Warren — Musings —

First things first: you and I are weird. We like politics. We pay attention to politics. Normal people don’t. And studies have been showing that debate audiences have been declining for decades.



Most people watch clips on TV, Facebook and Twitter, and think that is enough. Based on last night’s show, they’re probably not wrong.



Three key things to remember before I provide you with my own tweeted clips.



One, if very few people watched the debate, it will probably have very little long-term effect on attitudes.



Two, it came so early in the 2015 Long March Campaign that no one will remember it at the end. (That’s a shame, given that it’s possibly the last time all four leaders are together.)



Three, it wasn’t very exciting. It was pretty dull, in fact.



That all said, here’s my take on each leader, along with tweets about the proceedings.

Stephen Harper: When three professional politicians are attacking you for a couple hours, the best you can hope for is to keep the puck out of the net. Harper did that. He missed several opportunities to clobber the others, true, but he was effective hammering Trudeau on his position on terror, and bashing both Trudeau and Mulcair on their collective desire to talk about the Constitution.

Tom Mulcair: He wasn’t Angry Tom – he was Medicated Tom. He. Talked. Like. This. As such, you got the impression he was condescending (he was) and arrogant (he is). His equivocation on ISIS/terror was sickening; his qualifications on unity were pretty despicable. He was braggy about shutting down Parliament, rewriting Charters, and his eyes were scary-ola. If there was a loser last night, it’s him.

Justin Trudeau: He was a drama teacher, once, and it sure showed. He stuck to his lines, and he had clearly had been preparing for months. There were slips, however, such as when he bizarrely referred to himself as “Mr. Trudeau,” or when he said “the Liberal Party has been very clear” on ISIS and terror. (Um, not quite.) His startling statement that the Liberal Party was “naive,” quote unquote, on foreign policy will be replayed in CPC and NDP attack ads from now until the end of time.

Elizabeth May: She was winning. She was winning, big time, in fact. For most of the debate, she was the most effective – seemed to know her facts, had the right tone, sounded the least doctrinaire. She lost the pole position at the end, however, when she rhapsodized about Mu’ammar Qaddafi, and she suggested that ignoring ISIS will make them just go away. In those segments, she was dishonest and reckless and had a truther-like weirdness. A disappointment, because she’d been winning.

Sample tweets about each, gratis:

I’m feeling an irrational and unexpected urge to vote Green. #elxn42 #cdnpoIi — Warren Kinsella (@kinsellawarren) August 7, 2015





Trudeau has not been an unmitigated disaster so far. #Elxn42 #cdnpoli. — Warren Kinsella (@kinsellawarren) August 7, 2015





“No.” Harper on having Senate talks. I loved that. “No.” #Elxn42 — Warren Kinsella (@kinsellawarren) August 7, 2015

Paul Wells should stick to writing first person analysis pieces found, unread, in dentist offices, coast to coast. #elxn42 — Warren Kinsella (@kinsellawarren) August 7, 2015





Did Justin Trudeau just call his party “naive”? #Elxn42 #cdnpoli — Warren Kinsella (@kinsellawarren) August 7, 2015