Mr. Harper's Quiet Wisdom

Copenhagen seems like ages ago but is was just not even two weeks ago. The opposition and the media was screaming how Prime Minister Harper wasn't speaking at the summit and President Obama was yada, yada, yada.

Looks like it was a smart thing to do.

Harper's quiet wisdom at a time of shrillness

Relentlessly hounded by all the usual howling mobs, Mr. Harper proved himself in all of these ways in Copenhagen

'Everyone in the world was beating their chest," Prime Minister Stephen Harper observed, speaking of the Copenhagen global summit in one of his year-end interviews. "I never saw so much grandstanding in my life."

Quite so. In contrast, Mr. Harper was himself never more eloquent than in the three days he spent in Copenhagen - when he said absolutely nothing. Surrounded by a madness of politicians (that is, by the fevered rhetoric of the leadership of 160 countries), tormented by the mendacity of environmentalists (that is, by the absurd naming of Canada, which produces less than 2 per cent of the world's carbon emissions, as Fossil Fuel Country of the Year), Mr. Harper kept his head, a remarkable performance that proved him again - however else he may be judged - an authentic leader."

There's more:

"Mere talking is often dangerous to virtue, as Kipling acknowledges in If. Bloated talking is invariably destructive of it. Simply by keeping his mouth shut in Copenhagen, simply by keeping his own counsel, Mr. Harper - retrospectively - looks like the wisest leader of the Copenhagen bunch. "