Right side up

The fall of Stephen Harper’s bad traits and the rise of a new governing party

TESSA VANDERHART STAFF

Paul Wells is a jerk. Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, his book, Right Side Up: The Fall of Paul Martin and the Rise of Stephen Harper’s New Conservatism is really nothing more than an extended foray into the Maclean’s columnist’s jerkiness — but if you’re looking for a hilariously jerky recap of the last six years of federal politics, provided you read it within the next month, Right Side Up might learn you a thing or two.

The book more or less (often less) earnestly catalogues just what the precociously long subheadline says it will: the fall of Paul Martin and the rise of Stephen Harper. In case you’re not sure how it’s going to end, the end of every section is conveniently marked with a ↑so you can be clear on whether he’s being honestly pro- Harper or jerkily anti-Martin.

Wells is sharp enough to get away with this: even if you were present for — even if you voted in! — the last federal election, you probably don’t remember every single detail of the election, nor did you have access to the impressive array of “personal interviews” conducted by Wells, then and now. You probably haven’t read every book written on Canadian history ever, so you’d be unable to point out the contradictions that, it appears, every Canadian political scientist finds themselves writing in some rag or another. ↑

That is, except for Harper’s advisors, who are brilliant and almost infallible. Especially Patrick Muttart, a strategist Wells credits with the Tories’ five-point election platform and the two per cent GST cut. Muttart’s reliance on polling data and clear platform were no different, writes Wells, than Liberals’ strategy, something he notes critics have also not been shy to point out — except, of course, Muttart did it better than the Liberals. ↑

In fact, Wells is pretty good at acknowledging criticisms of himself and shooting them down. Likewise for the Harper camp. And, well, he’s darn good at acknowledging criticisms of the Martin campaign.↑

Wells has been accused of being anti-Martin, particularly because he once applied to work for the future pm-PM’s office and never heard back. But his book, less than his direct rebuttal of the criticism, shows something different: Wells is simply an avid small-l liberal watcher of Canadian politics, nonplussed with the Martin camp’s determination to say that everything Chrétien was wrong, and everything Harper is scary. In his compellingly close portrayal of the Conservative team during the 2006 election, Wells explains rather honestly how he came to support the next liberal leader, Stephen Harper. ↑

But what of Harper’s actual politics? For all the time Wells spends on his insidery I’m-so-important-Iwas- at-this-meeting-and-you-weren’t details, “the Rise of Stephen Harper’s New Conservatism” is really the rise of pragmatic policies dictated by a staff that was only marginally less groupthink-afflicted than the Martin camp. OK, Harper isn’t a “scary” social conservative — but the fact that he approved of a GST cut (a move that still has many economists shaking their heads) because, Wells writes, of his advisors’ bright idea that people would “get it” more than a reduction in personal income taxes, smacks of the even-scarier brokerage politics that Wells’ criticisms of Martin are full of. Well, they’re full of something. ↑

The book ends with a throwback to the Chrétien legacy Martin demolished (look, Wells is still a liberal, OK?), Wells’ views on the Liberal leadership candidates (hint: he likes Stéphane Dion), a clearcut cut-through of Harper’s tight media policy (those snotty Ottawa reporters kind of deserved it, right?), and something more interesting: a comparison of Stephen Harper to the title character in Rocky II. Wells leaves the reader with a warning: “You underestimate Harper at your own peril.” ↑

Next time, instead of reading newspapers for years and years to understand things while they’re happening, wait for a book like this one to come out a few months later, and scan the convenient listedby- person-and-relevance index. I guarantee that Wells or whatever columnist is then summarizing years of Canadian politics will save you a lot of time and effort. You underestimate the knowledge of snarky members of the Press Gallery at your own peril.