Globe | Rex Murphy: Mr. Harper throws down the gauntlet

There’s life in the old cat yet, thank the Lord.

The doddering feline in question here is Canadian politics. There’s been so much of the American stuff, Obama and Hillary, Obama and McCain, Obama and Obama - and don’t get me wrong, it’s all been quality material - that it felt like our own politics had just disappeared, or slunk out of the room while the really big game down in the States took over the headlines and fed the talk shows.

In the last number of months if it hadn’t been for Maxime Bernier and his temp-consort, Couillard of Harley-Davidson, a lot of Canadians might have forgotten there is such a sport as Canadian politics. We owe Mr. Bernier more than he knows just for keeping the flame alive. And if, in the fall, Julie Couillard comes out with her much-anticipated Proustian memoir of the affair (working title, From the Clubhouse to the Caucus: Someone Bugged my Posturepedic) I think our politics will be able to stand shoulder to shoulder with whatever the Americans happen to be churning out at the moment. Unless of course Jesse Jackson lets loose again with some nifty surgical fantasy on the subject of Barack Obama’s … er, bowling equipment.

Still, since summer began, and right up to this week, there really hasn’t been much to chew on. We’ve been told Stéphane Dion has been touring the country spreading the Good News of the carbon tax, but you can hopscotch from St. John’s to Victoria and I challenge you to find what we newstypes sometimes chillingly call “one real Canadian” who’s been aware, or cares, that Mr. Dion’s out there.

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