Lawrence Martin - Globe and Mail

Members of Parliament head off for a three-month break this week. Animal house mercifully shuts down, not to be reconvened until late September.

The consensus around the capital is that this session ranks as one of the more ugly ones, which is saying a lot.

Rancour ruled. No one ended up looking better than when the mean-spiritedness and fake fury of the session began.

For top story, there were many contenders: the election that never came, Afghanistan and the brawl over the treatment of detainees, the global-warming wrangle, the feud over the Atlantic offshore accords, the Liberals’ semi-alliance with the Greens, the big-spending budget, the startling flip-flop of Gilles Duceppe, the RCMP scandals.

But if there was a driving theme, it was none of those. Rather, it was the character of the Prime Minister. Angry-man syndrome took over Ottawa. Stephen Harper set the tone, carried the tone, laid the tone in stone.

Governance in Canada, most experts would agree, is about consensus-building. Patience, compromise, reaching out. Mr. Harper demonstrates opposite tendencies. For him, politics is chiefly about confrontation. He took on the provinces, threatening legal action. He took on the media, creating unnecessary frictions. He even took on Bono. He filled the Commons with below-the-belt accusations, outfitted his committee chairmen with a dirty tricks handbook, disciplined anyone in his caucus who declined to exhibit trained-seal subservience.

As the session ends, many, including members of his own team, look upon Mr. Gloom and are left to wonder, “Where does all the bitterness come from? Is life all that bad? What is bugging this guy?”

While Harper has held his minority government together longer than most PM’s, and the rancour of the Conservative government has worn on all Canadians - I really wonder what it has been like for Conservative MP’s.
Going home to the barbecue circuit is going to be a mixed blessing.

I’m reading Bob Plamondon’s Full Circle. While it is written for political wonks, his research is solid, his writing understandable. He is opinionated. One of the interesting aspects of the book is his ability to score interviews with about 50 party insiders - as a party insider. It gives insight into the morphing of the Reform/Alliance/Progressive Conservative into the Conservative Party.