Stephen Harper's Joe Biden moment

John Howard vs. Neil Kinnock. Mr Biden's borrowings seem to have gone on longer and further (stealing a life story too) than those in Mr Harper's one speech, and indeed Mr Biden's were instrumental in his giving up his 1988 presidential bid. Nonetheless, the Conservatives' initial response was terribly lame:

[...]

Tory spokesman dismisses issue as irrelevant

Reached by CBC News following Rae's appearance, Harper's spokesman Kory Teneycke dismissed the issue as irrelevant, saying the release of the video was an "act of desperation" from the Liberal campaign a day ahead of the first of the leaders' debates.

"I'm not going to get into a debate about a five-year-old speech that was delivered three Parliaments ago, two elections ago, when the prime minister was the leader of a party that no longer exists," Teneycke said.

"We're going to focus on the economy, which is the No. 1 issue Canadians want to talk about. We're not going to be distracted by attacks from the Liberal war room."

However, Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion later called for Harper to be expelled from the House of Commons over the affair, in which he said Harper "plagiarized George W. Bush [emphasis added] about the Iraq war" in a telling way...

Boy, is M. Dion confused. So what's new. As the CBC story quoted just above takes pains to point out in the next sub-head:

Australian leader ally of Bush government

It later emerged that the lifting was done by a speechwriter without Mr Harper's knowledge; the writer has now resigned from his current job in the Prime Minister's office. Mr Biden, on the other hand, knew full well whom he was using. Mr Harper should, in any event, apologize for what happened.

Mark C.

Update: Lots of people are comparing Mr Harper's 2003 stand on Iraq with M. Chretien's. For the record, I describe the former prime minister's principled policy in this comment at Raphael Alexander's blog:

Two points: Chretien made no independent decision not to take part in the Iraq war. He simply said Canada would go along with whatever the UN Security Council authorized. The UNSC did not authorize an attack (no vote even held because of certain French and Russian vetoes) so the Canadian government then said "no" definitively, based on the UNSC situation. In other words, a vital decision of Canadian foreign policy was put into the hands of France and Russia. Some brave, independent, policy.

Chretien moreover had already covered his ass in case the UNSC did go along with the US. In February 2003, when it was still unclear what the Council would do, he committed the bulk of the available Canadian Army to join ISAF in Kabul that summer. So we had no significant ground forces to contribute had things turned out differently.

Yet somehow the myth has taken hold that Chretien courageously stood up to George Bush and on his own kept us out of war. What a bunch of hooey.

Background here.

Posted by markc at September 30, 2008 09:03 PM