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Perhaps this is the last Liberal majority.

When a Prime Minister stays in office for more than two terms you have an oligarch. I think that this is the situation in Russia but it can also be a situation at home when a leader gets re-elected for more than the required number of terms. It is worse when politics is viewed as a sport and by that I mean all the politician cares about is providing a win for his family and not to do a service for the country that he representing. So it seemed that Chretien stayed on to satisfy his wife as if he were in some sort of sport contest.

Chretien, the last successful Liberal leader got in on a majority he mentioned but it is his constant reference to how politics was like a sport for him, in a recent interview on the Hour, that has saddened me. It sounded like politics was secondary to winning. He worked thirty years, as he said to be able to get to the Prime Minister’s office, which shows determination. You don’t go blaming another Prime Minister, namely Paul Martin for having gotten into power too quickly and yet it took him over thirty years to become the Liberal leader. Politics is a dirty game and dirtier when Prime Ministers think they have a greater legitimacy because they won the political race after so many years.

When it came to Kyoto, Chretien could have made an effort I think, instead of saying he had other issues to deal with, like balancing the books. It was good that he got his party out of debt. As a result we got a Prime Minister who was more intent on making business deals and had nothing to do with the question regarding the future of our environment When it came to Afghanistan he did not want to get involved. At least he advised the Americans to go to the United Nations for consent but that of course did not change the co-operative path that Harper chose later on.