Ever wonder why virtue in politics is so lacking in Canada? Andrew Coyne explains:

Why is Canadian politics so moronic? It isn’t that our politicians are especially stupid, as people: Stephen Harper, Stephane Dion and Michael Ignatieff are all intelligent men. They just behave like idiots. It’s institutional, a culture of vapidity that drags even the best down to its level.The dominance of the brokerage parties, combined with our peculiarly rigid tradition of party discipline, explains it in part: in few other countries is the party line so strictly enforced, to such trivial effect.

The supporting players also contribute: in particular, the expanding influence of the premiers in national debates — power without responsibility, as it is said, the prerogative of the harlot through the ages — has had a predictably coarsening effect, reducing what was an already overly regional politics to infantile calculations of profit and loss.

The role of the press gallery, marooned in Ottawa with only politics for amusement, must not be overlooked.

But two other factors should be mentioned. One is the size and shape of the Commons itself. Watch those British debates again: the two sides of the House are so close to each other they can almost touch.

In consequence, rather than bellow across the aisle, they are obliged to talk to one another. Nor do they sit at rows of desks, with all of the associations — of schoolboys, or bureaucrats — these imply. Rather, they recline on benches, as in ancient times.

And a last, more uplifting factor: peace and prosperity. That our politics is so banal is in part a tribute to our good fortune. We can (or so we imagine) afford it. In the absence of any obvious national crisis, we turn our minds to other things.

What ’s that quote from Brecht? “Unhappy the land that has no heroes. Unhappier still the land that has need of heroes.”