The prime minister has finally found a voice. Marshal Dillon’s. If you are more than 20 years younger than the prime minister, you might be wondering who that is.
Marshal Matt Dillon was the hero of a radio and, later, a TV western that the young Mr. Martin grew up with. Played by William Conrad on radio and James Arness on the tube, the man who was the law on that show would regularly confront the bad guys threatening the good people of Dodge City. He would stare them down and then take their guns away.
This week Paul (Marshal Dillon) Martin rode into Canada’s version of Dodge City, Toronto. He tried to convince the frightened locals that he had the talent, the energy, the power and the credibility to stare down the gangs who have turned their neighborhoods into killing fields.
Folks who live in Toronto and other urban centres can make up their own minds as to whether Paul Martin can do in real life what his hero did on TV. But politically the question today is not whether the PM can make Canada’s urban murder meter stop clicking. If you believe that one drug dealer, one drug mule, or even one badass punk is intimidated by Paul Martin, then I suggest you go outside on this frosty weekend and get some fresh air.
The politics of Paul Martin’s gun announcement are simple. Like all other policy announcements, it is designed to force the opponent and his supporters to overreact.
People in the political business and the journalists who aren’t merely stenographers and groupies understand what the word wedge means. The Liberal machine uses the gun issue to drive a wedge between Ontario Conservatives and their plain-speakin’ gun-totin’ kissin’ cousins in Western Canada.
You don’t have to take it from me, a western-based rhetorical gunslinger. You can just listen to the ramblings of Gordon Wilson. At one time he was the leader of the provincial Liberals in B.C. That’s when they were merely playing the role of the confused little guy who always misses his bus. Wilson, who never could figure out how to win a provincial election as a Liberal, has no trouble understanding how the federal Liberals do it.
On a panel hosted by Peter Mansbridge on CBC’s The National, Wilson talked about Paul Martin and guns and wedge politics.
“The handgun issue has really caused the debate to stir in British Columbia and the West generally. The National Firearms Association came out. They’ve panned it. There’s the same old voices who were very active in Alliance and Reform out saying, ‘Here we go once again (with a) move to take away firearms from law-abiding Canadians.’ So the old rhetoric is starting to bubble up, and that’s exactly what the Liberals want to do.”
And there you have it, right from an old Liberal horse’s mouth.
He might as well have said, “Peter, let’s cut the crap. Paul Martin isn’t going to solve problems in throwaway Canada. He is not going to get tough on the drug crowd that shoots to kill. But there is no issue that forces those western right-wingers out of their gopher holes faster than the word gun. When Paul Martin talks about taking guns away, he might as well be telling these guys in the sticks that they are about to get their private parts chopped off. And when western white guys start colouring the air purple, Ontarians look for shelter in the arms of Big Red.”
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