Wednesday, September 09, 2009

Playing the election blame game

My original headline on this column for the Post was "Playing the election blame game" but I imagine "Don't blame Ignatieff" will be how most Conservatives, particularly their commenters, will take it. I'd like to think my point was a little more nuanced than that, however.

My thesis, in essence, was that there's plenty of election responsibility to go around, and while, in the end I think the blame game is a media creation that goes away by writ day three, if the Conservative government does go down this fall, Stephen Harper has some explaining to do too.

As a Liberal, I can confidently say we made every effort to make this parliament work. Alas, I can't say the same for Steve.

Invariably, before any election all the parties try mightily to pin the blame for the trip to the polls on one of their opponents, on the tides, on anyone or anything but themselves. They seem to fear being blamed for the election very strongly, yet invariably as an issue it seems to die within days of the writ drop. It's one of those media truisms that never seems to hold true.
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