The Press: Fallen Arches

Only three days after the Conservative Party’s upset victory in Canada last week (see THE HEMISPHERE) one of the country’s biggest magazines, Maclean’s (circ. 516,587). came out with an editorial postmortem on the election results. “The mysterious and complicated and precious and precarious institution called democracy,” argued fortnightly Maclean’s, “once more has proved to be roughly as enthralling to the average voter as a case of fallen arches.” Not until the second to last paragraph did the magazine reveal its own Achilles’ heel. The doleful editorial had been written before election day, and was based on the assumption that the Liberal government would be reelected by a safe margin.