With the departure of Maxime Bernier, Cabinet Draft 2008 appears to be getting underway. Prognosticators are busy speculating on who will fill which seats, and even whether any seats other than Bernier’s are up for grabs. (Google News result 2 for the query ‘harper cabinet shuffle’: “Bernier affair unlikely to prompt major cabinet shuffle, source says”*Translation: Harper’s office wishes to quell speculation, but isn’t willing to commit strongly enough to a small shuffle to say on the record that that’s what it will do. In the absence of a Daily Show up here, someone really needs to start a blog to sift through all the “unsourced” crap that is clearly coming from the PMO.; result 3: “Major cabinet shuffle expected in coming weeks.”)
Alongside this speculation has come a rash of banal tsk-tsking to the effect that Maxime Bernier’s departure illustrates why Cabinet posts should emphasize talent over regional concerns. This wisdom has emanated from The National’s At Issue panel,*Whose video podcast I am addicted to. Why must you tease me so with your sensibly furrowed brow, Andrew Coyne?*Also worth two minutes of every day: The Hour‘s Cold Openings. the Globe and Mail’s editorial pages, and practically everyone capable of formulating a reasonably intelligent opinion on politics.*Everyone who fits this description, step forward. Not so fast, robotic vacuum cleaner! (Sadly, nothing yet from Maclean’s generally excellent Blog Central.*Which, near as I can tell, operates as a sort of potlatch economy, granting bloggers status only if they lead with a gift of praise for a fellow Maclean’s writer.*Not so over here. FYI, Christopher Flavelle (walrusmagazine.com‘s Bright Lights blogger) still thinks practical jokes involving laser pointers are funny, and Jared Bland (The Shelf) cheats at beach volleyball. You should only read their blogs if the rest of the Internet is down.)
Clearly, none of these people watch enough sports. Or if they do, they aren’t giving them enough thought. I’m talking levels of thought that, properly applied, could resolve questions that have plagued human existence for centuries.*Such as: Why are we here? And: Why are we really here? And: Who do I have to kill to find out why we’re really here? And: What do you mean by yourself? Fortunately, my friends and I are up to the task. We’ve argued out the talent vs. regional representation thing many times before, in the form of the age-old debate between the Best Player Available (BPA) and Fill A Need (FAN) theories of drafting for major league sports teams. This argument predates politics, going right back to the dawn of human life, when God had to decide between creating Adam or a left-handed pitcher with great upside from Bayonne, New Jersey.*His choice is only the first of many reasons why Darwin eventually turfed Him.
If you’re not familiar with the two theories, or are incapable of deduction, two babes(ish) will refresh you on the subject, apropos the 2007 NFL draft:
Which brings us to the upcoming National Basketball Association draft, and the dilemma faced by the Miami Heat, who are drafting in the number two position and who desperately need a point guard, but are likely to see the best one in the draft, Derrick Rose, go first overall to the Chicago Bulls. They will then be faced with three choices: (1) draft the consensus BPA in position number two, a power forward named Michael Beasley (pictured above), who would help them but who they don’t fully need; (2) try to trade down and draft one of several lower-rated point guards; (3) in the event a trade isn’t possible, “reach” for one of those lower-rated guards and hope he pans out.
The decision is always obvious in hindsight. We’re all very certain Harper reached for Maxime Bernier, passing up much better players, such as Diane Ablonczy, Jason Kenney, and Kevin Sorensen, in order to address his team’s Quebec-sized hole. It’s true, GMs and PMs have a habit of falling in love with certain player types, to the absence of all reason. In the case of Kevin Lowe, general manager of my beloved Edmonton Oilers, it’s Coke machine–sized wingers who ultimately deliver all the oomph of warm Fresca; in the case of Stephen Harper, it’s boyish Quebecers who eventually reveal self-destructive weaknesses for gun molls. (Money quote from Paul Wells’s Right Side Up: “[Harper] always, right back to university days, was a pretty perceptive evaluator of people … Pretty good at knowing what slots they could fill, what their strengths and weaknesses were.”—John Weissenberger, one of Harper’s best friends.)*Real money quote from Right Side Up: “It begins, as great adventures so often do, in a conference room on the Vancouver International Airport hotel strip, at a Canadian Alliance breakfast meeting on competitiveness policy. There’s a pastry tray and some pitchers of orange juice at the back. Just like in Homer.” That’s not just money, that’s cash money. *I believe I’ve just earned some face time on Blog Central.
Still, my long experience with the BPA/FAN debate teaches me that picking a Cabinet is a damned if you do, damned if you don’t proposition. It may look like the clear choice from the cheap seats to draft Michael Beasley to throw down dunks or Diane Ablonczy to throw down spreadsheets, but if you’ve got no one to give Beasley the ball or Ablonczy credibility in Quebec, and Opposition point guards or politicians are tearing up the gaps in your defence, you’ve retained a serious problem. And either way, people will complain, then jump all over you if your choice flops.
For a rare reasonable take on the situation, check out Don Martin’s piece in last Friday’s Calgary Herald. It will certainly be interesting to see what Harper does to fill the seat. If it were me, I’d pass on the BPA, forgo bringing Christian Paradis up from the D-League, and instead sign a senator in free agency.
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