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Ottawa, ON, Canada

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January 19, 2013

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National Post

There's plenty of head-scratching speculation as to why Prime Minister Stephen Harper suddenly took leave of his media-averse senses to seek the spotlight of international television news.

But his blitz of interviews, acting uncharacteristically like, shudder, a global media darling, may have an agenda beyond promoting his government's underlying fiscal strength. Maybe he was just happy to receive softball questions from anchors that couldn't find Canada on a map, but here's a wild theory -- Stephen Harper could be sending out job applications.

The possibility Mr. Harper believes he's closer to the end of his prime ministerial reign than the beginning appeared to weigh on his mind in one interview last week. After predicting "more big job losses" for Canada, Mr. Harper conceded "I may eventually lose mine."

If so, the least-recognized G8 leader will need a higher profile to solidify his credentials for any future international career, not that there's anything wrong if he's just promoting Canada's silver-lining story in these dark and stormy economic times.

The unspoken dilemma for Mr. Harper is what to do after politics. Be it this year or another term away, he'll still retire from the top at a very early age with two kids not yet even thinking about university.

As a prime minister who won't reach his 50th birthday until the end of this month, he'll have almost two decades of post-politics productivity left to work away at boosting his net worth for some substantial nest-feathering.

The usual retirement refuge for former prime ministers tends to be fat-cat law firms where they're given the big corner office, a few legal assistants, an appointments secretary and told to charge outrageous fees for client face time when they're not delivering stock speeches at $25,000 a pop.

Being a lawyer has been the norm for every prime minister since Wilfrid Laurier except for Joe Clark and Lester Pearson. Former Liberal prime minister Jean Chretien returned to law and still tours the world with business leaders in tow, his most recent being a mini-Team Canada trek to Kazakhstan. Paul Martin has megamillions from his pre-politics business interests and didn't require billable hours to survive as a aboriginal-cause philanthropist enjoying his own six-hole golf course on the farm.

But Mr. Harper is not independently wealthy and only armed with an economics degree that he's never actually used as an economist. Besides, being an economist these days isn't exactly a profession worthy of a prime ministerial retirement given that most of them, including Mr. Harper, didn't see this recession coming.

Mr. Harper obviously can't go back from whence he came, running the modest National Citizens Coalition advocacy group. And merely languishing on blue-chip corporate boards won't satisfy this human energizer. That suggests the greenest pastures for a worthy Harper retirement lie beyond Canada's walls, perhaps something like a lofty academic position at a London School of Economics or a United Nations gig. In other words, he might have to follow Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff's career path in reverse.

When the end game will be played is the stuff of hazy crystal balls.

But against the backdrop of a resurging Liberal party and a recession blame game that may stick to the Conservatives if there's no rebound before the next election, there's little sign of a Tory majority in the future.

Mr. Harper will know instinctively when his time is up, leaving far ahead of any push from below. That's why the grim scenario of an unlikely majority government drives the persistent whisper campaign that he won't bother running again.

For my money, that seems highly out of character for a power-seeker like Stephen Joseph Harper. But it's almost as uncharacteristic as his sudden affinity for international media attention -- which does little to impress U. S. or U. K. television viewers, but sure polishes Mr. Harper's resume for future foreign considerations.

abqa6n@r.postjobfree.com

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