance comes with the implicit or explicit acknowledgement that Harper lied during the last election at least on Equalization.
Not surprisingly, Harper isn't interested in admitting he's an untrustworthy person of low or no moral fibre.
You can see the problem here.
The Premier has very deliberately and very consciously framed his attack in highly personal and highly insulting terms. They are terms designed to frustrate a resolution of the conflict. There's only one person who knows why and he is having too much fun clenching his jaw for the cameras to tell us. But it's gotta be deliberate; only a complete dimwit would carry on with the insults and then at the same time believe his actions are constructive.
None of that, of course, is an argument in Harper's favour either. Newfoundlanders and Labradorians never warmed to the guy or many of his candidates. A majority of people in the province didn't vote for them the last time. He doesn't suddenly become pure because he is on the outs with a guy whose jaw muscles are like Arnold's biceps from all the clenching and unclenching that goes with his latest jihad.
And while we are at it, Danny Williams' realization that he personally made a major error in judgment in 2006 is all fine and good, but frankly, no one is holding his or her breath expecting Danny to admit that, the most obvious point about his whole ABC tirade. Even if it would hasten a resolution, it ain't gonna happen.
Anyway, whatever benefits the two first ministers are getting out of this little public tiff clearly outweigh the costs. Until that calculus shifts, there won't be a resolution to the impasse.
Still, though.
Neither one is a dimwit, but given the way they keep flailing away at each other to no obvious, constructive effect for the people they supposedly represent, you'd have to wonder sometimes.
-srbp-
Montreal Gazette
16 January 2008
A politician prevaricates!
"I don't need Newfoundland and Labrador to win an election."
Either Stephen Harper said that, in "private" conversation with Premier Danny Williams, or he didn't. The two men are on the record with conflicting versions of their talk, and barring some hard-to- imagine misunderstanding, one of them is not telling the truth.
Frankly, we hope the Williams version is false, because if it's correct it suggests the two men are both dimwits. Consider: Harper's minority government might face an election soon; he will need every seat he can get. Williams won a sweeping re-election victory last October by bashing Ottawa, and sees no reason to stop.
So why would Harper, by all accounts no dimwit and in some versions the reincarnation of Machiavelli, put himself in the hands of so strident a foe by saying something like that? Even if Harper believed that statement, why say it?
As for Williams, doesn't he understand the cost of betraying such a private statement - if there was one? How can Williams now expect Harper to tell him so much as the time of day ever again?