If Simon's post on the Globe and Mail's Silver/Powers blog goes off course at all, it's in his apparent view that Tim Powers' relentless stream of Con talking points would suggest somebody one would want to "have a beer with". But he nicely hints at a point that I'd been thinking about myself as well.
On paper, the structure of Silver/Powers would seem to make sense as an attempt to facilitate a clash of points between the Libs and Cons. Of course that itself presents an unduly limited picture of the political scene, but in theory it at least offers some prospect of "balance" as defined by conventional corporate-media wisdom.
But with increasingly rare exceptions, the result has proven to be something else entirely. Both Powers and Silver seem to be spending most of their time launching attacks to their left: Silver has made a hobby out of bashing unions, David Miller and any policy which might be anything other than big business' first choice (secure in the knowledge that none of his targets enjoys a similar platform to respond), while Powers is able to rest assured that Silver is more interested in attacking anybody with NDP leanings than in addressing any but the most inflammatory of Harper-style cheap shots directed his way.
As a result, rather than even meeting the already-modest goal of presenting a clash over an artificial "centre", the Globe and Mail's excuse for a back-and-forth discussion is instead working consistently to move the boundaries of Canadian political discussion further to the right. But I suppose those of us who see politics as more than an argument about what colour should accompany a corporatist agenda should be taking solace in the fact that a blogger who "has at one time or another canvassed door to door for all parties save the Marxist Leninists" has meekly suggested that Michael Ignatieff should pretend to be progressive.
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