I liked how liberal Sheila Copps ended her column today—in fact it’s all good and reminiscent of yesterday’s columns—one by Greg Weston and another by Kathleen Harris (see here), which both observed Paul Martin looks tired and spent.
[…]Paul Martin looks like a man who has been hit by a Mack truck. You can smell fear emanating from every pore of his body.
Contrast that to Stephen Harper. The man appears relaxed, focused and positively prime ministerial. Gone are the steely squints of the last campaign that left people feeling there was something really scary behind those baby blues. They have been replaced with the touch, feel and yes, even the smell of victory.
The “sweet smell of success” permeates a campaign. Larger numbers of people come out to winners’ rallies, the sense of momentum is literally palpable. When things are going badly, leaders stick to small, scripted photo-ops, where nothing can go wrong. But even Martin’s photo-ops have a certain smell of defeat. Campaigning with her leader in an Ottawa bagel shop on Monday, candidate Lee Farnworth joked that she and Martin might be able to get jobs there after the election.
[…] Blog rumours are swirling that Martin’s key Quebec lieutenant is already planning his post-election political exit strategy. Jean Lapierre is running in Outremont, where the Martin Liberals unceremoniously dumped Martin Cauchon to bring Lapierre, a close personal friend of Martin’s, back into politics. According to Bourque Newswatch website, (bourque.org), Lapierre has little appetite for a stint on the opposition benches. (If things don’t work out, he’ll consider radio again or write a tell-all book, Bourque says.)
Like Ralph Goodale, Lapierre was a true believer. So devastated was he when Martin lost the Liberal leadership in 1990 to Jean Chretien that he donned a black armband and ran yelling through the streets of Calgary referring to the new leader as a “vendu” (a sellout). He left the Liberal party immediately to sit in Parliament as a member of the newly-formed Bloc Quebecois under the leadership of Lucien Bouchard.
After that, even as a separatist, Lapierre worked in the wings to oust Chretien and secure the Liberal crown for Martin. But now perhaps Lapierre smells defeat. The Conservatives are tied with the Liberals in Quebec. No longer are Quebecers stuck with a single, separatist alternative to the Grits.
Lapierre has always had great polticial [sic] antennae and managed to stay one step ahead of the crowd. If he truly is sniffing around (there’s that smell thing again) for an exit strategy, it is because he smells a campaign that is nowhere near as close as the polls would have us believe.
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
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