Paul Wells on What Harper Did

After Stephen Harper’s Conservatives finally won a majority government in 2011, I used to enjoy terrifying readers by reminding them that by the time his term ended in 2015, Harper would still be three years younger than Jean Chrétien was when Chrétien became prime minister for the first time. Since Chrétien had lasted a decade, I was implying, Harper could turn out to be damned near eternal. Readers would protest that they could not stand the man. So how could he keep winning elections? But by 2011, I had a ready answer: You never could stand him in the first place, and yet he has won three in a row. Why would he stop now?

The truth—obvious to me only in hindsight—is that very soon after the 2011 election, Harper’s electoral goose was already pretty thoroughly cooked. He had always run an insurgency. He could not figure out how to run an incumbency.