In the middle of the 1964 election campaign, William F. Buckley, Jr. noted that a public humiliation which Barry Goldwater had to endure – one very similar to what Dean had to face at that recent televised Hardball town hall, except that Goldwater concluded a voter’s interrogation of him with a specific promise and Dean didn’t – meant that Americans prefer their politicians to be hypocrites. Men or women of integrity are just too threatening to certain voters who are effective at influencing others.

This conclusion (found in Buckley’s The Jeweler’s Eye) has, as far as I know, not been matched for the country of Canada. Upon the assumption that the hypocrisy expected of American political figures is a basis for a false sense of superiority among Canadians, I am reciprocating the above analysis by spilling a certain tub of beans: it is easy to show that Canadians prefer that their political figures be overgrown children.

Just look at the career record of the outgoing Prime Minister, Jean Chrétien. A straightforward analysis of his popularity among the Canadian voter for most of his term as P.M., which then compares this popularity to his actions as Prime Minister, would leave a rational person baffled. Why would a man who, in the fall of 1996, committed an in-front-of-a-camera physical assault at the expense of a voter end up being cheered for it rather than feared and hated? Had, say, Ted Kennedy grabbed a protestor by the neck in front of the American news cameras, what would the consequences be?

The same question hangs over Chrétien’s overall track record, which can be summed up in one word: “mediocre.” After (at the very least) presiding over a libel campaign directed against a previous P.M., Brian Mulroney, Chrétien effectively implemented Mulroney’s agenda. (As far as the libel is concerned, the typical American voter would have yelled “Watergate!” – but not in Canada. The average Canadian voter just let it slide, like that assault.) What other word can you use to describe a Prime Minister whose few ‘achievements’ clearly has their origin in the platform of the party he claims to oppose?

It’s safe to bring these things up now because Chrétien is retiring – but if you had tried it before his “little guy” act imploded, you would have run a real risk of being shunned. The best you could have hoped for had you stuck to your guns would have been a crankish kind of notoriety.

Does this indicate that there’s some sort of secret conspiracy to rob the noble Canadian of his electoral sense? No. What it really indicates is what the average Canadian voter considers forgivable: A political figure in Canada will be forgiven much if he or she is at heart childish. That is what Chrétien’s act tapped into.

Leaving aside Chrétien’s other lies - such as faking a disability which could have been exposed at any time during his term – his soon-to-be-over career indicates that such lying and irresponsibility is easily ignored by the average Canadian provided that the figure in question has a help-me demeanor. Much political success can be enjoyed by a nonentity provided that they’ve mastered the help-me act.

This will not change because pity is too easy a sell in Canadian politics. The next incumbent, Paul Martin, has already polished a help-me act of his own. The only one that saw a chance of beating him in the last Liberal leadership convention, which Martin won overwhelmingly, was Sheila Copps, another politician with a public persona that says “immature.” The others (such as John Manley) who couldn’t dab himself with pity lacquer dropped out before the convention started.

There should be little need to wonder about the spillover of this in terms of policy. Just as Americans’ tolerance of hypocrisy has a definite effect upon the rest of the world’s perception of the United States, so does Canadians’ tolerance of childishness. The polite way of expressing this is the phrase “Canada is a middle power,” but given the source of it, maybe a better way of expressing it would be "the Canadian government at present is simply not reliable enough to play with the big boys.”

Disclosing the above doesn’t give me any pleasure, but it really has to be acknowledged. I have a suspicion that this side of Canadian politics is so well-known around the world that to hide it would be little more than, to use the pop psychology phrase, “living in denial.” People that live that way are not exactly seen as reliable either, now are they?