David Johnston Would Be All-Time Worst Choice as GG

There have been many political appointees. But his one reeks of repayment of a debt for someone who proved himself a sound chap over terms of reference. Justice must not just be done, it must be seen to be done, right? Does this look very good, for a Crown's rep supposed to be above the fray? Question: if Johnston had not done "frame of reference" job, and proved himself "sound", would he have been made GG? That is to say, would we today be learning of some prof from Waterloo most had never heard of was about to become GG? Poser la question, c'est y répondre. And that being so, what does that imply about why Johnston was chosen? And what does that do to GG as impartial representative of Crown? And when there's hung parliament, and GG has to decide whether to allow coalition to form govt or listen to Harper, what then? One way, he's acting as puppet, as his form anticipates, the other he's overcompensating to demonstrate independence. Neither may be true, but they will both appear so. Terrible decision, if true.

PS. Just how much of a joke, of a banana democracy, is Canada? How much do we suck? Did the implications of this decision re. GG's and monarchy's role in Canada not occur to anyone? Is Harper, behind all that pro-monarchism facade, a republican, is he trying to do to monarchy what Graves had Claudius attempting to do to emperors in I, Claudius? When the BS detainee docs deal appeared, a clever commenter at Macleans made a good point, which I complimented and added "Johnston for GG jibe". I worry that commenter and I understand this country too well. It gets dispiriting. From comments at Towards an understanding of the understanding (II) (by the way, what's up with that panel, eh?):

"pdpd":
Isn't this whole "broad credibility and trust" thing really dodgy? It sounds to me that it's begging for a John Roberts or Pamela Wallin situation - moderate and thus political gold until it turns out they are hitting the partisanship even harder than their publicly partisan peers.

In the Canadian context, where people are much less known and scrutinized than perhaps a US supreme court judge might be, it will be pretty much impossible to get a gauge on how a supposedly moderate public figure would react on an extremely narrow set of issues (for which legal training actually provides very little help). There will be really tough asymmetries of information leading up to negotiations, and picking candidates will be an absolute mess for the three parties.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that the whole thing seems destined for arbitrariness masked as principled procedure. Maybe the Liberals score two closet anti-government types. Maybe Harper pulls off another Manley report. Either way it's really bad for Canadian democracy, where this unbelievably flawed and fragile compromise is going to be held up as the way to resolve differences, when in fact it has pushed those differences as far as possible, and then resolved them by effectively saying: "hey: John Manley and Hugh Segal, both great guys, think these documents are in and those are out".

EFL:
Well noted. I propose David Johnston, we know he's a sound chap (unless he's about to be GG, dual duties might be a bit much, even for our tiresome peons.)