Most good science fiction is just like a good election campaign: issues-based. To date, the Liberal’s campaign has been so been plagued by character failures that they’ve now resorted to promoting issues from science fiction: with less than two weeks left in the campaign, and after dropping his Notwithstanding Clause bomb on Monday, a leak of Liberal strategy papers reveals that Martin’s followup is the tepid issue of the militarization of space .

(Military) Pies in the Sky

The proliferation of weapons in space is a valid concern, but is it really the sort of campaign issue that a candidate goes to war with? Does anybody who hasn’t drunk the ideological kool-aid think that this is an issue a federal party should rely on to win the final trenchfight for votes?

Addressing weapons in space is perhaps a nice way to round out your international policy portfolio, but its not something you bother with in the close of an election that requires you to play catch-up. At best, this idealistic notion that stellar military policy is an election issue makes you wonder if the Liberal campaign strategy is being put together by fresh converts from the Young NDP?

To be honest, even the radical shift by the Liberal’s towards eradicating the Notwithstanding Clause is probably too indirectly related to the meat and potatoes issues concerning Canadian voters. A change to an already insensible constitutional clause is unlikely to stir the pot with any constituents besides policy-wonks. Perhaps the biggest revelation to come from the detached nature of these Liberal latest policies is that these moves may really be all that they’ve got. That’s too bad, because it’s far too late in the game for abstract policy.

A taxation plan will win you an election, contemplating the state of the heavens will not.