The story goes that a U.S. bank robber named Willie Horton was once asked why he robbed banks. To which he replied: “Because that’s where the money is.” The story isn’t true – Willie himself said it was bogus – but it should be true because it has the virtue of explaining an element of human behaviour in the simplest possible terms. Which brings us to Mitt Romney, Stephen Harper, Jim Flaherty, Jack Layton, Alison Redford and Danielle Smith – and even a prediction about the future of Canadian and Alberta politics (more or less).
Let’s start with Romney, who came remarkably close to winning the American presidency two weeks ago. Forget the vote in the electoral college; Romney finished only three percentage points behind Barack Obama in the popular vote, which is all the more surprising for where he was a few months earlier. Romney is not a radical by nature, though he sounded like one as he tried to score points with the hard-core Republican right during the primaries. With the party nomination secured, he moved back to the middle of the political spectrum, which is where he is most comfortable and where most of the American electorate resides.
In Canada, the hunt for the centre is even more pronounced. Americans are revolutionary, Canadians are evolutionary. We don’t like radicals (even in Alberta). Politicians may fiddle on the shoulders a bit, but the ones who succeed straddle the white line down the middle of the road. Stephen Harper understands this well. His opponents, particularly those on the left, would have us believe that he has horns and a tail. In fact, his record is consistent with the centrist policies that have defined Canadian political history. When the recession hit in 2008, his government responded with a Keynesian-style stimulus package.
His finance minister, Jim Flaherty, has more than once declared his commitment to pragmatism over ideology – an assertion that has proven true and echoed most recently through his fiscal update in Fredericton where he repeated that balanced budgets are not an end in themselves. “They are,” he said, “a means to an end and that end is a better, more prosperous future for all Canada.” Former finance ministers Allan MacEachern and Marc Lalonde couldn’t have said it better, and you can be sure that Alison Redford and Doug Horner were smiling.
It’s a safe bet that Danielle Smith was listening too. Her party lost the last provincial election for several reasons, but chief among them was the suspicion that the Wildrose was too extreme, notably on climate change and human rights. You can be sure she won’t make that mistake again. On the federal level, we can expect much the same in months ahead – a battle for the centre. Former New Democrat leader Jack Layton was a sanctimonious gasbag but to his great credit he dislodged the NDP from its ideological moorings, setting the stage for the pragmatic Tom Mulcair. (Mulcair may be an economic illiterate, but that’s a different story).
In short, as we move toward the next round of elections, look for a lot of hugging of the middle. Had he been a political strategist and not a bank robber, Willie Horton might have been asked why he liked the centre of the political spectrum. Because, he would have replied: “That’s where the votes are.”
