In Crocosaurus Cove in Australia's Northern Territories, they have a remarkable 5.1 metre saltwater-reptile named "Harry, the psychic crocodile" which has the uncanny ability of picking Darwin Cup winners and also new political leaders.
And, with his ability of seeking "truth" like an Oracle of Delphi, perhaps Harry could serve the purpose of truth-seeker with Canadian politicians who have recently gone astray and introduced "dirty tricks" into Canadian politics.
If we wish to study the history of political "dirty tricks", we must go back to the 1970s and the Republicans during the Watergate Scandal, the "Plumbers" and "Tricky Dicky" Nixon whom many of us remember well. Heading up this subversive team was Donald Segretti who later admitted his culpability and spent time in prison, like many others in Nixon's inner circle.
In the late 1960s, it was suddenly deemed acceptable by Republican politicians at the top-level to introduce less-than-honest means of gaining the advantage of political opponents. It was a time period in US political history of which they are not proud. The dirty tricks they performed were illegal, slanderous, deceitful and unethical. Some tricks were even despicable and ruined many lives and many careers and perhaps even perverted the course of history.
A perfect example of this was Edmund Muskie, a well-liked, Democratic presidential hopeful with plenty of talent, political skill and potential who served as both Governor and Senator for Maine. He was soon in the sights of Republicans and a target of their dirty tricks campaign. When the Manchester Union-Leader newspaper published the fake "Canuck letter" in which he was supposed to have disparaged French-Canadian Americans, and later made damaging, personal attacks against his wife, Jane, he tried to defend himself and his wife against these lies but without success.
Unfortunately, the damage had been done and many Americans contented themselves in believing the flagrant lies. The effect on his campaign was devastating and he was forced to give up his bid for President in favour of George McGovern, a dark-horse candidate. In the view of many, the course of democratic principles and the course of truth, justice and American history were perverted by a cabal of political operatives hired to destroy campaigns, and peoples' lives.
The fact that similar dirty tricks have now crept into Canadian politics is both disturbing and demoralizing when one reads in our newspapers how Canadian politicians used our brave military against Ghadafi's Libya to remove a much-hated, brutal dictator to install Western-style democracy while at the same time having won their place within our highly-valued democratic system by subverting the very free and democratic voting rights that every citizen of this country is entitled to. What a distasteful irony!
Having said that, what should we do? My suggestion is this: borrow "Harry, the psychic crocodile" to weed out those telling "porkies" and perverting the course of justice and defrauding the people of Canada of their rightful representatives in Parliament. But, how do we do this?
In each riding where unethical methods were used, we could then place all the "dirty-trickster" suspects in the saltwater tank with Psychic Harry - who hadn't eaten in weeks - and give them a half-pool length head-start (it would only be fair) before they let Harry free to sort out "truth" from "prevarications". With Harry's innate sense of judgment and justice, the Liberal "Truth Squad" (of years past) would not be necessary nor would overly-generous stipends be paid out to political cronies.
Harry would serve a three-fold purpose - identify the tricksters, save government money and help cement relations between Canada's, constitutional monarchy and Gillard's future Republic of Australia.
