CBC Saskatchewan's election reporters have hit the campaign trail and are hard at work producing news reports for broadcast. They'll also be filing quips, notes, jokes and anedotes for our special election feature, Reporters Notebook.
Now, Tommy Douglas' Mouseland speech from 1944 is certainly good hearty Saskatchewan political rhetoric, no dispute there.
It's just that for me ... I wonder about the "recent" part. Guess it all depends on your perspective.
You could be forgiven if, during this election campaign, you got the impression that Lorne Calvert and Brad Wall don't think much of each other.
However, you might be interested to know that though there are differences, the two leaders admire one another, too.
Last Christmas I asked Calvert and Wall to say something nice about each other ('tis the season, after all).
Here's what Calvert said about Wall:
"Brad Wall is a very capable speaker. I think he's an agile mind. He's a good debater."
And here's what Wall said about Calvert:
"The premier has an amazing ability to orate. To do that, and that's not an easy thing to do, and extemporaneously... that's not an easy thing to do."
So while those two are attempting to knock the stuffing out of each other on Tuesday night, realize that they may be secretly admiring their opponent while they devise their own clever comeback.
Like everything in this election campaign, the issue of marijuana -- who smoked, who inhaled, and who knew what when -- is nuanced and more complicated than it needs to be.
So, in the interest of providing you the blog reader with helpful "cribs notes" on this issue, I offer the following chart:
Brad Wall: Smoked Marijuana (Inhaled) *
Bill Clinton (included for context): Smoked Marijuana (Didn't inhale)
David Karwacki: Didn't smoke Marijuana (Didn't inhale)
Lorne Calvert: Didn't smoke Marijuana (Inhaled) **
* This was apparently the first time Wall had made this admission publicly, prompting him to ask that the reporters hold off reporting for a few minutes while he contacted his mother.
To quote George Bush, this campaign is a "different kind of war," a much different campaign that the one four years ago. That campaign was virtually over within the first few days.
Elwin Hermanson famously had already said "We'd be crazy not to look at offers" referring to the possibility of selling SaskTel if the right deal came along.
The Nazi cartoon (depicting Hermanson as a Nazi-like figure) was all the chatter on the election trail and folks were still talking about the so-called Saskatchewan Party "hit-list" -- a list of people "with NDP connections" kept by the Saskatchewan Party and accidentally leaked to the NDP.
Those three things were defining features in that campaign, but mostly it was Hermanson's comments on the Crowns.
It all boiled down to a single issue: Can the Saskatchewan Party be trusted with the Crowns?
This time, the policy fronts seem to be much more broad and as of yet there isn't a single compelling issue dominating above all. The issue of the NDP's drug plan and its sustainability is the closest thing to a defining issue so far. Mostly the parties are duking it out, policy by policy.
This is a policy wonk's campaign so far (debating drugs, tuition, property tax, democratic reform) reminiscent of the Federal Conservatives successful campaign in 2006. At that time the Conservatives set the agenda by announcing one policy after the other... policies that became the subject of debate (eliciting clever beer and popcorn comments from Liberal spinners) and ended up making Stephen Harper sound less scary to voters.
Makes you wonder if the Saskatchewan Party is taking a page out of the Conservative's handbook here in their attempt to “de-scary” themselves and convince people that contrary to the NDP's campaign, they're not wolves just friendly little puppies.
One NDPer told me that whereas last campaign was kind of like an "air war" with a single big bomb (Crowns) dominating and winning the campaign for the NDP. He says this time it's a ground war -- street by street, house by house, policy by policy.
Both the NDP and Saskatchewan party seem to agree it's a bit of an adjustment but they also both seem to believe this is a winnable campaign.
OK, maybe three days on the election trail has thrown my judgment off but... Am I crazy to be spotting a certain pattern here?
It feels great to finally be in the middle of a campaign.
Not that folks would really care about what reporters go through, but our lives are really at the mercy of politicians and their timetables. Think about it. Would you wish that on anyone?
It's nice to have the waiting over. But enough about me.
It seems like I'm not alone in feeling relief. The other day, as an election campaign seemed imminent, a "back-room boy" for one of the political parties told me he felt like a hockey player while "O Canada" was being sung: head down, skates shuffling, the inner drive to just hit someone.
Well, now the hitting is on and both the Saskatchewan Party and the NDP (the two campaigns I've spent time with so far) seem oddly giddy about it all. I think everyone is just happy to finally be allowed to throw body-checks for real.
