Last New Year's, the current leaders of Canada's three main national parties could have been excused for helping themselves to a bit of extra bubbly. Looking back on their achievements in 2003, there was much to toast; looking forward to where 2004 promised to take them, there was even more.
After more than a decade of trying, Paul Martin had finally taken over the Liberal leadership and moved into the Prime Minister's Office, and was enjoying what would prove to be a very brief honeymoon.
Stephen Harper had managed what Preston Manning and Stockwell Day never could by convincing the federal Tories to combine forces with his Canadian Alliance. For a united right, the prospects seemed infinite - and he was already the clear front-runner to lead it.
As for Jack Layton, some of us - present company included – were suggesting he'd had the best year of all. In the 11 months since taking over the NDP, he'd revitalized a party seemingly on its deathbed under Alexa McDonough. With plenty of ink, a boost in the polls and an apparent rightward shift by the post-Chretien Liberals, he seemed poised to do some serious damage.
Heading into 2005, none of them has quite as much to raise a glass to.
2004 went sour first for Mr. Martin, who found himself buried by the sponsorship scandal in February with no idea how to dig his way out. For Mr. Layton, it was early in the June election campaign when his act proved too shrill to play well on the nightly news. And for Mr. Harper, it was when his party started counting its chickens nearly two weeks before election day - imploding with a wave of idiotic press releases, candidates' outbursts and premature triumphalism.
The result was a rare election in which all the major parties -- save for the Bloc Quebecois - finished well below expectations.
For all the positive spin they can put on it, the Liberals can't be satisfied with clinging to power when they entered the year expecting to increase their majority. Nor can Mr. Martin claim to have done the best he could with the bad situation handed him by his predecessor, considering his flat, uninspired and vacuous campaign failed to give voters a single good reason to vote for his party.
The Conservatives can't really take much solace in knocking the Liberals down to minority status - not when the stars were aligned perfectly for them to win it outright. When Mr. Martin was wobbling around punch-drunk, Mr. Harper couldn't deliver the knockout blow. Rather than convincing any Liberals to come his way, he wound up turning off enough Red Tories to minimize the benefits of last year's merger.
The New Democrats arguably had bad luck to blame as much as anything else, picking up only five additional seats despite nearly doubling their share of the popular vote. But for a party that was making noises about playing with the big boys only weeks earlier, its renewed fourth-place status was pretty humbling.
Conveniently, at least for purposes of year-end reviews, the election fell smack in the middle of 2004. So we should be able to look back on how they dusted themselves off, learned from their mistakes and set about ensuring they'd do better next time. But because they don't appear to have done anything of the sort, the second half of the year may have been even more discouraging than the first.
Just like he did in his first months on the job, Mr. Martin is still dithering - incapable of making a quick decision, unwilling to stand up to anyone (notably provincial premiers) who takes him on, and lacking a comprehensive policy vision. And he's still surrounding himself with the same people he did before the election - the ones who, by all appearances, were completely unprepared for the PMO's challenges.
Mr. Harper, if anything, has actually gotten worse. Always a bit cold and remote for electoral politics, he's been all the more so in recent months, frequently disappearing from the national spotlight altogether. And, having apparently come to the conclusion the key to future success is in pandering to nationalist Quebecers, he seems more interested in decentralization than in promoting mainstream conservative policies.
Mr. Layton's case is the most perplexing. Be it his own failings or the media's short attention span, he's somehow become less prominent since taking a seat in the House of Commons. For a brief time, he seemed front-and-centre in driving the national agenda; this fall, he was barely more visible than some of his more outspoken MPs.
Messrs. Martin, Harper and Layton are all relatively novice leaders, which leaves open the possibility that what we saw in 2004 were just growing pains. For their sake, you have to hope so: If the next year is anything like the last one, each one may be looking for a new line of work sooner than he'd like.
If nothing else, at least they won't be entering 2005 with artificially high expectations.
