Martin's Likely Right ... And I Hate It!

Exacerbated by both the detainee situation and the use of negative flyers branding opposition members as anti-Semites, the word “thug” has entered firmly into the lexicon of Parliament.  It’s almost as if this is the kind of naked contemptuousness that the government feels it was born for and it relishes in the battle.We’re not used to this kind of blood-sport in what is normally a sanguine Canada, but following four years of constant aggression, there is now the growing sense that if something isn’t done to halt it in its tracks, the global view of this country being peaceable in nature is doomed in a highly competitive and resource-hungry world.Offering his thoughts on how to respond to thugland, Globe and Mail columnist Lawrence Martin threw together a series of prescient observations that set a buzz among the Liberals.  Opening with a quote from Frank McKenna that Parliament is dealing with thugs and that Liberals have “got to fight back and fight hard,” Martin goes on to point out some pretty obvious truths about recent Liberal leaders.  Beginning with Paul Martin, and followed up by Stephane Dion and now Michael Ignatieff, the Liberal Party has run three individual leaders into the public arena who were all decent and honourable, but who were all doomed because they failed to take the low road.It’s true and I’ve personally seen it - they have been personal friends and associates.  All three of these men faced being undone with the invasion of the public space by forces willing to use negative politics to a degree unseen before.  Sure, Paul Martin threw the odd punch himself while Prime Minister, but his hits couldn’t land against the threshing machine that was the Conservative Party.  From very close proximity I watched Dion become the object of derision, outright lies, and eventual humiliation and yet he still refused to dish the dirt.  I respected him then, as I do now for his lofty view of public service and the truthfulness it required.And now Michael Ignatieff.  He had been deputy leader long enough to know what any Liberal leader would face from a government that preferred pummeling to policy. Yet he believed that when his time finally came that respectful treatment and the force of ideas would eventually trump politically meanness.  Seated behind him during Question Period, I have watched him repeatedly turn and tell his forces to turn down the heckling, while at the same time his opponent opposite merely smiled as his hordes threw every verbal weapon they had at anything they could hit.This is terribly hard for me, but I suppose the time has come to finally admit that Lawrence Martin and others like him must now have their day.  In both votes and polling, Canadians have opted for the negative at the same time as they claim to despise it.  As Martin himself says, taking the respectful path “made them punching bags while they barely laid a glove on the PM in return.”  We have run out of options and the battle will now be joined, but what it means is that Parliament will have lost its last bastion of respect and decency.  Gone will be the excuse that it was the Harper Conservatives that dragged this respectable place to its all-time low; we must now share in the guilt.By chance, I passed Lawrence Martin on Wellington Street today as we crossed over the Rideau Canal.  When I told him I was posting this tonight, he merely smiled and said, “What else can you do?  They’ve left you no other choice.”  I wanted to argue, but I’m no real politician and I’m just too idealistic, but as we parted I declared that I hated every bit of this and that I wouldn’t take part in it personally.  For the briefest of seconds a shadow of regret passed between us as we realized the scope of what will be lost.  Alas, we’re all about to descend in a kind of refined barbarism.  Canadians should get used to it; they voted for it, and I still can’t bring myself to believe that they’ll reward it.