Cohen: How Harper's legacy is slowly being dismantled
Who has seen Stephen Harper? Wasn’t that him, wearing a baseball cap, at the Shake Shack in Las Vegas? Wasn’t that him, in the same headwear, at the airport in Fort Myers?
Having had too much of the poor man for almost 10 years, his critics no longer have enough. Now that Harper has all but vanished they hold that against him, too.
Who can blame him for lying low? On Oct. 19, he suffered the cruellest of fates: He lost his government but won his seat. Divine retribution.
More than any other, the political story of the last six months is the incredible shrinking legacy of Stephen Harper. His record of achievement in office is disappearing as fast as he is. Breathtaking.
John Ibbitson, the award-winning writer, calls Harper an “important” prime minister. He believes, as a biographer must, that his subject was substantial and consequential.
Six months after his defeat, here’s another view: Stephen Harper was a failure in power. He created nothing lasting. Of prime ministers since 1945 who served a full term or more, his is the thinnest record.
Harper took on none of the big social issues – abortion, gay marriage, capital punishment – which animated his loyalists. He championed no constitutional reform and established few innovative programs. He proposed no new national initiatives – museums, pipelines, high-speed rail – or declared a projet de société.
Politically, he left a party with one-third of the vote but no seats in Atlantic or Northern Canada and few in urban, ethnic Canada beyond the Prairies. He brought the West in, yes, but made no inroads in Quebec.
His legacy is style: small, nasty, narrow, divisive. It was rooted in a one-man government with weak ministers (such as Kellie Leitch, clad in sackcloth and ashes, who regrets her role in “the tip line” on barbaric cultural practices). Harper’s modus operandi was explored brilliantly by Lawrence Martin in his book, Harperland.
Hubris was Harper’s undoing. “When they told us in caucus six months before the election that the campaign would be built around Harper, I knew it was over,” says a Conservative MP.
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