Rick Mercer, premier?

Who should be Newfoundland and Labrador's next premier?

QMI Agency's David Akin recently made a compelling case for Gen. Rick Hillier. But I'd like to suggest Rick Mercer.

Mercer is a comedian. But his candidacy would not be a joke.

First, Mercer is a household name - not just in Newfoundland, but across Canada. Name recognition is important in every stage of a campaign, from getting people to read your campaign literature to getting them to remember what box to check on the ballot.

Second, although Mercer is now based in Toronto, his Newfoundland roots run deep. He's a Newfoundland booster who regularly visits home, and has been awarded many of that province's highest honours - from an honourary degree at Memorial University to that province's Artist of the Year.

It's clear why: Mercer is a perpetual Newfoundland champion, a charming ambassador for his province across the country.

Merely being well-known and well-liked are not criteria for public office. Mercer is also intensely political, and follows political news voraciously. It doesn't feel like it, because his TV shows and public appearances are so light-hearted and watchable.

But almost every segment or sketch that he performs has a political lesson to it - the medicine that his spoonful of sugar makes go down easy.

It's not just his patented "rants" and his quick quips on the news headlines of the day. Almost all of his sketches - such as his prescient mockery of heavy-handed airport security - have a moral to the story, and are part of a coherent political philosophy.

You couldn't say it about most comedians, but Mercer's work forms a body of opinion not too different from a campaign platform. Jerry Seinfeld used to joke that his famous TV show was "about nothing." Mercer's show is about Canada and its inspiring possibilities.

Like most entertainers, Mercer could fairly be called liberal. But it's not a partisan sort of liberalism - he's an equal opportunity mocker whose scourging of Stephane Dion was more powerful than anything the Tory war room ever cooked up.

His occasional antipathy towards the Conservative Party is rooted, in part, in his assessment that the federal government doesn't respect Newfoundland and Labrador. Whether or not that's a fair conclusion, it's an opinion that wouldn't hurt Mercer in a province that loves anti-Ottawa champions like Danny Williams and Clyde Wells.

Newfoundland has always contributed disproportionately to Canada's military. And in his own way, Mercer continues that tradition. He is a frequent visitor to our troops in Afghanistan, bringing both the relief of laughter and heartfelt moral support.

Mercer's stump speech at conferences and conventions across Canada always has a large part dedicated to Canadian Forces, and the moral obligation citizens have to support them, not just emotionally, but in tangible ways too, like with modern military equipment.

If Mercer is liberal on other matters, he's a rock-solid hawk when it comes to supporting the troops.

Being a premier of any province means dealing with less adventurous matters than foreign and military affairs. Provincial politics is the stuff of schools and hospitals and roads and countless boards and commissions.

But Newfoundland is growing up, too; it's a "have province" not only with its own oil, but with an enormous expat population in Alberta's oilsands, too. So interprovincial relations, and dealing with Ottawa, are likely to grow in importance.

And that may be Mercer's greatest strength.

He has travelled to every city and town in Canada, in a humourous and patriotic travelogue of the country. He can find the good and the interesting in every little place, maybe even things that the locals can't see.

Frankly, he should have been our governor general. But a Canada-loving premier of Newfoundland and Labrador, proud of his own province and welcome in all others, would do quite well, too.