Leadership Quote by Stephen Harper

Harper’s line is a masterclass in political self-positioning: it performs moderation without disclosing content. By declaring he’s “not on either pole,” he’s not offering a view so much as an alibi - a way to occupy the safest rhetorical real estate in a culture war where specificity is punished. The sentence is built around absence. No principles, no policy, no thresholds, no exceptions. Just distance.

The clever pivot is the second clause: “neither of the interest groups on either end...would probably be comfortable.” That frames the debate as dominated by activists, not citizens or law, and casts Harper as the sober adult stuck between noisy factions. It’s an appeal to the voter who’s exhausted by absolutism, even if they can’t articulate a middle position themselves. “Probably” adds a soft hedge: he’s hinting at independence while keeping plausible deniability if one side decides they like what they hear.

Context matters because abortion in Canadian federal politics has often been less about legislating (the legal terrain is constrained) and more about signaling values to party coalitions. For a conservative leader navigating social conservatives, swing voters, and a media environment primed for “gotcha” answers, ambiguity is strategy. The subtext: trust me to be reasonable; don’t force me to choose a tribe out loud. It’s not fence-sitting as weakness - it’s fence-sitting as a governing technique, letting different audiences project their preferred Harper onto the blank space.