I’m not entirely certain if people realize this, but in 2010, Stephen Harper will be starting his fifth year as Prime Minister of Canada.

That’s right, count ‘em up — it’ll be four years since he achieved his first minority government. And given our intense exposure to American political culture which exposes incumbent leaders to serious review after four years, Canadian pollsters, pundits and citizen commentators will be doing the same with the aim of asking: is it time for a change of government?

Yes, I know, the last election was just 14 months ago. But the extended minority tenure of the Conservative government means Canadians now regard the Harper government as an incumbent entity in its own right; no longer can problems be blamed on the previous performance of the Chrétien-Martin era. People expect the PM and his ministry to have a firm grasp on how government should be working.

The National Post’s Kelly McParland has a good summary of what I’m talking about here:

Mr. Ignatieff appears to have a long way to go before he can plausibly claim to represent a party with a serious alternative platform, but he’s an intelligent man and it would be unwise to assume he will continue to perform as badly as he did over the past 12 months.

So, like Mr. Chrétien did, Mr. Harper should enjoy the attention while it lasts. But it won’t last long and the government faces issues that could quickly reverse its fortunes. The detainee furor has been handled abysmally. The fun part of deficit budgets — the spending part — is nearing an end and the hard part is at hand. And the Prime Minister can’t help but wonder why he can’t leave the capital for a few days without all hell breaking loose, and start re-assessing his team. He has some able performers, but after four years in power, bench strength is not the government’s greatest asset.

That last bit is debatable; Messrs. Flaherty, Prentice, Kenney and Day have all earned varying degrees of respect for their jobs. But it is true that while Harper & Co. have done well this year, they haven’t exactly inspired enthusiasm among the Canadian populace. To put it in petrolhead terms, it’s a four-year-old Toyota Corolla: sure you’ll hang onto it, but that won’t mean you won’t stop looking for something better.

And in case you’re thinking that the Waffle has no chance whatsoever of pulling his party’s fortunes out of the doldrums, remember that Cadillac, at the start of 2000, would have been a prime candidate for being dropped from the General Motors lineup. They switched from a luxury car mindset to a sports performance one, came up with the CTS, and haven’t looked back. People know that the Waffle still has that kind of potential for a turnaround, once he hammers together a real policy platform.

So therein lies the challenge for 2010. When it comes to political skills, Harper has definitely earned the minds of Canadians, but overall he hasn’t really captured their hearts (piano-playing notwithstanding); certainly not to the extent that Chrétien did. And because he’s the incumbent, the MSM is going to be even more critical of him in 2010 than they were in 2009, and less inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt on debatable matters.

So the next election, whenever it happens, will focus on Harper and the Tories defending their record in office. And that means behaviour will need to focus more on achievement, as opposed to merely pointing out why the other guy’s still not qualified.

Which is, of course, what a lot of Tory bloggers (myself included) have been doing.

Which brings up the real challenge for Blogging Tories in the New Year. No longer will Canadian blog readers be satisfied with us bashing the Libranos. Now, we’ll be expected to defend the incumbent. And that means a change in the Blogging Tory mindset is going to be required.

Defence is going to be harder, and less fun, than offence. It means (reluctantly) that less time and bandwidth can be devoted to Librano-bashing. It means really, critically examining government policy, not just merely asking if the other guy can do better. It means seriously challenging talking points whenever they don’t make sense, and being able to explain them to readers whenever we think they do. It also means reducing our attention to the silliness that the Libranos have been trying to peddle as scandal. (After all, we already know that Jane Taber and others in mainstream media are going to peddle that line. Why should we therefore help them by publicizing it?)

If we do this function right, we Blogging Tories will be more credible in holding the government to account than the Opposition and the MSM in its current weak, “gotcha” mindset. That credibility (and the refusal to be taken for granted by the Harper government) will go a long way towards help them earn that majority.

And that, I think, is a blogging New Year’s resolution worth shooting for.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 30th, 2009 at 10:07 and is filed under Can Cons, Harping. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.