The leaders' debate

I watched the leaders' debate last night. Initial thought: Martin was terrible. And insane. What the hell is he thinking, pledging to get rid of the notwithstanding clause? Probably this: "I'm going to be evicted from 24 Sussex in two weeks--better go for a Hail Mary." I'm surprised the other three leaders didn't burst out laughing. File that one under "Not a Chance, Paul". Talk about a hidden agenda--he wants 9 judges (appointed by him) to rule the country. Who needs parliament anyway? I wonder if we're going to get a bunch of letters to the editor, talking about how Paul Martin "scares me" because of his "hidden agenda".

Harper was good, not spectacularHe deflected criticism well and did a good job of articulating the Conservative positions. The tone was set in the opening statements when Martin just trashed Harper with his tired fearmongering, whereas Harper didn't even mention Martin, focussing solely on what the Conservatives would do if elected.

Layton was boring. It's a debate, not an infomercial for recycled socialist policies. He directly answered maybe one quarter of the questions he was asked. I really like Duceppe. He is the only one who seems to care that we have a constitution that gives certain responsibilities to the provinces. He is totally right in telling Ottawa to butt out of provincial jurisdictions like health care and education. I wish the Bloc was a federal party.

In my not-so-humble, totally biased opinion, Harper won. Martin was passionate on some things, but it seemed so contrived, like absolutely everything about him. Either way, he certainly didn't land anything remotely close to a knockout punch on Harper.

The three best lines of the night:

1. "[Martin] is a living democratic deficit" - Duceppe
2. "The Liberal policy is 'Not Seen, Not Caught'" - Duceppe again
3. "We gave 5 billion to aboriginals because that is the root cause of poverty in the country" - Martin. That makes zero sense.

In fairness to the other three, Duceppe has the advantage of sounding hilarious. His accent alone is a reason to vote for him.

There's still lots of time left for Ontarians to be scared into voting for the Grits, so we'll see. But I've got my fingers crossed that Prime Minister Dithers is soon going to be Unemployed Dithers. And that's bad news for him, because as Duceppe reminded us a million times: "da Liberals stole $45 billion from da pockettes of da unemployed."