In Defence of Rona Ambrose. Sort of.

Rona Ambrose is having the bad hair week from hell. (Okay, tacky reference to her coiffure. I know it's wrong. Very wrong. And sexist. Sorry.) First she's viciously ambushed at Nairobi by those snaky Liberals and ingrates from the Quebec delegation, then she's late, then she's sliced and diced by various U.N. functionaries, and if that isn't enough, gives a speech resembling the post-prandial wanderings of the Peterborough County Senior Euchre Club Awards Banquet. And that's only in three days. It's enough to make any girl cry.

Though Ambrose has been thoroughly pilloried (here and here and here, and also here, here, and here) including by your humble ob't servant, repeatedly, I have to wonder: how much of the blame does she really deserve?

Before you fall out of your seats in fits of excessive jocularity, consider this: in days of yore, traditional constititutional theory held, a la Bagehot that the Prime Minister was primus inter pares, first among equals. In practice, in the Canadian polity, this hasn't been true for some decades, as successive prime ministers have concentrated power in the Prime Minister's Office, the first and last resort of government policy. Stephen Harper's New Government is just the last extreme example of this tendency. Ministers of the Crown, holders of the great offices of state are reduced to a brigade of brainless barking seals, unable to pee without express authorization from the PMO. It isn't coincidental that when the Glorious Leader trots out some new initiative, the minister actually responsible is carefully placed in the backdrop as some vacant-eyed golem, ready to spring into life at the word of some PMO flunky.

Which brings me back the the tribulations of Rona Ambrose. The Conservative green plan and the subsequent fiasco at Nairobi was orchestrated not by the scientists and advisors within Environment Canada --- who in any case weren't included in decision-making process --- but by those whip-like minds in the PMO. Unfortunately for Rona Ambrose, she now has to weather the volleys of horse fruit from the likes of me, importuned by a policy she had virtually no voice in creating. Because she's the minister responsible.

Stephen Harper, keen politico that he is, will let Ambrose twist slowly in the wind as the symbol of government incompetence and have her take the fall for the policy he ultimately approved. Then he'll sack her. No mud will stick on him. In such ways are teflon politicians made. If we let them.