Barrel Strength

While Mark Steyn tackles the facts of Frum’s departure from the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) in his inimitable style, I wish to look at the longer record of Frum’s writings and how they have shaped his political fate.

Many have weighed in with his prior service to conservative thought. While the depth and quality of his earlier work is praiseworthy, it has no bearing on his more recent behaviour. From his book “Comeback” to his blog at FrumForum.com, he had been advocating a vision of the Republican Party that is not winning over a wave of converts. Frankly, somewhere between the poles of Glenn Beck and an Americanized Big Blue Machine the GOP can find a persuasive electoral platform. But it is not going to be solely on Frum’s terms and this is clearly disturbing him, as seen in the pattern of vituperation cited by Steyn.

No matter how prize an intellect one may possess, it is for nought if you cannot maintain a place at the table. By that I refer to the common experiences we have had in social dining. Occasionally we have witnessed guests who have surrendered their graces and made themselves quite dispensable. In the realm of politics the prime example would be Joe Clark, a man who has never accepted defeat with genuine lasting grace. In his mind, his appearance at the Liberals’ “eminent thinkers” conference this weekend is meant to be a stinging blow to the party circles that rejected him. To the rest of us it is just appalling bad manners exhibited by someone who has fallen in the esteem of most reasonable people.

I hope that Frum uses his time-out from AEI to get a clearer bead on what role he can play in conservative politics. Otherwise I fear that he will become an American Joe Clark. And I do not wish that fate upon anyone.

I was present at the Ann Coulter demo at the University of Ottawa.

She had spoken earlier to a small gathering at the Rideau Club, on behalf of the International Free Press Society, which was formed in the wake of the Mohammed cartoons in Jyllans-Posten. I consider Ann Coulter as an effective political entertainer, a brilliant rhetorician, a razor mind, and part of the great over-amplified American political shouting match.  I suspect I would tire of her by the end of a dinner party, not because she is wrong or that I disagree with her about much, but because her relentlessness would become tedious. As Oscar Wilde said: “In matters of society, it is not a matter of being right or wrong, but of being charming or tedious”.

The lecture was set to take place in Marion Hall, whose entry is off a lobby on the first floor of some non-descript building on the University of Ottawa campus. Several thousand people were lined up to see her, most of whom seemed to be orderly. The media were interviewing many people in the line-up. The lobby in front of the lecture room was filled to the brim with people seeking to get in, most of them friendly to Coulter. Having paid to see her at the Rideau Club, I walked to the head of the line, past the table in front of the auditorium doors, where those who had paid in advance had their names written down. The auditorium was filling slowly, as people ’s names were checked off lists. When the hall was half filled someone pulled the fire alarm, to the annoyance of all. After that point no one else was let in to the auditorium. I overheard the police tell the young security guard that the hall was going to be cleared, but nothing of that sort happened. This would have been about 6:45 pm.

I chatted with various people in the audience (conservatives, cameramen, security personnel) and then went back up to the top of the auditorium and peeked out the door. By this time the militants had seized the left hand side of the entry hall and were demanding to be let in, without payment of course. When I say demanding, they were shouting en bloc, waving fists and behaving as an organized mob would.  I saw a friend in the crowd on the friendly side of the crowd and got him into the auditorium. The crowd of people, some hostile, some friendly to Coulter, was as thick as anything that could be found on the Tokyo subway.

It was apparent to me that if the police and security had made any determined attempt whatever to keep order, and to arrest the troublemakers, the speech would have gone ahead.  It is also apparent to me that if Coulter and her bodyguard had wished to get in, they could not have done so from the front entrance  against the wish of the anti-Coulterites, without severe risk of personal violence, though they might have slipped in the back door of the auditorium.

My impression was that the interests of both the leftie protesters and of Miss Coulter for political theatre were served. They succeeded in preventing her from speaking; she got millions of publicity, and only Allan Rock’s University was embarrassed, if at all, by its pusillanimity. But then Allan Rock, Chancellor of the University, was the man who brought us the long-gun registry. The man who cannot be embarrassed by a multi-million dollar failed gun registry cannot be embarrassed by his employee, the twee Provost Mr.  Houle, the idiocy of his students asking for a “safe” environment, safe from any conservative thought whatever.