Dear Steve,
Ordinarily, I'm not in the habit of writing to sitting prime ministers except for that time I penned a letter to Maggie Thatcher to suggest she tell George Bush the Elder to grow a pair. After all, I'm just an average citizen and I generally assume that I'm no expert when it comes to running the federal government.
But even I have to pause and wonder what the heck is going on with your gang up there in Ottawa these days. Have you all been starting cocktail hour at lunchtime or smoking all that excess B.C. bud confiscated by the RCMP?
That's the only plausible reason I can come up with for the mess you've gotten yourself into. Otherwise, I've gotta assume you recently suffered a stroke that destroyed the area of your brain reserved for common sense.
What were you thinking when you appointed Mike Duffy and Pamela Wallin to the Senate? Steve, Steve, Steve. They're journalists. You know; the crazy folks who spend all their time on TV pretending that they know what they're talking about.
I wouldn't trust a journalist to hold my opened beer, much less a Senate seat complete with an expense account based on the "honour system." Remember, this is the class of folks who back in the days when newspapers actually made money spent most of their time inebriated or sobering up.
As I recall, you never had a good word to say about the media. You might have gone a little overboard with your hate-on for journalists, but you were definitely on the right track. All the more puzzling to discover that you elevated two of these clowns to a Senate sinecure.
Buy hey, what's done is done. You appointed them and you've gotta live with the consequences. What you didn't have to do was try to bail them out. These are basically reporters, Steve, and reporters will do and say just about anything to get their faces and names in the news.
So it beggars the imagination that your chief of staff cut a cheque to one of these jokers to help him pay off his illegitimate housing claims. You say you weren't aware but that doesn't sound like you, Steve. From what I hear, you know every tiny detail of the workings of your government right down to the toilet habits of every member of your cabinet.
I'm betting you did know about the cheque but I can't understand why you let this happen. It doesn't sound like the ruthless Steve I've come to know and love. What happened to cut him loose and let him twist in the wind?
Likewise with that Wallin gal, what the heck were you thinking? When the issue of her dubious travel claims first issued, all I was expecting from you was a big fat serving of silence.
Instead you started chattering away like some beauty contestant about how much you respect Ms. Wallin and how her travel expenses looked mighty fine to you. Unless she's got some real good dirt on you, Steve, it's just passing strange that you would stick out your neck for a non-parachute-wearing journalist with one foot already out the airplane door.
It looks like you've finally regained your senses and have started distancing yourself from these two buffoons. A bit late, no doubt, but still a definite step in the right direction.
Yet all is not lost. When it comes to politics, a week is a lifetime and with your tidy little majority, you've got plenty of weeks to make this problem go away.
The public always likes someone to admit their mistakes and seek redemption. All you gotta do, Stevie boy, is tell the Canadian public you're sorry for appointing two journalists to the Senate and that you'll never make that mistake again.
You didn't know what you were doing. You thought these two were different. You trusted them but now you know you were wrong. You can't trust the media. Ever.
Tell 'em that the next time Senate vacancies arise, you'll stick to the tried and true and just appoint doctors, lawyers, hockey players and Tory bagmen. Unlike journalists, they know when to shut their mouths and lift their snouts out of the trough.
Your pal,
Dave