Waiting for the Wave
Flanagan, Tom
D on't—pace Andrew Lloyd than traditional Liberal policies, would Webber—cry for Argentina. dictate his program. "Every house has the Weep for Canada instead. mortgage," he said. Poleaxed by...
...In spite of the fact that Flanagan, a professor of political science at the University of Calgary, was the Reform Party's director of Policy, Strategy, and Communications until he was fired in 1993, no credible portrait of Manning emerges from Waiting's 245 pages...
...There are some useful facts and figures to be found here, but no telling anecdotes, no illuminating bits of dialogue...
...Even Merlin the Magician couldn't balance our national budget within three years, as he promised, without causing too much unacceptable pain to the poor...
...But in the end the brightest future for Canada might be when we recognize we're sitting on a disproportionately large pool of the world's fresh water supply...
...But he is not anti-Quebec...
...It is a book not to be read, but to be consulted as a reference...
...And our f Reformers have been a disaster in prime minister, Jean Chrefien, is inarticu- the House, they have nevertheless late in two languages...
...If we get round to marketing it retail to our parched neighbors to the south, no refreshment will have been so pricey since Jacob billed Esau for his nosh...
...RCMP's emblem on tea trays, beer mugs, T-shirts, jock straps, and panties...
...A house divided against itself, he has said, cannot stand...
...tents, boosting two all but brand new Such humiliations are the unhappy rule regional parties into prominence, and up here in North America's attic...
...The election where even muggers are said to scorn also marked the arrival of the malconour currency...
...Manning deserves better...
...The deepening the fractures in this already fabled Royal Canadian Mounted Police, fragile country...
...clunky prose unredeemed by wit or humor...
...Instead, the reader must suffer through page after page of gray...
...And Preston Manning, riding out of fulminating Alberta, led the Reform Party's takeover of 52 seats in parliament...
...The only time I been enormously influential, shiftinterviewed him, in January 1994, shortly ing both fearful Tories and Liberals, after the Liberals had assumed office, I fingers held to the wind, to the right...
...But the rest is simplistic...
...Out of their league...
...Bouchard and Manning are now the most interesting politicians in Canada...
...asked if our huge national debt, rather Deep thinkers in both parties have been obliged to take heed of the deficit and Mordecai Richler is the author most contemplate unpopular cutbacks in welrecently of This Year in Jerusalem fare, medicare, and other costly social (Knopf...
...Living within our means...
...In fact, a good deal of what Manning has to say is reasonable...
...The surprising federal election indigenous wampum is now worth only of October 1993 more than decimated the 72.8 cents U.S., making it expensive then-governing Tories, reducing their 157 just to take a junket to New York, seats to a humiliating two...
...Americans beware...
...They have closed an exclusive qualifications for the job, he replied, "I deal with Disney, which will market the was a travel agent...
...In fact, Manning is for everything nice...
...He is a federalist...
...There is a possible, if highly unlikely, scenario in which Manning could become our next prime minister...
...The most likely scenario, however, is that our Tories will shift further to the right, reclaiming their traditional western support, and that Reform will dwindle, having made its considerable mark as a pressure group...
...The Prime Minister of Canada, he agrees, should be bilingual, which is why he is now taking French lessons...
...whom many long took to be a Mickey Lucien Bouchard, a very natty dresser with undoubted charisma, won the separatist Bloc Quebecois 54 seats, all of them gained in Quebec...
...But if Bouchard's bunch, given their agenda—a perspicacious comedian described it as wanting an independent Quebec within a strong, united Canada—have been performing with élan in parliament, Manning's lot have proven themselves sadly inept...
...n The American Spectator September 1995 67...
...T he subject I have cleverly avoided until now is Waiting for the Wave, the latest book about the incredible rise of Manning's Reform Party, which was founded in 1987 and went on to win 18.7 percent of the popular vote in 1993...
...Manning turned Beck out of the party within an hour, and so hardly deserved Deputy Prime Minister Sheila Copps's coarse comment that his "are the same kinds of policies that permit a David Duke to come forward in a state like Louisiana...
...programs...
...On the evidence, he is a sweet and caring man and a devout Christian...
...He is a man so touchingly innocent that he relies on "the common sense of the common people"—which is to say the wishes of the yahoos who swear by Oprah Winfrey, gorge themselves on frozen french fries, adore Forrest Gump, and made The Bridges of Madison County a huge best-seller...
...Family values...
...But a more likely possibility is that somewhere down the road our flexible conservative party, already burdened with the contradictory name Progressive-Conservative, due to its absorption of an earlier western protest party, the Progressives, will be born again as the Reform-Progressive-Conservative Party, with Manning as its leader...
...D on't—pace Andrew Lloyd than traditional Liberal policies, would Webber—cry for Argentina...
...When an Ottawa reporter asked the Reform Party's spokesman on Mouse bunch anyway, recently made it foreign affairs what, exactly, were his official...
...In that case, Manning, said to be a promising French student, might be boosted into office in the hope that he would talk tough to the separatists...
...I have avoided mentioning Tom Flanagan's study until nowbecause it is the first book I have ever plowed through in which the graphs are more readable than the prose...
...He is a populist not beholden to the right or left...
...Poleaxed by a national overdraft of So not much ever changes here, except $C540 billion—$C717 billion if you for the composition of our parliamentary factor in what the provinces owe—our fun-house...
...Should Quebec opt in the forthcoming referendum for sovereignty—providing, of course, they can keep their Canadian passports, continue to deal in Canadian money, and share a joint parliament with the rest of Canada—Ottawa could respond by calling a snap election...
...I feel the time has come for white Anglo-Saxons to get involved," said Beck, ". . . and those people [immigrants] coming from another country, one evil just as bad as another...
...A balanced budget...
...Embarrassing...
...66 The American Spectator September 1995 Know-nothing American pundits have compared Manning to both Newt Gingrich and Ross Perot, but Manning, uneasy with confrontation, is not abrasive like Newt, nor rich, ill-tempered, and flaky like Perot...
...Prime Minister Chretien, a Quebecer himself and nobody's fool, might be adjudged the wrong man to negotiate with his own province on behalf of the rest of Canada...
...And he has also attracted too many nutters to his banner, some of them Quebec-bashers, others anti-Semitic, and at least one of his 1993 candidates, John Beck, a racist pure and simple...
...And a country wherein "every citizen is entitled to equality of treatment by governments, without regard to race, language, or culture...
...Every house has the Weep for Canada instead...
Vol. 28 • September 1995 • No. 9
