Mulcair, exhausted

It seems so long ago. In the U.S., the first wagon trains were plodding across the bleak high plains, and in Canada the fur trappers were just then picking up the early bulletins of the Mike Duffy trial, when the election was called. And, astonishingly, the NDP and Thomas Mulcair, for whom Movember wasn’t a month, it was a calling, were riding high, poised to be the challengers to Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s tenacious hold on 24 Sussex and the reins of power.

Back then, Mulcair was finally getting his popular due. His standout, standup performance as Question Period’s grand inquisi- tor had reached the public ear. He had slowly but steadily eased his way into public consciousness as a quite respectable potential prime minister. The early flash of Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau was in partial eclipse. Mulcair, over his term as opposition leader, had successfully nursed a caucus of political infants into a responsible parliamentary presence. Most importantly, he had taken a lot of the stuffy edge off the NDP, scoured away much of the grim grey patina of its earnest righteousness. So much so that when, for example, Naomi Klein and her band of TIFF utopians issued that sad Manifesto of theirs, a raw diamond of purest progressive nonsense — “if you wouldn’t want it in your backyard, it should be in no one’s backyard” — his party was spared the taint of being associated with its weary nonsense. The days of tuneless folksingers and geriatric parlour radicals being the “brand” of the NDP had been quite extinguished, and Mulcair could claim that as an achievement.

The Mulcair NDP was not annoy- ingly pious. It was capable of taking (and sticking to) what looked to be an unpopular stand on treacherous issues — the terrorism legislation, C-51, provided a fine dividend for Mulcair and his party. And best of all, as the ceaseless rain of polls confirmed, he had lifted the NDP from its perennial third-place slot in the public’s esteem — always seven to 10 points behind — to a full equivalence with the Liberals and Conservatives. Not even former NDP leader Jack Layton had ever reached that plateau.

Some of his success, as is the way with political fortune, came from events he did not author. Alberta Premier Rachel Notley’s socialist earthquake, her devastation of the dynastic Tories in that radically blue province, sent out national vibrations. It offered minds unaccustomed to, or even fearful of contemplating, the idea of a federal NDP government, a portal of plausibility to that otherwise unthinkable prospect. Notley’s win, the scale and timing of it, looked like it might be overture and omen for the party’s national fortunes.

All was going well. And perhaps that was a problem. It is the wisdom of fishermen that “a smooth sea never made a skilful sailor.” When this marathon campaign began, all looked so bright that Mulcair looked just a little too easy with his progress. In the long ago Maclean’s debate (when the first wagon trains made it to California), he seemed not fully present, not fully energized, which suggested a leader a little too confident, not sufficiently alert that there was still much persuading to be done. He also seemed to think, or perhaps more fairly gave the impression, that the “problem” of Justin Trudeau had been taken care of. He either was not capable of, or thought it not necessary, to fully dispatch Tru- deau then.

He might have been able to close the door on the Liberals early on. Able or not, he didn’t. And here he is now, at the very crisis of the campaign, with just two weeks and a bit to go, and his fortunes and his party’s are at their most critical.

It was not a matter of his “peaking” too soon. Neither parties nor leaders determine when they will peak. Events and the public’s fickle moods control the valleys and the summits of politics. We’ve seen this this week with the emergence of the “niqab debate,” which has recast the political dynamic in Quebec — and maybe, to a weaker degree, outside that province, too. Trudeau is wearing better through this long ordeal of a campaign than any of his rivals thought he would. Harper, to the distress of his most intemperate critics, and to the horror of independent filmmakers, novelist politicians and performance artists everywhere, remains adamantly in the race — with at least as good a chance of hitting a minority government as his rivals.

It is Mulcair who is in the hardest spot now. Can he find a message which will bring him back to full challenge, and can he find the energy and the wit to deliver it?

He might have been able to close the door on the Liberals early on. Able or not, he didn’t