McCain is it

The primaries yesterday in the US confirmed what had been coming for some weeks now, John McCain will be the Republican nominee for President.

I am glad to see McCain get the nod, though it is eight years later than it should have been. The world has had to live through eight years of George W Bush and his generally incompetent government.

My big issue with Bush is his handling of the US economy. What sort of a moron puts a nation into a deficit when the economy is going well and unemployment is rock bottom? Why are they increasing the size of government so rapidly? And the Bush created falling US dollar is a fundamental global economic insecurity - there needs to be some degree of certainty of value to money.

McCain v Bradley would have been a race that would have had a good outcome either way, instead it was Bush v Gore and a race that did not matter as neither one of them is capable of being president.

McCain strikes me as very much in the same political line as the Reform Party in Canada, and that is a good thing. Though I have to admit that I hated the Reform Party when they were around but I still thought the left had answers.

McCain is likely to be able to beat Hillary Clinton, but I would prefer for him to run against Barak Obama because I would be comfortable with either one winning. I see Obama as a pragmatic centrist and not an ideologue. Obama is light in experience but can learn quickly and looks to have a lot of very capable people around him. Hillary Clinton does nto impress me that she would be able to govern well.

McCain will likely be at odds with his own party as president, but I do not think that this is a bad thing. The US system of checks and balances is built on the assumption that the Executive and the Legislative arms of government are in some manner of tension.

I hope to see McCain win because he will be in favour of freer trade, openness in immigration and will be the only person who can find a way for the war on terror to be brought to an end. Only Nixon can go to China, only McCain can end the war on terror.

Federal Election?

The longevity of the current government is quickly working up towards a record in Canada. It has been 771 days since the last election, only twice before have minority parliaments gone on longer than this in Canadian history - those being in the Pearson era.

On September 8th of this year the government will have lasted the longest between elections with a minority. The opposition voices the threat to bring down the government but so far have not followed through with the threat.

So why is there no election? Ultimately I believe this is because none of the parties can see themselves doing well enough to make the risk of an election worth it. In many ways we are in a world much like the mid 1960s when we had three successive minority governments, two of them the longest in Canadian history.

Certainly Stephen Harper is proving to be a very skilled PM in how he is managing to keep his government going. This is very much in contrast to Paul Martin in 2004 - 2006 or Joe Clark in 1979 - 1980. His handling of parliament is even better than Trudeau's in his minority government of 1972 to 1974.

On April 2nd, Stephen Harper will pass Paul Martin in longevity as Prime Minister.