Paul Martin as Anakin Skywalker?

One of the biggest movies of 2005 was Star Wars Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith. It’s the final chapter of the trilogy, depicting Anakin Skywalker’s metamorphosis from golden-boy, to troubled young man, to the legendary villain Darth Vader. Episode 1 and Episode 2 were flawed movies, but Episode 3 really brings a satisfying end to the tale. Beyond the action and special effects, Revenge of the Sith is really a story about how a man’s loss of faith in his beliefs lead him to his downfall. You see, Anakin started with only the noblest ideals. But as he matures and discovers life is more complicated, he begins to have doubts. Opposing forces pull at his moral compass, and when the war against the separatists forces Anakin and his allies to make desperate choices, Anakin finds himself struggling to reconcile–

–wait, separatists?

Well, yeah. In this trilogy, the backdrop is a war against separatists that seems to justify all of these morally ambiguous choices that are made. For example, when the separatists–

–wait a minute. Was this thing based on Canada?

Well, no. Not exactly, anyway. Well, there is this one character that sounds a lot like somebody we know.

When we first meet Anakin, in Episode 1: The Phantom Menace, he is a young child with wide-eyed admiration of the Jedi Knights. They believe he is destined to be one of them– one of their greatest– and so they take him to their temple to learn their ways.

Paul Martin, like Anakin, seems to have been destined for politics. His father was an influential cabinet minister and contended for leadership of the Liberal Party. Before the 2004 election, Martin spoke of how he grew up with great admiration for Canada’s parliamentarians and said he was “raised in these halls,� referring not to the Jedi temple but to the House of Commons.

In Episode 2: Attack of the Clones, Anakin Skywalker has become a young man. He has grown up to be powerful, but also impatient. He feels he is being held back by people who are jealous of his growing power. Although still an apprentice, Anakin believes in his heart that he is already a greater Jedi than his master. He continually pushes at the boundaries of his master’s authority.

Paul Martin, if we check in on him in the 1990s, has also grown powerful. In 1990 he contended with Jean Chrétien in a bitter leadership battle that went to four ballots before Chrétien emerged victorious. When the Liberals swept to victory in the 1993 election, Paul Martin became Finance Minister, perhaps the second most powerful position in the government. And over his run of 9 years as Finance Minister, Paul Martin achieved triumph after triumph. Paul Martin’s success as Finance Minister was a great asset to Chrétien, but it also became a thorn in his side. Martin, like young Anakin, began to challenge his master’s authority. The rift in the party between Chrétien loyalists and Martin’s supporters became common knowledge. Martin became openly defiant of Chrétien, mocking Chrétien’s authoritarian style of leadership with the slogan “Who do you know in the PMO?â€? and challenging Chrétien’s views in areas that went far beyond Martin’s Finance portfolio. Martin pledged to do things differently– better– if he became Prime Minister, a destiny that now seemed all but assured. Martin would heal regional rifts. Martin would address the democratic deficit. People from coast to coast were anticipating Paul Martin’s turn as Prime Minister. Even Albertans would get behind Paul Martin, it was believed, because Paul Martin’s fiscal conservative street credentials would resonate with Albertans. “Paulberta,â€? some called this impending breakthrough. Paul Martin was a consensus builder, people said, not a pugilist like Chrétien. Politics would stop being about personal power and start being about solving problems. Everything would change.

In Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith, Anakin Skywalker has become a full-fledged Jedi Knight in his own right. As was his destiny, Anakin has become a great and powerful warrior. But the journey from starry-eyed child to grown man has cost him the idealism he had as a youngster. His vision of the purity and nobility of the Jedi ideal has been tarnished. The Republic is in crisis, and war against the separatist forces pushes the Jedi Council into making choices that sacrifice morality for expediency. Anakin becomes troubled by the Jedi Council’s hypocrisy when he is asked by the council to betray the trust of Chancellor Palpatine. As well, Anakin breaks the Order’s rules by having a clandestine love affair, prohibited by the Jedi for reasons that he disagrees with. And ultimately, when he is given the chance to save the woman he loves by betraying the Jedi Order, his diminished view of their ideals and his awareness of their hypocrisy seals his fate. Anakin is able to betray the Jedi Order because in his heart he has already abandoned them.

And if we check in on Paul Martin in 2004, we find that he has now become Prime Minister, fulfilling the destiny that has seemed certain for years. But like Anakin Skywalker, Paul Martin has paid a moral price during his rise to power. His bloodless coup against Chrétien and the political aftermath have come at a cost to the party unity and to Martin’s own reputation. Many Liberals lost their seats in the 2004 election, and Paul Martin was obliged to fill vacant Senate seats with defeated comrades and party aides, rather than “addressing the democratic deficit�. Rather than ending cronyism, Martin found patronage appointments a helpful way of rewarding his allies. Rather than healing regional rifts, Team Martin again ran a campaign that drew the anger of Albertans and “Paulberta� became a myth. Rather than diminishing the importance of the PMO, it seems as though it’s bigger than ever. The answer to “Who do you know in the PMO?� has become that just about everybody has heard of Tim Murphy. Like Anakin Skywalker, the ideals Paul Martin held before seem to have vanished as he came to power and had to contend with difficult choices.

Of course, I don’t claim for a moment that Paul Martin has become as ruthless and morally vacant as Anakin became as he transformed into Darth Vader. It’s not like Paul Martin is the first politician who’s had to make compromises to hang on to power, or the first guy to fail to live up to lofty expectations. And if you think back to the ending of Return of the Jedi, you remember that even Darth Vader was not beyond redemption.