Recent events in Ottawa demonstrate that Canada has its own Richard Nixon — Stephen Harper. Nixon resigned the presidency in disgrace rather than face trial and certain impeachment. Looking back there is an amazing similarity with our “Tricky Dick.”

First Nixon was adamant that in the pursuit of his government’s policies the constitution be damned. Thus he breached the U.S. constitution in an almost serial fashion — domestically as well as internationally. There was the wiretapping, the misleading of Congress and, most importantly, the secret, illicit war in Cambodia.

Our Prime Minister also has chosen to mislead Parliament with respect to matters foreign and domestic — whether in regards to the state of our public finances or the treatment of Afghan prisoners.

Second, the only motivation apparent in the conduct of both men is a blinding, all consuming ambition to forever change the political system that nurtured them. That ambition it seems is so potent as to alight a sense of righteousness in both men that fundamentally blinded them.

So Nixon in spite of an ever-increasing release of damning information insisted this was all the work of his political enemies and so he must continue. So it is with Mr. Harper, a man who came into office convinced he was surrounded by enemies not just in Parliament but in the media and public service. Those “enemies” of course in turn justified any and all measures required to triumph over them. Whether one has to smear public servants, turn upside down core principles of Parliamentary government, cripple Parliamentary committees, when the enemy is in your midst anything goes.

Third and perhaps more striking is that both men seem to dislike politics, at least that part of politics that involves talking and listening to citizens. Both men seem reserved to the point of being withdrawn. They feel most comfortable in public settings that are entirely staged. In public encounters they appear stiff and remote. The discomfort they display in public settings is palpable. Yet in spite of that both have succeeded.

Unfortunately this is where the similarities end. In the case of Richard Nixon there were still people in his administration willing to stand up for what is right, Elliot Richardson and William Ruckleshaus come to mind. There aren’t any such people in Stephen Harper’s administration. Instead Conservative ministers and other MPs read from scripts prepared by the Prime Minister’s Office. The senior civil service buries their heads in the sand lest they be torched as well.

Nixon didn’t trust his defence secretary, Melvin Laird, so he kept him in the dark about the secret war in Cambodia. Harper on the other hand hasn’t any such problems with Peter McKay. In 1970s America there were still media prepared to report what was happening and not just the Nixon administration’s spin. That isn’t the case today. In the era of embedded journalists, shrinking editorial resources and the 24-hour news cycle, Canadians are far less informed than were American citizens then.

Most importantly Americans had constitutional safeguards that, however belatedly, provided a basis for holding Nixon accountable. In our Parliamentary system there aren’t such explicit, written safeguards. As for convention this Prime Minister has displayed an absolute disregard. The memory of a Prime Minister and all of his political followers bellowing to a public that “He” was elected by the people and therefore Parliament had no right to dismiss him is all too clear.

The current refusal to hand over documents to Parliament reflects that same all consuming righteousness. In Harper’s Canada, the Prime Minister has all of the powers of a president and more without any of the restraints of the U.S. system.

How likely is it that a Parliamentary committee with a Conservative majority is going to pursue a rigorous inquiry of illicit electoral practices last May?

As for Elections Canada, their legal mandate may very well allow them to identify illicit practices and street-level operatives. But so what? Elections Canada charged the Conservative Party with breeching our elections financing laws in the previous election. Their mandate ended there. In any event the Conservative Party dragged this through the courts for several years, finally accepting fines without admitting guilt. Don’t you think Nixon so wishes he had been an American prime minister rather than president.

But this is not the only reason we will all come to lament these events. Nixon set American political campaigns and elections on a low road from which it has never escaped. The result is an American public that despairs of their politics.

Stephen Harper has set us on that same low road.

Wayne Petrozzi, Professor, Department of Politics, Ryerson University, Toronto

Read more about: