I hesitate to predict anything about these debates tonight. If anything, tonight might be one of those occasions that reminds us that predicting the future is really a fraudulent vocation.
First, I’ve decided to watch the Canadian debate — or at least I’ll see how it goes. I haven’t been an enthusiastic spectator of Canadian politics lately, but things seem to be getting more interesting. I wrote a whole post this morning on Dion’s proposal in the French debate…
Ah hell, I’m just going to stick it in here:
So far we’ve been relatively immune to the economic mess in the U.S., especially from problems in the financial sector. But that doesn’t necessarily mean we won’t face fundamental challenges. Canadian leaders must be responsible for elevating the discussion of these issues to ensure the best possible results.
Consider that only a few months ago — or even a few weeks ago — most Americans would not have expected to see events play out as they have. Looking back it’s easy to see that more effective action could have been taken sooner — but what?
It’s still difficult to know what the best course of action would have been, not to mention what the best course of action should be going forward. Historians will spend decades untangling the causes and conditions involved.
Every day there are more plans — too many to count, let alone read. Former Treasury secretary Paul O’Neill and financier George Soros have both come out with plans in recent days, and as the economy will either remain bad or get worse in the near future, more plans will continue to come forward.
In order to make sense of the many ideas and criticisms (some of them good, some of them absurdly bad), what is needed above all is an educated and engaged public that’s capable of telling politicians what we want in an informed and articulate way — or at the very least, capable of not being fooled by fear mongers and political opportunists.
As Harper says, “Canada isn’t the U.S.,” but that doens’t mean we’re immune to manufacturing declines, which are a very real and immanent threat to our economy, nor a housing bust, which the influential economist Robert Shiller has suggested Canada may yet be vulnerable to.
The plan sprung by Dion in the French-language debate might not have much substance, but it does have the benefit of generating discussion of the issues, which is perhaps all we can really do.
I don’t care which leader or which party initiates the discussion. We need it. We need it to go well beyond the debates. We need it to go beyond politics, beyond credit and blame. This is where real leaders emerge; I’m still waiting — hoping — to see if Canada has any.
Now since then I found some criticism of the suggestion that Canada is vulnerable, namely from Jonathan Kay at the National Post (as well as in an earlier post I can’t seem to find — ?). I also found this editorial from yesterday’s London Free Press by Paul Berton, which I could be accused of cribbing from.
The problem with Kay’s criticism is that the differences he cites all pertain to finance and housing. Canada is certainly better off than the U.S. there, and perhaps far better off than many European countries, but it’s becoming apparent that the crisis is deepening and broadening into other areas. More directly, we sell lots of stuff to those countries. And then there’s the problem of market psychology, as I addressed above.
So yeah, I’ll be watching the Canadian debate. It seems like it’s real now.
I called the post “making a turn” because there is a chance Dion and the Liberals could pull a radical change of momentum tonight. A chance. I’ll leave it at that for now.
Looking to the U.S., this is do-or-die for Palin.
It occurs to me that I haven’t been giving Americans any credit at all. I’ve been assuming that hardcore Sam’s Club Republicans will buy anything sold to them by a politician like Palin. In the past few weeks, as criticism and doubts have become more vocal, as the honeymoon ended, I’ve come to realize that they may in fact be capable of thinking for themselves.
Please, please, please, if Palin performs tonight the way she performed in interviews, let me be wrong. So that’s the other ‘turn’ we might see. (Well that was maybe two turns, actually.)
The other turn is that I’m kind of getting sick of politics and following all this stuff so closely. There are other kinds of writing I want to work on…. Debates are starting. Gotta go.
