I wonder if perhaps the media use up a bit too much valuable ink and paper and air time in covering the federal election. I do not mean to denigrate the efforts of those fine candidates who offer themselves for public service, nor the few thousand partisans who knock themselves out in each cause. But does it really matter to the ordinary person who is in power in Ottawa?
This may seem at first glance like a heretical statement, to be easily refuted by noting that we need a government and it matters who directs it. Quite so. But we will have a government whatever happens in the election, and whoever directs it will not move far from the public good. Governors may - indeed, will - make mistakes, but public opinion will correct them soon enough.
There is an old piece of wisdom that is relevant here. It is along the lines of, "I care not who writes a nation's laws, if I may write its songs." The idea is that in a democracy, the general will of the people will govern, and the truly important leaders are not the managers of the day, but rather those in politics, business, religion and the arts who shape that general will.
Such leadership by no means requires government office. Business and the arts are more important, but even in politics, any student of Canadian history will verify that the NDP and its predecessor, the CCF, have had an extraordinary effect upon our laws without ever coming close to federal power. Preston Manning changed the fiscal policy of the government 180 degrees in the 1990s with his insistence on the importance of eliminating the deficit, in effect giving the day's government permission to do what needed doing. He did this from the opposition side. These people out of power wrote the political songs. The governments of the day - mainly Liberal - just hummed along.
And any student of democratic governance will tell you that process is more important than persons. Change the rules by something as basic as electoral reform, for example, and you will have changed the country far more than any given prime minister. This is perhaps why Stephen Harper pays such attention to the Senate, another basic institution. If the temper of the times delivers the songs, the institutions provide the instruments to play them. Why is it that we give all of our attention to the election of mere members of the orchestra?
Ah well, this is very human. It is a bit like sports - little attention to the rules of the game and almost all to the players. Political reportage is sportswriting in its own way: who is on first, who has the ball, what the celebrity wore or said that day and so on. In politics, it is the persona and the polls. This is the focus of folks on Parliament Hill and harmless enough if kept in context.
But it is also good to remember that even in politics, Ottawa isn't that important. Most of the things that matter to ordinary people - health, schooling, roads, zoning, police work and the regulation of most of the economy - is managed by provincial and local governments. And again, for most people, a fine school teacher for their kids is way more important than a good MP.
And even more fundamentally - this being the real kicker - the truth is that we are fortunate enough to live in a society where government itself is not that important. Such basic things as medicare, pensions and social security are truly beyond the control of any government except for tinkering at the margins. And everyday life is otherwise almost totally driven by the private relationships of citizens with other citizens.
Would we want it any other way - to live in a place like Russia, Saudi Arabia or any of the other non-free parts of the world where the makeup of the government and who you know is not only crucial, but perhaps a matter of life and death?
The world today is certainly better than ever in my long lifetime, notwithstanding the past week's financial turmoil. That is not by accident. It has been made so by the songs and due process - those are the things, the fundamentals of our better lives. A bit more attention to these things would be good.
The election? Try a thought experiment. Suppose we all voted "none of the above" and went with no Parliament for a year. No new laws, no new budget, just a carrying on of the present. We could live with that. We mostly have enough laws already.
Of course, we need a government and will have one, and of course it matters who heads it. But what matters much more is the balance of love songs and of battle hymns, of the soaring concertos of the cities and the melodic angst of country and western, and the underlying rules of the democratic music-making that our forebears have bequeathed us. Spare a bit of time and ink for those.
