National Post (National Edition)
Scheer as tough guy won’t work
Idoubt Andrew Scheer is old enough to have much firsthand memory of George H.W. Bush, whose death produced a surprising outpouring of U.S. national emotion.
Scheer was born in 1979. By my calculation that takes him halfway through his second year on the planet when Ronald Reagan, with Bush as his running mate, clobbered Jimmy Carter in the 1980 presidential election, nine when he succeeded the Gipper as chief occupant of the Oval Office, and 13 when he bobbled it away to Bill Clinton.
Thirteen is pretty young to be up to speed on presidential politics, but Scheer has enough of the geek about him to suggest he may have had some awareness of what was going on south of the border. If so, he’d know Bush was never much more than an appendage during Reagan’s presidency, and struggled to solidify an identity for himself even during his own four years in the top job. The great regard reflected in the ceremonies surrounding his passing grew up mainly after he left office, when he carried himself with considerable dignity even as the position he’d held slid precariously into a cesspool of muck and ineptitude.
As Americans recalled it last week, Bush was a solid, honest and respectable figure whose record shone in stark contrast to the bungled wars, sex scandals and personal buffoonery that has followed since. He organized and led a war hailed as an international triumph, constructing a U.s.-led military alliance that sought a shared goal, achieved victory and returned to base exactly as planned. His loss to Bill Clinton resulted from an economic downturn that prompted him to break his famed “no new taxes” pledge, handing Democrats a cudgel to beat him with. Judging by last week’s funereal commentaries, his broken promise has been reinterpreted as a decision to “do the right thing” by taking the necessary step to win Democratic support for his economic package despite knowing the personal political cost it would entail.
This is where Scheer should be paying attention, because the Bush held up for high praise on his passing is not the Bush as viewed at the time. The Bush who served as a Reagan’s vice-president for eight years was deemed a necessary but harmless decoration, added to the ticket due to his solid resume and status as a reliable country-club Republican, a useful counterpoint to Reagan’s reputation as a hard line Cold Warrior with an underwhelming intellect. Reagan frightened people a little, and Bush had the brains, background and experience needed to calm some of those jitters.
Eight years later he won the presidency largely because Americans were by then in love with Reagan, and — if they couldn’t reelect him to a third term — Bush looked like the next best thing. Even then he struggled to win over the Reaganites, emphasizing his years as a Texas oilman over his preppy New England youth. He claimed his favourite snack was pork rinds, which sounded suitably cattle herd and four-byfour, and he unleashed the furies of dog-whistle politics with the infamous Willie Horton attacks, a strategy both he and his campaign manager were later said to regret.
Not everyone bought it, though. Golf and sailing at the seaside Bush estate in Maine sounded far more Kennedy than Reagan, who liked to spend his spare time in California cutting brush at his ranch. Bush was the son of a Wall Street banker and Connecticut senator. He attended Yale University, where he joined a fraternity and the secret society Skull and Bones. Reagan’s father was an alcoholic shoe store manager; the future president worked as a lifeguard and attended Eureka College, a small Illinois school known mainly for Reagan’s time there. Despite his best efforts, Bush’s attempt at a transformation never quite took hold.
This is where Andrew Scheer might pause and consider his own image-building efforts. He is, as National Post’s Chris Selley recently observed, “hopelessly inoffensive.” I’m not sure he could sneer if he wanted to. Like Stephen Harper trying to smile, it might scare the children. He reminds people of a chipmunk. If you put him on a Christmas float with the sugar plum fairies, he’d fit right in.
There’s nothing wrong with being a pleasant, decent person, as Scheer appears to be. No country fetishizes its niceness more than Canada. Yet Scheer seems set on a Bush-like effort to convince his party’s more flinty elements he’s one of them. His response to the United Nations pact on immigration, which Canada signed Monday along with 163 other countries, is neither sensible nor convincing. The agreement is nonbinding and largely inoffensive. Only the hardest-headed UN haters will be buy into the notion it’s yet another step in the great UN plot to take over the world. And none of them are ever going to vote Liberal anyway.
Voters can sense a leader who’s uncomfortable in his own skin. Michelle Rempel, the fire-breathing Tory immigration critic from Calgary is far better, and more credible, at getting down and dirty over gut issues than Scheer will ever be, and he should leave her to it. As a rabble-rouser, Rempel exudes authenticity, while Scheer looks like the Telus gecko auditioning for the part of Godzilla.
Bush was a genteel New Englander who wanted to masquerade as a tough Texan. It never really worked out — it was after he left office and let his natural courtly character come to the fore that his reputation grew. Scheer is a civilized father of five with a pleasant demeanour who wants to convince voters he’s a red meat lawand-order guy. I doubt it will work for him either. Take a lesson from George Bush and let the brassier MPS do the rough work. You be the leader.