The Enlightened Despot

As proof that I am part of the problem on this issue, I submit that I feel that the most interesting thing about the probable regime change in Canada is just how little interest Americans have shown in it thus far. Sure, Canada is goofy, but we only have two neighbors; you’d think we’d pay attention to who runs them. Yet all of the following stories are receiving more attention in the American media right now, as measured by the headlines on my Google News home page:

1.) The Hillary appointment, which everyone but me knew was coming over a week ago.

2.) Plaxico Burress has been charged with shooting himself in the foot. The shooting is old news by now, but the charge is new. The case against him seems pretty air-tight, but I suspect Suge Knight.

3.) Post-Thanksgiving-Weekend shopping was up from last year’s levels.

4.) Post-Thanksgiving-Weekend shopping was down from last year’s levels.

5.) Those horrible things really did just happen in Mumbai. The news here isn’t really news, as such, but this is the one issue that actually merits the attention it’s getting.

6.) Colleges continue to play football games against each other.

I like making fun of Canada as much as the next guy, but - especially with a president-elect and a secretary-of-state-in-waiting who spent primary season yelling at each other about NAFTA - we might want to take major shifts in their political situation slightly more seriously.

Mark Steyn - one of them, so he would know - has a summary:

what David Frum calls “the Harper government“* is about to fall, and the fellow set to replace him as Prime Minister is the October flopperoo Dion, reborn as leader of a freakshow coalition of Canada’s three opposition parties - the soft left, the hard left and the separatist left, all of whom have figured out that what they have in common (unbounded love of big government) is bigger than what divides them. Which is true. Quebec separatism is mostly one almighty bluff, a giant racket by which the francophone minority screws out of English Canada a hugely disproportionate share of the spoils. The Bloc Quebecois are separatists who have no interest in separating: no matter how wide you open the stable door, the flea-bitten old nag refuses to bolt. Granted all that, it’s weird to see the Liberals, until recently the most electorally successful party in the western world, reduced to climbing into bed with separatists and socialists.

I never said it was an invective-free summary.

While I have not spoken to him, and thus have no more information than you, dear reader, I am going to go out on a limb and say that Frederick’s endorsement of Ruffini’s nice summary of some differences between British and American politics should not be taken as an endorsement of the post as a whole, which is, in fact stupid. The clue is in the title: ‘The GOP Needs an Ideas Czar’.

That’s a very bad idea. What’s especially weird about the post is that Ruffini’s explanation of why the U.S. political system doesn’t lend itself to parties having a unified message contains everything you need to see why his idea couldn’t possibly work. Furthermore, it doesn’t really address the complaint it is supposed to be a response to: that the Republicans have lacked a coherent message of late. Regardless of the merits, this complaint is not coming from David Cameron; surely the complaint is that their message has been incoherent by the standards of U.S. politics. In which case ‘because we don’t have a parliamentary system’ isn’t such a clever answer.

K-Lo, on the other hand, thinks it’s a terrific idea, and nominates Newt Gingrich for the position.