{"id":251,"date":"2005-02-11T00:32:00","date_gmt":"2005-02-11T05:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=251"},"modified":"2005-02-11T00:32:00","modified_gmt":"2005-02-11T05:32:00","slug":"251","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=251","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><span style=\"font-size:130%;\">Grudging Credit<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I have to admit that Paul did a fairly good job at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theglobeandmail.com\/servlet\/story\/RTGAM.20050210.w5martin0210\/BNStory\/National\/\">the inquiry today<\/a>. I wasn\u2019t wowed by his performance like I was by Chretien on Tuesday (everyone I\u2019ve talked to, even people who hate Chretien, agree the golf ball stunt was one of the all-time great performances of political theater) but he\u2019s coming from the much more difficult position of needing to get re-elected. He was relatively clear and consistent, and distanced himself from the program as much as he could. All in all, a solid performance \u2013 I\u2019d been expecting a lot worse. And that is one thing Paul Martin has going for him now, I think. Last year, the expectations were so high that he inevitably fell short. After seeing him as Prime Minister for over a year, I think it\u2019s safe to say that Canadians now have very low expectations for him so he can only exceed them.<\/p>\n<p>And I\u2019ll say that the other favourite target of this blog, Ralph Klein, came out with a fairly solid State of the Province. His <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theglobeandmail.com\/servlet\/ArticleNews\/TPStory\/LAC\/20050209\/KLEIN08\/TPEducation\/\">support for post-secondary education <\/a>and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.canoe.ca\/NewsStand\/EdmontonSun\/News\/2005\/02\/10\/926098-sun.html\">an increased minimum wage <\/a>is long overdue. His post-secondary support does not come even remotely close to the Liberal platform promises but it\u2019s a start.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Grudging Credit I have to admit that Paul did a fairly good job at the inquiry today. I wasn\u2019t wowed by his performance like I was by Chretien on Tuesday (everyone I\u2019ve talked to, even people who hate Chretien, agree the golf ball stunt was one of the all-time great performances of political theater) but [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}