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Friday, July 3, 2009 07:16 PM
Inside the conservative (and Liberal) mind
One of the great pieces of contemporary journalistic counterprogramming is Tom Frank’s weekly column (titled "The Tilting Yard") in Rupert Murdoch’s newly energized Wall Street Journal. According to Wikipedia “a tiltyard was an enclosed courtyard for jousting (also known as 'tilting'). Tiltyards were a common feature of late medieval castles and palaces.”
That’s altogether apposite as the Journal is America’s palace of deep-dish conservative lunacy. If you want to find an “argument” supporting the proliferation of guns, opposing public spending on health care or espousing public garroting (kidding), you’ll find it on the Journal’s editorial pages. By comparison, Frank is a screaming anarchist.
At any rate, he’s well worth a read since the delightfully perverse quality of his brief shines through every sentence. Yesterday Frank wrote about the peculiar genius of the GOP and the roll it plays in American politics:
I've always thought that P.J. O'Rourke was only half joking when he wrote, years ago, that "Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work, and then they get elected and prove it." Conservatives grasp the grand strategic sweep of politics better than liberals, and consequently they have always seemed to understand that what they do when they're in charge can help to reinforce the myths that put them there.
A government that works, some conservatives fear, is dangerous stuff. It gives people ideas. Universal health care isn't just a bad idea for their buddies in the insurance business; it's a gateway drug to broader state involvement in the economy and hence a possible doomsday scenario for conservatism itself. ...
On the other hand, government fails constantly when conservatives run it because making it work would be, for many of those conservatives, to traduce the very laws of nature. Besides, as we can now see, bungling Katrina recovery or Pentagon procurement pays conservatives huge dividends. It gives them potent ammunition to use when the liberals have returned and are proposing another one of their grand schemes to reform health care.
This is the perverse incentive that is slowly remaking the GOP into the Snafu Party. And in those commercials and those proclamations we should also discern a warning: That even if Democrats manage to set up a solid health-care program, conservatives will do their best, once they have regained power, to drop it down the same chute they did the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Maybe they will appoint a tobacco lobbyist to run the thing. Maybe they will starve it for funds. Or antagonize its work force. And as it collapses they will hand themselves their greatest propaganda victory of all. They will survey the ruins and chide, "You didn't really think government could work, did you?"
That’s as tidy a summary of conservatism’s agenda as I’ve ever read. It neatly captures the cognitive dissonance the governing neo-cons on this side of the border must feel now that they’ve invented an entirely new category of political theory: Libertarian Keynesianism.
That said, much as it pains me to admit it, it’s never enough to simply satirize the current contradictions of the right. Sooner or later (i.e. pre- or post-election), progressives need to enunciate an alternative program.
Take the Igmeister, for instance. He’s been carefully keeping his powder dry hoping the Tories will self-immolate on a pyre of internal division. Well, as the polls suggest, that ain’t happening. So the all-purpose, all-things-to-all-people capital-L Liberalism that rolls off Ig’s tongue is starting to wear a little thin. Just yesterday in this very paper, he opined:
I think sometimes we tried to establish our environmental bona fides by running against the oil sands. And I just think: This is a national industry. It's pumping something like $8-billion into the federal treasury. So it's slightly bad faith to beat the goose that lays the golden egg over the head with a stick. The goose is a little messy. The goose needs to be cleaned up. The goose needs to make better use of the yard, but let's make this a sustainable industry that all Canadians can be proud of.
Yeah, uh huh, but what about, like, the planet, and the rising oceans and onrushing global catastrophe and stuff?
The funny thing is, I kind of agree with Ig here. The oil sands are what they are. But you have to articulate some concrete ideas that address the other side of the issue, lest you sound like - how to put it - a pandering ditz.
Word is the Grits are putting on a Big Think festival at the end of August which will re-establish them as the party of Pickersgill, Pearson, Trudeau and Pitfield - i.e. the party of ideas. For what it's worth, I recommend a panel discussing Freeman Dyson’s views on global warming. And make sure Ig shows up.
Link to this postSunday, June 28, 2009 11:51 AM
Canada's day
It’s the summer silly season when newspapers and their web manifestations are full to brimming with words that may or may not amount to news on account of the fact the people who make it and the people who cover it are from time to time at the cottage. That’s why Jacko’s early demise is journalistic manna from heaven. When nothing’s going on a non-event of such titanic proportion (“Los Angeles police interview Jackson’s doctor,” “Jackson family reportedly sought a second autopsy”) does the trick nicely, thank you very much.
Back on Planet Canada, we’re going through the usual July 1st self-flagellation. We don’t understand ourselves. And even if we did what difference would it make? We’re feeble and growing feebler by the minute.
In the midst of all this I was struck particularly by former NDP campaign manager Gerald Caplan’s pensee in the Globe’s “summer advice” series. Presumably Caplan’s brief was to give the NDP brain trust something to think about over the summer. Instead he vented his spleen over the entire Canadian political spectrum. I was reminded of nothing so much as Dean Wormer’s advice to Kent Dorfman in Animal House: “fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life son.” The topper though was his parenthetic dig at the Conservatives for somehow suborning anti-Semitism in their attack ads aimed at Iggy:
“The government has lost any inclination to actually introduce policies, beyond satisfying its base with regular law-and-order bollocks. Mr. Harper exhausted his capacity for civility last week when he helped a relieved Mr. Ignatieff withdraw his election threat. Some mean and nasty schemes are sure to be hatched in Conservative backrooms, and new anti-Iggy ads will be introduced raising mostly legitimate questions but in the most puerile manner, hurting both the target and the attackers. (And can we drop this "cosmopolitan" business, please? Michael's not even Jewish.)”
I’m no fan of the Tories, but this really is the bridge to far. Whatever else they might be, the Conservatives are clearly friends of Israel and those ads are aimed at class resentment not religious insinuation. Shame on Gerald Caplan. And as for the rest of us poor benighted Canucks, grab a two-four and enjoy the holiday. We are the nation of Ortona, McLuhan, Expo 67 and Nazem Kadri. The Maple Leaf forever.
Monday, June 22, 2009 12:54 PM
I just have one question
This morning’s Globe features a lively op-ed piece by former Harper campaign guru and University of Calgary neocon Tom Flanagan. To begin, Flanagan steps through the recent history and consequent central conundrum of the current parliamentary condition.
“Canada entered a period of potential minority government when the Bloc Québécois won 54 seats in the 1993 election, but the effect was obscured for a decade by the split on the right that allowed Jean Chrétien's Liberals to win three majority governments. Then, as soon as the Canadian Alliance and Progressive Conservatives merged, minority government became the norm, starting with the election of 2004 and confirmed in the elections of 2006 and 2008.
This could go on for a long time. With the NDP winning 20 or 30 seats and the Bloc winning 40 or 50, it's almost impossible for either the Liberals or Conservatives to get a majority. Absent some huge scandal or a major internal collapse by one of the big parties, there just aren't enough seats in play for either to win 155.”
And what does Flanagan conclude from this analysis?
Given the current gridlock - “Five years of minority government, with no end in sight, is building up a backlog of unaddressed issue” - he asserts that power sharing among traditional political foes is probably the only way to govern responsibly. But here’s where this particular trolley goes a little off the rails. Faced with the gravest economic crisis since the 1930s and an ongoing environmental catastrophe, Flanagan suggests that a grand Liberal-Tory coalition could, wait for it, address the hitherto irresolvable problem of Canada Post.
“Canada Post's business model is being undercut by advances in information technology, and legislative change is necessary. Probably either the Liberals or the Conservatives would deal with Canada Post if they had a majority, but will a minority Parliament ever get around to doing what needs to be done before it once again has to go to the polls?”
Let me cut to the chase.
One quarter of Canadians voted either Green or NDP in the last election. Wouldn’t the Liberals be better served to address that constituency? The Conservatives believe that government itself is always the problem in need of a solution (what are they doing delivering the mail anyway?). And what is more they have a perfect right to espouse that belief and to seek the votes of like minded citizens. That said, what on earth is the Liberal Party doing continuing to prop up a Tory government whose interests are antithetical to the very institutions the Liberals purport to espouse at a moment when they are needed most?
Wednesday, June 17, 2009 12:13 PM
Silly me
When I get all ornery about the stuff written in the same paper that publishes my golden nuggets of insight, it's probably a sign I should be moving into another field.
And yet…
“A game of chicken will now unfold before votes of confidence scheduled for Friday. Already the permanent opposition parties - the Bloc Québécois and the New Democrats - have signaled their desire for an election, as they always do.”
- Jeffrey Simpson, June 16
“Minority government has been tried and proven wanting. At a time of fierce global competition for resources, a financial collapse, severe recession, flu pandemic, and six score dead in Afghanistan, we spent the last two weeks yammering about lost binders and misplaced recorders. Seeking constant electoral advantage has completely overtaken the hard work of government, and Canadians can no longer afford their elected officials neglecting their duty. Bring on an election. Falling over the cliff has to be better than this.”
- Andrew Steele, June 16
The first quote is an example of cynicism; the second shortsightedness.
According to Simpson, the NDP (and the two and half million Canadians who vote for them) are only ever interested in destroying the status quo. They have no positive program for change; otherwise they would be busy governing, i.e. they’d be dues-paying members of the Liberal caucus. That phrase “permanent opposition” has about it a decidedly authoritarian odor. Not exactly grist for any liberal mill I know.
And as to Steele’s contention that the country's best interests can only be served by a majority government... Well, if my aunt had wheels she’d be a trolley and the chances that any party’s going to get to 155 are just about that good. At some point, we’re going to have to grow up as a nation and learn to accommodate regional and ideological differences so we can move the bus from A to B. Otherwise, somebody’s going to do it for us.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009 12:36 PM
The vision thing
This morning’s Toronto Star featured an op-ed by Canada’s leading digital-guru Don Tapsott. In it he endorses Michael Ignatieff over Stephen Harper. His reasoning turns on his assessment of each candidate’s grasp of the techno zeitgeist:
“The recent Toronto Star/Angus Reid survey revealed that the Conservative attack ads against Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff are not having the desired effect. While some voters think poorly of Ignatieff because of the ads, a larger percentage says it makes them think more negatively of Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
… My advice to Ignatieff: don't respond in kind to Harper. Win over young people as the emerging powerhouse of politics. Be open. Focus on the issues, not the toxic attacks of old-style politics. Use social networks and the Internet to engage youth. Build a social movement for change. Be a 21st-century politician.
…In comparing Ignatieff to Harper, young voters tilt toward Ignatieff because of his party's centre-left policies. But party platforms will be just one factor in winning the next election.
Young voters will also judge the leaders on their character. Harper practises "old-style" politics with a go-for-the-jugular approach that many voters, particularly young adults, find off-putting. His use of attack ads is just one example. When the most recent ads were unveiled, Ignatieff had the perfect counter-response: Such ads were harmful to the political and democratic processes and the Liberals would not use them. In taking the high road, Ignatieff turned the ads to his advantage.”
Leave aside that it was Ignatieff who propped up the Tories by voting for their budget without a single amendment, my question to Don Tapscott is this: What exactly do the Liberals stand for beyond some vaguely defined commitment to social networking and “the high road”? Three weeks ago Adam Radwanski wrote, to hilarious effect I thought:
“The Liberals had great fun on Wednesday calling for Jim Flaherty's head. Sure, there's no way he'll be fired any time soon. But how better to generate headlines, now that everyone's getting a little tired of your empty threats to go to an election over a relatively minor dispute about employment insurance?
Here's a thought: How about being more creative, and actually putting forward a competing vision for the country's economic management.”
Despite today’s Potemkin threats to bring the government down on EI, Radwanski’s comic query still holds. And no amount of nouveau vague techy hokum is likely to address the issue head on.
In his 1992 speech to the Democratic convention Bill Clinton gave a clear and stirring call to arms asserting that, at root, politics is an intellectual (as against a technocratic) enterprise:
“Of all the things that George Bush has ever said that I disagree with, perhaps the thing that bothers me most is how he derides and degrades the American tradition of seeing and seeking a better future. He mocks it as the ‘vision thing.’
But just remember what the Scripture says: ‘Where there is no vision, the people perish.’
I hope, nobody in this great hall tonight, or in our beloved country has to go through tomorrow without a vision. I hope no one ever tries to raise a child without a vision. I hope nobody ever starts a business or plants a crop in the ground without a vision. For where there is no vision, the people perish.”
These are words Iggy would do well to remember if not live by.
Friday, June 12, 2009 03:56 PM
Speaking plainly
Just before Lisa Raitt started tearing up at the thought of her farther and brother dying from cancer, she made a few remarks that I’m going to examine somewhat under a microscope.
Only a fool or a blackguard would gainsay Raitt’s tears. Clearly, in that moment she remembered the horrors of cancer as it had affected her and she started to cry. But in the moments prior to that, her speech had a strangely disengaged quality. To wit:
“Today I want to personally communicate my deep regret for wording I used in a private discussion earlier this year which was inadvertently recorded. As somebody who has had in their personal life been deeply affected by cancer, my intent was certainly not to show any disrespect for cancer victims, survivors or their families. However, it's clear that these remarks have been interpreted in that way. So I want to offer a clear apology to anyone who's been offended by what I've said.”
Look carefully at the choice of words and syntax:
“Personally communcate," “regret for wording I used in a private discussion,” “my intent was certainly not to show any disrespect,” “it's clear that these remarks have been interpreted in that way.”
These words are to plain speaking as Kryptonite is to Superman. How about: “I apologize for my offensive remarks”?
It’s not that the remarks were recorded inadvertently or that they’ve been interpreted in a certain way.
The words and the thoughts behind them were offensive. Period. Any other “interpretation” is caviling.
In his essay Politics and the English Language, Orwell wrote: "In our time political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible."
Plus ca change…
Thursday, June 11, 2009 12:47 PM
A view from the 18th century
Over the last week or so I plowed through the engaging HBO series John Adams. It is both rich in period and character detail and true to its subject (the politics of revolutionary America) in a way that elevates it beyond the merely episodic. In focusing particularly on the relationship between Jefferson and Adams, the series gets at the fundamental political paradox - the eternal tension between principle and practice. Where, for instance, Jefferson reveled in the Republican ideal, Adams reviled it for the people always carried with them the whiff of the mob.
There’s a particularly chilling scene in which Adams describes for Jefferson certain excesses of the French reign of terror to which his interlocutor, friend and rival responds with a certain bloodlust playing in his eye that a revolution isn’t carried on upon a bed of feathers.
What’s fascinating in the series’ recounting of all this is that neither man comes off as a caricature. Neither is Jefferson wholly radical nor Adams wholly cautious. Both crave the exercise of power and both are capable of calibrating their stated beliefs to achieve it.
I was reminded of all this while conversing recently with NDP strategist Brian Topp. Our discussion turned in part on the legacy of the failed coalition and where those events leave the two principals. I was struck particularly by Topp’s asserting again and again “that we have to move on from the coalition.”
Monday, June 8, 2009 12:24 PM
And now, a word from our dear leader...
I realize I’m going a little inside baseball here, but I wanted to share with you extracts from the “Statement by the Honourable James Moore, Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages, on the occasion of the 32nd National Magazine Awards Gala.”
First, a little context.
This year’s annual piss-up and fish fry, conducted last Friday night, saw one of its main corporate sponsors (Rogers) drop out, thereby diminishing the quality of nosh (or so it was reported to me) by a considerable margin. ( I know, I know - poor benighted journos forced to eat free cocktail weenies instead of oysters on the half shell). Still, it was in the face of the ongoing economic catastrophe, an occasion to celebrate an important aspect of Canada’s journalistic endeavours. And of all things an Alberta-based magazine (AlbertaViews), with no connection whatsoever to Ted Byfield, won magazine of the year.
Back to the Honourable James Moore:
“On behalf of Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the Government of Canada, I congratulate the winners of the 32nd National Magazine Awards, and I commend your dedication to conveying accurate, pertinent, and interesting information to your Canadian readers. Your contribution to our society's great debates as well as to the development of our culture is essential, and I invite you to pursue your efforts in this direction.”
First of all, to characterize the beneficial content of a magazine as “accurate, pertinent, and interesting information” is like congratulating a surgeon for having washed his hands before the operation. And that bit about “inviting” journalists to do journalism puts Canada on a par with such paragons of free expression as North Korea and Fox News.
That said, I can only imagine that a similar message to the equivalent assemblage in Pyongyang might at least be delivered with the Minister’s tongue planted somewhere near his or her cheek. Hereabouts, not so much.
Thursday, June 4, 2009 04:32 PM
Gene therapy
As is my wont, I’m weighing in on Raitt-gate long after the horses have vacated the jurisdiction. That said, there’s an odd discombobulation evident in some of the reporting. Yesterday at 4:17 p.m., Norman Spector suggested that:
“By the time the next election rolls around, this matter will all have been forgotten. With one exception: Michael Ignatieff will have drawn a line in the sand on the question of ministerial resignations. With the very real prospect that he could be moving into 24 Sussex, the position he took is not one that any first minister I've known would have wanted to be bound by.”
At 5:17 p.m. same day, The Globe's Brian Laghi observed that during yesterday’s Question Period:
“Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff did not take the opportunity to call for Ms. Raitt’s resignation, as did almost every other opposition MP who raised the matter. Rather, Mr. Ignatieff called it despicable that Ms. Raitt’s employee took the fall, and wondered, sarcastically, whether it was the same youthful aide who was responsible for the current isotope shortage.
‘It is presumably this 26 year old who is responsible for the whole darn department," the Liberal Leader said. "How are we supposed to believe such a fiction? When will the minister take her responsibilities seriously?’”
File this mixup under C for Cake: have it and eat it too. Ig let loose the dogs of war then cried “let’s not be hasty here.” By carefully parsing his response, The Other One imagines he’s reserving the right to avoid Spector’s caveat. Nice, but probably too clever by half.
I thought of Ignatieff this morning while reading an hilarious piece in the Times by Mark Leyner titled "Of Mice and Monologues ," in which he ruminates on the implications of German scientists injecting the speech gene into mice.
I wondered whether they couldn’t reverse engineer that gene so as to render politicians mute at exactly the right moment. For instance when they want to say one thing to an audience in French and exactly the opposite to one in English so as to score political points with both. Staffers would have their bosses gobbling the stuff down like Viagra.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009 08:41 AM
And a one and a two
Across the way Tim Powers, who never lacks for candour and/or straight talk, writes of the latest EKOS poll:
“Frankly, I find it bizarre that with a self-anointed, can’t-miss candidate and tough economic times the Liberals aren’t higher in the polls… Ignatieff cheerleaders need to start asking the same tough questions that have been posed about the Prime Minister. Specifically, why can’t their man move the polls? Yes, they are doing well in Quebec but nationally they still haven’t reached Dion honeymoon like numbers and Dion didn’t even have the benefit of a global economic recession… I think despite the hooting and hollering of the glitterati, the ads are having some impact – though that is hard to quantify at the moment.”
From his decidedly blue perspective, Tim is eking out what little good cheer might be had in polling that indicates the Grits are headed towards minority territory. And yet his caveats persist. The Liberals are stalled and the triumph of the “radical center” seems far from assured. Among the tribes of Afghanistan it is said there are no enemies only future allies. This might be a good time for the red team to heed these wise if challenging words. The demise of the coalition brought with it a lot of hard words and harder feelings. Surely that time has passed.
Going forward the Grits have two ways to address their old enemies: demonize the NDP by playing brokerage politics or seek a genuine entente cordiale and move the progressive agenda forward. Time is a wasting. At a minimum, the Americans are in the midst of dictating our environmental and industrial policy. And they are doing so for a Canadian government that, though it may understand the words, surely cannot hear the music. It’s time old coalitions renewed acquaintances and whistled a happier tune.
Douglas Bell Contributors
Douglas Bell
Douglas Bell is a Toronto-based writer and occasional actor. He wrote for and acted in CBC TV's The Newsroom. His first book Run Over (Random House Canada) was short-listed for the Toronto book award. Recently he wrote the Spectator blog for TorontoLife.com. He has at one time or another canvassed door to door for all parties save the Marxist Leninists.