Well, you can make it about Dion if you like: he's an easy target, having been perhaps the most inept politician our political scene has witnessed since Kim Campbell.
But in the end, the opposition to the coalition was just shrill hand-wringing from Harper. The Westminster parliamentary system clearly authorizes coalitions, and a coalition government is always going to be just as legitimate as a weak minority government would be. The fact that we don't have a coalition right now is just a testament to Harper's inability to play nicely with others. Instead of all that hand-waving and silliness he engaged in during "coalitiongate," he should have tried to form a coalition of his own with the Liberals. If he had, we would now have a stable center-right government instead of this idiotic gridlock and constant hot-button posturing from all sides. Not to mention that such a coalition would instantly have had more legitimacy because a) the Liberals were leaderless at that moment anyway and b) they wouldn't have needed the Bloc.
Harper's flaw is that in spite of being a relatively shrewd operator politically, he's kind of a moron when it comes to governance--that is, he's unable to perceive the moment when it is time to stop grandstanding and start governing. In my view, that's what will keep him from ever being remembered as a great, or even a good prime minister. It's too bad--he is a fairly bright guy otherwise, though a bit of a charisma vacuum.
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