It's as though, suddenly, the Beverly Hillbillies are in charge in Ottawa.
The Harper government's new embassy-sharing venture with Britain, announced Monday at a joint press conference between Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird and British Foreign Minister William Hague, should have been a walk in the park.
It's common sense. In places where one government has embassy quarters but the other doesn't, and could use some, you share. It's safer. It's cheaper. Everybody wins.
But rather than a round of cheers, Baird and Hague's news met with skepticism, mockery and scorn.
NDP leader Thomas Mulcair's take on this ("Why stop at the embassies? They could merge our armed forces. No wonder they are so nostalgic for the War of 1812. Why not merge the Senate with the House of Lords?") was funny. Nice to see him enjoying his job.
But given the simple logic of closer overseas co-operation with Britain, his little riff should have made no dent at all. Yet Baird was put on the defensive, as the usual critics of Harper's foreign policy wheeled to the attack.
The objections to Canada-U.K. embassy space-sharing in places such as Haiti and Burma are robotic. Had the idea been ventured by a different government - say, a Liberal one - it would have elicited yawns from the national gallery and perhaps a complacent quack or two from the opposition. If anything, closer foreign ties with Britain would have pleased Canadian liberals not long ago, inasmuch as it would have represented less reliance on Washington.
The reality, as most Canadians who spend time overseas soon learn, is that distinctions between Canadians, Americans, Aussies, New Zealanders and Brits are lost on much of the world. To most Thais, for example, we're simply rich westerners. And as far as our foreign and economic policies are concerned, vis-Ã -vis most other parts of the world, we may as well be one people.
But such is the Harper government's track record that, even when it does demonstrably sensible things, its ministers are lampooned as hamfisted yokels and dismissed. With three years to go in the mandate, this does not bode well.
Until now, Stephen Harper has shrugged off suggestions that he and his government have an image problem. He declined last spring to go the so-called "soft route," which would have required him to appear friendly and warm.
Likewise, a summer cabinet shuffle did not materialize. Instead the PM and his ministers have stuck with the economy as their only mantra. The idea is to simply do the job, transform the economy, as quickly as possible, and not worry overmuch about how they're perceived, because an election is years away.
The most recent survey by Abacus Data shows that attitude is beginning to hurt. For the first time ever, Harper has an "unfavourability" rating of 50 per cent. Only 35 per cent view him favourably. Mulcair, by contrast, is disliked by only 22 per cent. And 36 per cent view him favourably.
This trend, NDP strategists believe, is behind the recent attempt to brand Mulcair, falsely, as a proponent of a carbon tax. The NDP view the shifting narratives as a sign of fear.
And now comes news that Jason Kenney, arguably the most successful and popular minister in the Harper government, intends to buck the PM and vote in favour of backbencher Stephen Woodworth's motion to reexamine the definition of when life begins.
Kenney, of course, is a future leadership candidate. Woodworth's motion, which lacks the support of the government, will fail. But that Kenney would declare himself to social conservatives in this way, now, is intriguing indeed. In the hyper-controlled Harper government, it's tantamount to an early leadership challenge.
All of which suggests, perhaps, that the PMO brain trust may want to revisit plans to ram a second kitchensink omnibus bill through Parliament this fall, and to hell with the critics. Harper has a democracy problem, a perception problem and a growing legion of critics. This is turning what should be easy wins into draws, or losses.
That's how it began for Mulroney.
