WHO IS Stephen Harper? What makes him tick? It is a question Canadians should be asking.
As leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, Harper is one of just a few score of Canadians who have in the 138 years of Canadian history had a decent chance to become prime minister.
He has been involved in Canadian public life and debate since the mid-1980s, almost half his 46 years.
With an election months away, Harper’s party sits within striking distance of the governing but vulnerable Liberals.
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Yet for most Canadians, he remains largely a mystery.
Of course, people who have witnessed speeches or news conferences know he is an angry man who despises Liberals, a publicly humourless man who wants to become prime minister, who opposes same-sex marriage, high taxes and big central government.
Physically, he has lips that strangely appear lipstick-red in photos, hair that would not budge in Katrina winds and unsettling husky eyes that, while a penetrating blue in person, bleach out to a disturbing white on television.
But those are all descriptions of public positions and appearances.
For voters who soon could find him at the political helm, more interesting questions are: why does he think the way he does, a Republican conservative who has lived all his life in middle-of-the-road Canada? How radically does he want to reform Canada? What moves him, makes him cry, makes him laugh? How flexible is he in the face of opposition ?
Is he decisive or a ditherer, compassionate or flinty, laid-back or driven?
Most people wouldn’t have a clue.
All of which made a new biography – Stephen Harper and the Future of Canada by journalist and Quebec English-rights activist William Johnson – an eagerly anticipated tome.
“Do you know Stephen Harper?” asks the jacket promotion. “Read this thorough, fair and thoughtful book and you will know him well, not as a husband or hockey dad but as a serious politician.”
Alas, that is true for both good and ill.
Johnson admires Harper, seeing in him a public intellectual with conviction and a clear constitutional position on Quebec-Canada relations that reminds him of Pierre Elliott Trudeau. (In much of the West, that would not be high praise but Johnson means it as such).
The book follows Harper through decades of developing a conservative view of what ails Canada. It describes, rather than analyzes, his political skills and strengths that helped him swallow the historic Progressive Conservative party into the remnants of the Reform party.
But it does not explain why he thinks the way he does, how he reconciles “principled” conservative positions of yore with his more recent tendency to promise voters almost everything the Liberals are promising.
The Harper that emerges from Johnson’s 407 pages is a cardboard character in a world of policy positions, ideologies and strategies but with few human dimensions. Harper’s refusal to be interviewed for the book obviously handicapped the author’s ability to sketch a more complicated character.
It’s a pity because at the end of a well-researched book, many questions remain.
Who is Stephen Harper? What makes him tick?
