One of the comments I received about my Jeb Bush post was about the best description of the nature of Stephen Harper’s leadership style that I have ever read. As a result, I will reproduce commenter autoguy’s post. It is well worth the read:
“Harper is an incrementalist. Sure, his detractors say he's not conservative enough, not libertarian enough, too autocratic, etc... But he has been arguable the most successful Tory PM we've ever had.
Why do I say this?
When Harper took over, he was dealing with a significant amount of political momentum leftward in the Canadian electorate. Things had been going left for a LONG time and he had to change that. Attempts to reverse course quickly were too fraught with danger (note the last minute electoral failure in his last failed bid) and he was dealing with a minority government. Since then, he has slowly and surely changed the direction. A nudge here, a statement there, and now we have a significantly different situation. Compare Harper's stance to Mulcair and Trudeau. Trudeau prays at a radicalized mosque. Mulcair can't even bring himself to call the Parliament Hill attack "terrorism". Harper, on the other hand, has used some of the most direct language on this issue of any world leader. Read some blogs - for example, the Daily Caller ran an article that headlined "When did Canada become so bad-ass?" The US thinks he's tough, that’s for sure.
Furthermore, his ground breaking speech in Israel to the Knesset was actually out of character. THAT was not incrementalism. THAT was international leadership.
There is a long way to go, no question. But if Harper tried to bridge that gap in one stride, he would be out on his ear. Harper has shown in the past that he will get us there. It will just take a little more time.”
To me, what makes Harper an astute politician is that he understands what is possible and what is not possible.
Some might ask, so what is the difference between an incrementalist and a craven surrenderist like John Boehner or Mitch McConnell? The difference is that the latter cave in to Obama to get themselves out of a crisis, while Harper is always moving the ball forward.
On gun control, he eliminated the long-gun registry and is in the process of deregulating the ownership of restricted firearms. On immigration, he has quietly changed the entire system. This has received little notice in the papers, but the immigration system he inherited was little more than a Liberal voter importation scheme. Quietly, he has been able to turn it into a system for attracting quality Canadians, and he did it while increasing the appeal of the Conservative Party brand to ethnic voters at the same time. With regard to the civil service, he has modified their pension and benefits plans significantly. He has also increased the age when Canadians qualify for CPP. These changes will do little to the bottom line today, but will have great effect on Canada’s unfunded liabilities down the road. Tell me, which other Canadian politician has done anything but kick that can down the road? Even during the height of the mid-90’s debt crisis, Paul Martin didn’t have the guts to do that. Yet, Harper pulled it off, all under the media radar.
One criticism you hear from conservatives about Harper is that he allowed the federal budget to go into deficit in 2009. Fair enough, but consider this: in 2009, Harper ran a minority government in a Parliament where he had zero natural allies. Every other party was clamouring to spend money as fast as possible. If Harper had argued the folly of Keynesian pump-priming, he would have lost control. What do you think would have happened to the federal deficit with Ignatieff, Layton and Duceppe at the helm? As it happened, Harper kept the stimulus to the absolute minimum and confined it to programs that could be neatly rolled up once the program ended (such as the home renovation tax credit). This is a much different experience to what transpired in the US.
Running something as big as a country involves many constraints. It’s not just about what you would like to do. Turning dreams into reality is tricky and hard work, and the shortest distance between two points is often not a straight line.
Harper has his critics among the Right, but I suspect that they will grow to miss him when he is gone, and I certainly think they wouldn’t have been able accomplish a half of what he has been able to do had they been running Canada.
Saying Harper is incrementalist certainly lets him off the hook for accomplishing very little in 9 years.
Posted by: Henry | March 19, 2015 at 04:50 PM
Scaling back public sector pensions, raising the retirement age for all Canadians, transforming the immigration system, ending the long-gun registry: that's your definition of 'very little'?
Posted by: Cincinnatus | March 19, 2015 at 05:40 PM
The proof of PM Harper's successful incrementalism is that he created his substantial roster of accomplishments completely under the radar of his slack-jawed and clueless detractors. His approach has been like a glacier, slow, straightforward and damn near unstoppable, invisible to those who don't care to look. They resort to petty cheap shots about his effectivness and are flummoxed as to why they just can't ever seem to land that killer blow.
Kudos to Autoguy for his brilliantly reasoned, dead-accurate assessment of Harper's leadership methodology, and to you CC, for expanding on that assessment with such excellence. Harper's style has always seemed obvious and sensible to me, but I could never have explained it with the clarity the two of you have. Well done.
Posted by: MadTrucker | March 19, 2015 at 09:12 PM
I think your median voter is centre-left in Canada and for a variety of reasons winning as a conservative is probably more difficult here than many places for a number of reasons. Historically Quebec has had a strong leftward pull as well as if you look at Canada's history, much of historical immigration were working class types wanting better opportunities as opposed to people facing persecution. I've even heard most Americans of British ancestry come from Southern England (which tends to vote Conservative) while in Canada most are Scottish or Northern England (which generally vote Labour). In addition the 60s is sort of when we become of age and unfortunately that was when leftist ideas were at their peak so many things that define us as Canadians are left wing ideas. By contrast in Europe, countries are defined by their history, language, and culture which date back thousands of years so their identity is less tied to any political ideology
Finally Canadians tend to be averse to change and only favour it when things get really bad and since when the Liberals were defeated in 2006 things were too bad there wasn't the same demand to swing rightward like say there was in Ontario in 1995 when the Rae government was turfed.
So in summary, those criticizing the right for not being pure enough need to realize just how difficult it is to win being even slightly right of centre let alone further to the right. Otherwise Harper is as right wing as he can be and still be electable. Anything further to the right and he would be turfed.
Posted by: monkey | March 19, 2015 at 10:40 PM
Abortion: nothing done
Gay marriage: nothing done
Budgets: largest deficits in history
Gun registry: don't own a gun don't care
US relations: worse
Military: weaker
Progress on Arctic: lots of announcements, no action
Corporate welfare: did it anyway
Fighting ISIS: 40 trainers and 6 jets. Commitment to kill ISIS does not match overheated rhetoric.
Fixed election date law: not ever followed
Public service: larger than when Harper took government
Posted by: Henry | March 20, 2015 at 08:05 AM
Sorry Henry. but the lagest deficit in Canadian history was under PET in 1984. It cam in at over 8% GDP. In 2009 the deficit was 3.6% GDP, less than half the total. In fact the defict for 2009 doesn't make the top ten.
Posted by: Rob West | March 20, 2015 at 08:57 AM
henry ahhh we vote in October moron that is our fixed election date where did you get your info from that we didn't have fixed election dates.
Posted by: Roy Elsworth | March 20, 2015 at 02:39 PM
we didn't have a budgets largest defecit in history idiot. it was trudeau who did. harper went into a small defecit but we will be out bye the end of 2015 or 2016 were on target for that. okay to go into defecit as long as you get out. when the economy wasn't doing well around the world we had to go into a Defecit. but then again you don't know much about economics. like starting a business you go into a deefecit at first to get out.
Posted by: Roy Elsworth | March 20, 2015 at 02:43 PM
Harper has increased the debt by 1/3. He is a fiscal disater.
The last 2 elections were not on the fixed election date cycle despite the law being in effect. Are you uninformed or just a partisan idiot?
Posted by: Henry | March 22, 2015 at 12:40 AM
Dear Henry:
I am a glass-half-full guy, not a glass-half-empty guy. The reason why is because I realize that politics (like most activities taking place in the real world) is a messy game.
I also suspect that when Prime MInister Harper is replaced by Prime MInister Trudeau, you will be reminiscing fondly at the good ol' days when Stephen Harper ran Canada with a firm hand at the rudder.
Posted by: Cincinnatus | March 22, 2015 at 11:04 AM
Henry - It's true Harper ran the biggest deficit in absolute numbers, but as a percent of GDP or even inflation adjusted, it wasn't close to what Trudeau ran. Its like saying a cheap car today is more expensive than a luxury car 35 years ago. You have to take inflation into account when making comparisons. Now I agree Harper's fiscal discipline has been weaker than the Chretien/Martin Liberals, but compared to Trudeau Sr., he has done much better. Also minority governments tend to produce bigger deficits than majority governments as no opposition party will ever vote in favour of the tough measures needed to bring the deficit down as it would involve either tax hikes or spending cuts which are never popular.
Posted by: monkey | March 22, 2015 at 08:09 PM