The cabinet is bare

In case anybody was wondering just how weak the Cons' cabinet is, Don Martin went looking for reasons to rank up to 10 ministers as having been successful - and instead couldn't even get to 5 without lowering his standards all the way to Stockwell Day:

The bad ones are easy to find. But scout around to find the best of Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Cabinet and, after a couple of obvious nominations, insiders retreat into an awkward silence marked by a furrowed brow.

That is why this isn't a Top 10 list of Cabinet stars to go with yesterday's list of underperformers. There just aren't enough above-average performers to fill it...

When the NDP released its report card for the Cons' cabinet ministers, my first question was who (if anybody) had managed to earn a relatively high mark...on the assumption that surely even the Cons couldn't manage to avoid having a single cabinet minister who ranks as anything but a disaster from a progressive perspective. But after reviewing both the NDP's comments and Martin's last couple of columns, it seems like they've managed to pull it off.

Which isn't to say that a couple of them haven't served their purpose from the Cons' angle so as to rank highly in Martin's view. But Jim Flaherty and Maxime Bernier evidently took over their respective roles with the goal of slashing and privatizing as much as possible with little regard to what's best for citizens. And while it takes some PR skill to avoid massive public blowups over those kinds of moves, the message management doesn't come close to outweighing the substantive damage.

Meanwhile, the Cons who have had an opportunity to do some good on more progressive files have nothing much to show for it. Tony Clement has not only failed to deliver on one of the Cons' top "priorities", but also completely ignored the strong movement for a national prescription drug plan. Jim Prentice may manage to rank at the top of the Cons' pile in combining relative centrism with relative competence, but his role in killing the Kelowna accord undoubtedly keeps him from being seen as a positive influence on the balance. John Baird may have managed to get an Accountability Act through Parliament, but the final bill didn't accomplish anywhere near what the Cons promised to achieve. And of course, the less that's said about Rona Ambrose, the better.

For some reason, Martin holds out hope that some of the Cons' current backbenchers or parliamentary secretaries could do better. But even if some Cons are capable of doing better than their currently-woeful lot, surely PMS deserves blame for inflicting the present bunch on Canada. And that poor central management, along with the individual incompetence and/or extreme ideology, will hopefully lead to the lot being booted out of the class before long.