“He was just too com­pli­cated for Belinda. I’m glad she left him.”

Con­ser­v­a­tive insid­ers say that Steve Harper for­gives and over­looks Peter MacKay’s almost con­tin­ual string of mis­deeds and lies because he has “a man crush” on his wit­less, bum­bling Min­is­ter of Defense.  “It’s noth­ing like the sit­u­a­tion with Bev Oda.  In that case Steve was just wor­ried she would beat him up,” said an unnamed clos­eted homo­sex­ual in the Prime Minister’s Office. “Pete is just all those things Steve always wanted to be, but isn’t.”

Indeed, the two men are a study in con­trasts.  Steve Harper is zaftig and flabby, cursed with a spare tire around his mid­dle; Pete MacKay is trim and fit.  The ath­letic MacKay is con­sid­ered a lady’s man; Harper is unco­or­di­nated and has always found it dif­fi­cult to talk to girls. Harper worked his way to the top polit­i­cal post in the land by tena­cious hard work, build­ing a far right wing West­ern party and using it to destroy its more tol­er­ant East­ern cousin; MacKay ben­e­fits from one of the few Fed­eral rid­ings — in feu­dal Nova Sco­tia — that is inher­ited.  MacKay loves to travel, all the time, every­where, no mat­ter what the cost; Harper is a home­body who loves to spend time in his base­ment play­ing with his hockey cards.

“Steve thinks Pete is cool and sort of lives vic­ar­i­ously through Pete’s wild adven­tures,” said the PMO offi­cial. “Ever since Pete sug­gested there was hanky-panky going on between him and Con­delezza Rice the Prime Min­is­ter just idol­izes the guy.”

MacKay’s suc­cess with women both mys­ti­fies the Prime Min­is­ter and makes him suspicious.

“A clas­sic case of claus­tro­pho­bic con­ser­v­a­tive clos­et­ing,” claims Dr. Bussey Rogers, an expert on man crushes. “Quite often, espe­cially in high-stakes pro­fes­sions like pol­i­tics, sports and fire­fight­ing, you reg­u­larly see supe­ri­ors who assume they are infe­rior to those they lead or com­mand,” say Dr. Rogers.

Canny sub­or­di­nates can take advan­tage of this sit­u­a­tion. “You often see the object of the man crush, in this case Pete Mackay, manip­u­late the infat­u­ated one, in re Steve Harper, to their pur­poses. Like teen-age lovers.”

Rogers has a warn­ing for MacKay, though. “If Harper ever fig­ures out that MacKay is tak­ing advan­tage of him, the ‘jilt’ could have seri­ous con­se­quences. Pubic flog­ging, the stocks, demo­tion, or even a good cussing out would not be far from the Prime Minister’s mind. Just remem­ber the first time you got dumped. I know I do,” con­cluded Rogers, chok­ing back sobs.