The usually insightful Chantal Hebert of the CBC political panel and the Toronto Sun writes on December 31 that the Liberals will never again govern until they understand that in today’s political alignments the NDP makes a Liberal majority impossible. The road to power for the Liberals goes through the offices of the NDP caucus. I made the same point over a month ago on this site. The road to power for the Liberals now runs through the NDP.

However Hebert’s mastery of politics is still less than complete when she says this means that the Liberals and the NDP must divy up the seats they contest in the next election, with each standing down for the other in seats that either could win. There are many things wrong about this suggestion. The first is that it fails to understand the fundamental nature of political parties in Canada. She needs to read Ken Carty’s excellent article entitled “The Politics of Tecumseh Corners: Canadian. Political Parties as Franchise Organizations”, published in the Canadian Journal of Political Science (35: 723-45). Carty correctly suggests that parties in Canada are founded on a kind of social contract whereby the central organization provides leaders, policy, campaign infrastructure and money, while the local organization provides workers, organization on the ground, election day vote pulling, and candidates. Fundamental to the whole structure is the understanding that local organizations differentiate themselves from then other parties and field candidates of their choosing. The idea that some might step aside and watch while another party has its way in the local constituency is completely foreign and deeply offensive to local activists. The central leaders will never have the power to make this happen except in a few exceptional circumstances. If you don’t understand this, you don’t understand Canadian politics. There are also other fundamental problems in dividing up seats, such as determining how many each party will have claim to. However this is secondary to the fundamental problem of inability to get the consent of local organizations, who enjoy a large amount of autonomy on the question of fielding a candidate and running local constituency elections.

hat is why the Coalition provided such an apparent break through in the thinking of the leaders of the progressive parties. It offered the only he only workable way for cooperation. It was audacious and for those steeped in conventional politics shocking. Hebert was no more able to appreciate its true significance and promise than any of the other elite commentators. They all piled on to discredit the arrangement because it was so radical in the Canadian context. It promised to be a game changer. But Hebert could not abide its sauciness any more than her more conservative journalist colleagues. To a person it offended their deeply conventional view of politics. It had the same affect on Ignatieff and the Martin wing of the Liberals. It threatened their understanding of power and control. They feared it as much as they didn’t understand it. And so it was not to be.

Tis a pity. Hebert is right about the need for reviving the underpinnings of the coalition if Canadians are to have competitive choices. But it cannot be done through shortcuts. A centralized union of the parties, which is what is involved in running only one candidate in winnable seats, can never be the first step. Such a union could come after a period of coalition, but it is premature to consider that. A conventional coalition is the necessary first step to any union of progressives. There is no other way of getting there. Opinion leaders on the left and the party leaders need to get their head around this. In particular, the Liberals need to understand it.

Unfortunately they cannot get back what they had in December 2008. That moment is gone. The Conservatives have consolidated and the NDP leadership was burned and has lost a any sense of trust it had. However the membership of the NDP is ready for a coalition. It is not ready for the Hebert solution. The golden moment that made a coalition possible last December is gone, and may not return again for sometime. But it will return in some form, and this time the leaders need to have the courage to do it. The media will whine. The immediate reaction of the majority of voters will be negative. Short term political reactions to a new political adventure are bound to be negative.

But if a coalition governs well that will dissipate. Future elections can proceed in keeping with party traditions under this scenario without party amalgamations at the local level. These may come in time if the experience is a good one, but it is not essential. But even without that it is easy to see regular progressive NDP-Liberal coalitions providing Canadians with government they like and embrace. That would not be a bad thing.

Chantal Hebert is smart. She has great insights into the Ottawa game. But she doesn’t understand Canadian parties. Which nis too bad. It would enrich public deliberation if intelligent journalists had the sagacity to help explain and educate on these questions As it is they simply add to the paralysis and paucity of vision in politics today.

It is a terrible and depressing day, this last day of 2009 and the first decade of the new millenium. The death of four Canadian soldiers and a journalist in Afghanistan yesterday is just starting to sink in as we in Canada mull the news over our end of year morning coffee.

There are a number of reactions that one picks up from both informal and published sources. Some triumph the view that this is final proof that the whole effort was and is wrong headed, and it would never had happened had governments listened. Others express regret, but say that death is a risk that goes with war, and that nothing significant can be read into this from a policy point of view. Others are confused and frustrated that we cannot protect our own and demand that our military leaders do a better job of command. Even others understandably feel simple grief and sadness at the loss of the lives of young men and women who could be our own sons and daughters, simply doing their best to make a contribution to building a better world.

All of these reactions are understandable. None of them are wrong. War is horrible and deaths are inevitable. It is impossibly sad to hear the stories of the 138 young people killed there and not be reduced to tears. As I write this I listen to a Calgary Herald reporter recalling the life and work of Michelle Lang, the young reporter killed yesterday along with the four soldiers. I am a little surprised that I am feeling sadness verging on tears. But in the end all young deaths are personal, painful, and tragic. It is hard not to feel those things at times like this.

Lives lost should be for a reason. The military effort in Afghanistan, it is becoming clear, has failed. The conventional idea that insurgents can be defeated through hit and run forays from safe bases has proved wrong. This strategy that prevailed for so long in fighting the Taliban, has failed. They cannot be defeated this way. They are too mobile and too elusive to fight against successfully in this large and hostile physical environment. They know the country and the people, they are brave and committed to a cause, and they enjoy the advantage of anticipation and initiative. The Canadian forces are in many ways in a situation similar to that of the US cavalry chasing the Indians of the US northwest in the 19th century. In the end it was white settlement, displacement and the extension of civil authority, not killing, that prevailed. Some truths prevail across time.

There has been a recognition of this reality, up to a point, but the Canadian military over the past few months. A new strategy has been adopted focusing on securing local communities and settlements. This has become known as the Dan Valley strategy, named after the area adjacent to Kandahar where this strategy is being applied. The idea is that rather than madly chasing after Taliban fighters in the remote mountains and valley hideouts, the soldiers will work to secure and protect local communities, train local soldiers and police to provide local and regional security, develop local services, businesses and government institutions.

Which brings us to the most significant thing about yesterday’s deaths. These soldiers were killed in this very Dan Valley, in a regular and assumed safe patrol. The attack occurred in the very location where the much trumpeted new community security strategy is being pursued. It is the centre piece of what NATO says is to be a new model, replacing the old hot pursuit strategy. We can now see the Taliban can and will penetrate these so-called safe haven communities at will. They have the means and the will to take the war to the western forces wherever they maybe.

The reality is that things have changed radically in Afghanistan as this decade has evolved. When western forces initially went into Afghanistan, something over 80% of the population of the country supported the action. The promises of peace, security, development, governance, and civil society was understood and supported by the nation. The truth is that eight years have been essentially wasted. The seminal development was the American abandonment of its commitment there in pursuit of its quixotic adventure in Iraq. When money, forces and development effort shifted dramatically to Iraq, Afghanistan paid dearly. Development stopped, government turned corrupt and al Qaeda and the Taliban immediately saw that Afghanistan was now open to them in a way that seemed impossible up to that point. Their expectations altered dramatically. They saw immediately that Afghanistan was now much easier and much more likely of succeeding for them.

The Taliban have used the years since the Iraq invasion to great advantage. They have focused on stalemating the western forces in the south, undermining the confidence of Afghanis in the western determination to prevail, communications and propaganda (in which they have been absolutely masterful in the use of electronic non-broadcast media), and on undermining the Karzai regime The west became almost totally reactive and defensive. Effective development came to a virtual halt. Billions of dollars were spent on security for western aid and military support workers at the expense of infrastructure creation and industrial development. A sad example is that Canada has trumpeted the building of a new hydro electric and irrigation dam in the south, hundreds of millions have been spent, and extravagant promises made. The now dam sits unused, producing no electricity and irrigating no crops. Nothing is now said about this legacy project. More generally, housing, water and sewer, electricity, social services and jobs all have taken a back seat. All of these have been in fact admissions of defeat, and the people of Afghanistan and the Taleban have not missed that point.

The truth is that the Afghan effort has failed. The promise of the early years of the decade cannot be recaptured. But governments cannot admit to this. The politics of doing so in the US, Canada and the UK are deadly. Obama, Brown and Harper are reduced to fighting a war that cannot be won, defending a country that has failed to develop a workable government, and attempting to convince a now skeptical and in many cases hostile population that is in various ways now positioning for the day when the west leaves.

A PMO e-mail claims that Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff flubbed it in a recent interview when asked why he wants to be Prime Minister. The PMO e-mail says “It was a lob question. Emmanuelle Latraverse (a Radio-Canada television journalist) asked Michael Ignatieff why he wants to be Prime Minister. An easy question for a man who wants the job so badly he tried to force an election in the middle of a recession – someone who returned from Harvard just so he could become Prime Minister.”

The PMO e-mail goes on to claim that Mr. Ignatieff couldn’t give a straight answer and that he stumbled and rambled. “He talked about everything and anything, except why he wants to become PM.” Which is true – he could not come up with anything but platitudes and rambling thoughts.

The Liberals have attacked the Conservatives for using government e-mail for such a partisan message. Which is a good point. But not the one that really matters to voters. The Conservatives are right. This should have been a gift question for a political leader of substance. Ignatieff should have been able with ease to respond with what he wants and hopes for Canada different from that offered by the Conservatives. That he could not do. The problem is that he comes to politics with one purpose only – to be Prime Minister. He has no compelling vision that drives him.

To make matters worse, in substance, he sees the world in almost exactly the same way that Harper does. He is unable to define an alternate direction for the country. Given that why should Canadians chose him?

This gets to the heart of the problem the Liberal face. There are a large number of Canadians who want the country to go in a different direction. Ignatieff neither understand nor embraces that view. People see that and are not impressed.

He has only one thing driving him – to be Prime Minister. That is not good enough. It undermines any argument for a change in leadership of the nation. Harper is doing quite a good job as a pro-business conservative. If Ignatieff offers no alternative to that, there is really no compelling reason to support him. Given the choice, most if not all of us will take the one who staked out that ground himself on his own. Harper actually has conviction driving him in that direction.

The Conservatives have hit upon the Liberals real achilles heel. As long as most people believe that Ignatieff has no other purpose then to occupy the office of Prime Minister, there is little reason for middle voters to support him. And he offers nothing to the progressive voters who will otherwise vote NDP.