The First Husband and I get five newspapers every day—Globe & Mail; Toronto Star; Hamilton Spectator; National Post; and New York Times—and two on Sundays—Star and NYT. They cover the political spectrum, which is good since he’s right of centre and I’m just this much to the left of Trotsky on some things, and more or less left of centre on everything else. So, it’s a given that we disagree on most things political, which can make it a bit testy around the breakfast dishes some mornings.
One current flashpoint is Stephen Harper, who makes me grind my teeth. The FH, on the other hand, quite admires him, even if he is an evangelical Christian. (That’s something we do agree on—card-carrying atheists both of us, thank God!)
Another is that I’m quite caught up in the Liberal leadership struggle, while the FH thinks they’re all crooks. “Nobody leads the Liberal Party,” quoth he. “Powerful forces behind the scenes tell the so-called leader what to do, and it gets done.” More tooth-grinding on my side of the table. It’s a miracle I have a tooth left in my head at this point.
I was quite taken with Michael Ignatieff at first. The fact that he has spent the past 30 years out of Canada, I thought, might give him a perspective that is sadly lacking in most Canadian politicians. But the more I see, the less I like him. “Arrogant, conceited know-all,” I mutter every time he opens his mouth and shoves another foot into it.
My first act after becoming a Canadian citizen was to vote for Bob Rae as Premier of Ontario, for which the FH still hasn’t quite forgiven me, so now I’m rooting for him instead of Iggy the Insufferable. I have to admit I have a soft spot for Gerard Kennedy, too, but I’m not sure he has the intestinal fortitude to be leader of the Liberal Party or Prime Minister of Canada. (I have no doubt Harper and his band of thugs will be tossed on their asses as soon as the Grits get their act together.)
Right now, it’s all up for grabs. The pundits have Ignatieff in the lead, with Rae and Kennedy coming up behind, but there’s still a lot of jockeying to be done. The fact that 30% of delegates were for Iggy earlier on doesn’t really mean anything, given that he’s branded Israel as war criminals and brought the whole Quebec nationhood snafu back onto the front burner since then. Hopefully they’ll come to their senses during the convention and tell him to buzz off back to wherever, so that he return to pontificating from the sidelines, which is his real talent.