Adam Radwanski, on Stephen Harper's lunchtime speech in Toronto today.
If we consider his audience to be the people sitting here in the Sheraton Centre's ballroom, then it was exactly the right speech. Calm, reassuring - if you're a downtown Toronto businessman with a large stock portfolio and a really good suit.
Why that would be his target audience, though, is anybody's guess. There aren't that many of these people, and they're mostly living in ridings where the Tories don't have a hope in hell. They're very useful between elections for fundraising, and it's important for governments to keep them in the loop. But with a week to go before an election, these are not the voters Stephen Harper needs.
The people he needs to reach, as various commentators on this site have already advised, are those who are worried about their jobs, their homes, and their pensions. To reach them, he can't just coldly recite the reasons our economic foundations are sound - he needs to empathize. And in today's speech, there was not a single moment of empathy.
For Harper's sake, I hope he's saving his empathy for his other outings later today. Otherwise, the Tories' slide won't be stopping any time soon.
No comments:
Post a Comment