Bubble Boy

He moves untouched and unseen by the rabble.  Protesters, and uninvited guests, are hurried out of his presence.  Being Prime Minister of Canada entails certain advantages, including being able to avoid the messiness of modern democracy.  In fairness the Prime Minister, any prime minister of a modern liberal democracy, is a magnet for kooks and political stunt artists.  Trying to embarrass the leader of the opposition is largely pointless, he hasn't done anything so there's nothing to mock, except his often mutable policy pronouncements.  The current Prime Minister has the added burden of being a Conservative.  Jean Chretien could strangle protesters at random, and shove reporters out of the way, he after all was compassionate.  In modern Canada conservatives - and even mere Conservatives - are guilty until proven "progressive."  The fierce discipline, that approaches paranoia, imposed on the Tory caucus attracts charges of authoritarianism, but it curbs down on gaffe induced poll drops.  Candidates musing about abortion or same sex marriage is fine in Lethbridge, but the left leaning sheep of Toronto frighten easily.  Thus Stephen Harper, and much of his Tory Team, live in a bizarre "bubble" trying vainly not to seem like anything but nice fellows interested in running the country.  Why this hyper discipline is still necessary, after 2 1/2 years of a fairly moderate and sensible government, is shown by this off hand remark by a Tory voter in southern Etobicoke, a former suburb of Toronto:

Says software designer and Conservative voter, Mark Brombacher, after meeting Boyer: "My employees crack jokes about me being Conservative. It's kind of not cool. ... People in the big city see it as lowbrow."

That's about it.  It's not about compassion or social justice.  The bastions of Canadian Liberalism are urban areas where chic matters.  Voting preference is merely one of a thousand ways the urbanite proves his cultural credentials to his contemporaries.  It long ago became fashionable to mock the Rat Race, yet this is it's urban version, a race about values and lifestyle.  That these are thinly worn, and easily discarded, does not change their power.  It's cool to be Left.  Why?  Because the Right is supposedly the party and policies of the establishment.  Generals are mocked for fighting the last war, yet intellectuals and urban voters do much the same thing. 

The central historical memory - so far as this group retains anything that can be described as a collective memory - for the Left is the 1960s.  It was the highwater mark of their influence, before Nixon began the electoral process of shifting America and much of the West to the Right, or simply the center-Left.  It's forever 1968 and their parents - though now really their grandparents - are holding power against the rising generation.  It is the first establishment in history to pretend it's not an establishment.  For decades Mexico was ruled by a political party calling itself the Institutional Revolutionary Party.  In that oxymoronic spirit walks much of the boomer Left and their progeny.  When such a mentality controls the politics of a country's largest cities, argument is largely pointless.  You can't convince people who aren't interest in being right or wrong, or Left or Right, but simply feeling good.  Trudeau entered politics saying he wanted to put reason above emotion.  His political legacy is an electorate seeking after one emotion, smug contentment.