Friday, February 10, 2012 1:28 PM EST
Hope will help Hudak move forward
Heading into a leadership review, Ontario PC Leader Tim Hudak looks set to win.
The Ontario PC party has been far more likely than the Ontario Liberals (or the federal PC party of old) to keep its leaders on for multiple elections. Joe Wearing’s seminal paper “Ontario Political Parties: Fish or Foul” found this trend was very significant.
In addition, Mr. Hudak has been relentless in his opposition to the Liberal government in Ontario. Tough rhetoric is red meat for a party base in opposition, and Mr. Hudak has been feeding them Angus beef.
Given his party culture, his success in holding the Liberals to a minority, and the absence of an obvious successor, a strong result is to be expected.
However, the path forward after the review is uncertain.
Adam Radwanski wrote this morning about the protest movement gaining steam to elect a reform candidate president of the Ontario PCs.
Link to this post
Saturday, February 11, 2012 1:06 PM EST
The revolving anti-Romney
Every few weeks a new “anti-Romney” emerges in the Republican primaries.
Last July, Rep. Michele Bachmann emerged as the darling of the Tea Party. She appeared on the cover of Newsweek with crazy eyes, and that was that.
Texas Governor Rick Perry jumped into the race and appeared to be a substantive challenger to Mr. Romney. With massive fundraising capacity, a record of economic growth, rugged good looks and a natural charm, Mr. Perry looked to be following the George W. Bush path to the White House.
Then he opened his mouth and his campaign collapsed.
The former CEO of Godfather Pizza, Herman Cain rose to take the lead in the Republican primary, until stories about sexual harassment came out and he withdrew from the race. (You can’t make this stuff up.)
Thursday, January 26, 2012 9:14 AM EST
Mitt Romney’s money problem
Mitt Romney is one of the richest men to run for President of the United States.
Wealth is a challenge for a Presidential candidate, because it can set up a essential “otherness” to the politician that creates a barrier between them and the voter.
George H.W. Bush was (inaccurately) believed to have been caught unawares by a grocery check-out scanner in 1992, reinforcing an image of an out-of-touch elitist who sent his chauffer to pick up his milk.
John Kerry was merciless ribbed for his wealth, in part because it was his wife’s in most part.
Steve Forbes never gelled with the public, in part due to his other-worldliness as a man worth half a billion dollars.
But some of American’s greatest presidents were also clearly wealthy.
Tuesday, January 24, 2012 4:51 PM EST
Newt Gingrich and the Rob Ford phenomenon
Times of great angst do funny things to voters.
Sometimes, voters stick with what they know, reasoning that tough times are no time for on-the-job learning. We saw that phenomenon in the recent federal and Ontario elections.
Sometimes, voters switch to the traditional opposition, reasoning that tough times are the incumbent’s fault, not the fault of the system itself. This was generally the response to the 1991-92 recession in English-speaking countries, although there were interesting exceptions.
Sometimes, voters thumb their noses at all the traditional options and pick someone unknown primarily because of their anti-establishment credentials.
Famous examples exist on the left and right, from Hugo Chavez to Silvio Berlusconi.
Typically, these candidates thrive because voters believe the insiders have been captured by corrupt and powerful interests who fail to put the needs of average people first. The outsiders are unencumbered by having to gain the approval and validation of internal elites, and thus have a wider range of promises they can make. Populists often engage in scapegoating and mass simplifications of public policy that will rush benefits to the people.
A recent definition of populism from political science calls it “an ideology that considers society separated into two homogenous and antagonistic groups, ‘the pure people’ and the ‘corrupt elite.’”
Toronto recently saw the potential for success in a populist candidate.
Rob Ford was able to campaign against the established order at a time when the establishment was highly unpopular. He ran against specific scapegoats and with a relatively simple method for change. Unencumbered by the need for elite validation, he was able to out-promise his opponents.
The populist phenomenon is enjoying a true test in the United States this month.
Newt Gingrich is defining his campaign in terms that are absolutely populist.
He cast his win in South Carolina as a blow to “elites.”
He defended himself against charges by his ex-wife with a counter-attack aimed at media elites.
His SuperPAC is targeting Mitt Romney from a distinctly populist, even left-wing populist, perspective attacking capitalist elites.
Even the structure of his campaign is classic populism. Rather than building a large organization, Mr. Gingrich is campaigning solely on his own charisma and messaging ability.
The surprising thing isn’t that Gingrich ran as a populist. After his own campaign team walked out and he failed to earn a significant number of endorsements, running against the traditional establishment of the GOP makes perfect sense.
The surprising thing also isn’t that it’s worked in South Carolina. Populism is always most effective where there is high economic inequality.
It is fascinating that the first two states in the U.S. nominating process are among the top five for income equality in the U.S.
In comparison to relatively equal Iowa (#5) and New Hampshire (#4), South Carolina (#32) has much more spread between the rich and the poor and Florida (#46) should be even more fertile ground for Gingrich populism.
What is surprising is that the Republicans still have not developed anyone who can provide the only antidote for populism: hope.
Populism is the politics of fear and resentment and anger. It’s the politics of pointing at someone alien from the voter, and saying it’s all their fault. But it is a hollow shell that only works in the absence of a compelling and substantial agenda that provides hope to the middle class.
Franklin Roosevelt and Bill Clinton are great examples of U.S. Presidents who overcame powerful populist movements, either in their own party, across the aisle or in non-democratic movements, by the use of hope.
Mr. Roosevelt faced down internal threats to democracy like Huey Long, Father Coughlin or Douglas MacArthur by providing hope to the middle class in the form of the social stability offered by the New Deal.
Mr. Clinton deftly brought the Democrats back to electability by embracing hope as his mantra, reassuring Americans that economic growth would return, facing down of populist plays by Ross Perot, Pat Buchanan – and one Newt Gingrich.
The entire reforming progressive movement of the early 1900’s – Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, George Norris and others – can be seen as the antithesis of the populist movement of that time, an attempt to reform government to adapt to modernity, rather than the Populist Party’s call to return to an idyllic (and non-existent) past of nativist and anti-intellectual agrarianism.
Like these earlier Presidential candidates, the test of Mitt Romney will be how he responds to Mr. Gingrich and his populist surge.
Mr. Romney can attack Mr. Gingrich as a serial philandering, Freddie Mac-advising, Nancy Pelosi-bill co-sponsoring, unelectable jerk. In other words, he can try to out populist Mr. Gingrich.
It’s probably the safest way to gain the Republican nomination, given Mr. Gingrich’s remarkable record of hypocrisy and bad judgment.
But the smart move is to use Mr. Gingrich as a foil to roll out a responsible, compelling and honest plan to address the economic challenges facing the middle class.
Mr. Romney should be a Progressive to Mr. Gingrich’s Populist. Where Mr. Gingrich wants to take American back to a non-existent idyllic past with blatant attacks against non-existent enemies, Mr. Romney can provide real, radical reforms aimed at helping the middle class adapt to a new era of challenge.
For Mr. Romney, this plays to his biographical strengths as a business leader, makes a virtue of his own record, and turns the coming months of campaigning into a springboard to the general election.
Winning this nomination by being the least objectionable person to the Republican Party will leave Mr. Romney fundamentally challenged in winning the Presidency.
In comparison, winning the nomination by having the best plan to restore hope for the middle class will leave Mr. Romney almost unstoppable in November.
Wednesday, January 18, 2012 1:40 PM EST
Imagine a world without Wikipedia
Productivity in North America must be through the roof: The Internet is boring on Wednesday.
You can still go to NBC’s website to watch advertisements before a few clips from Saturday Night Live. Facebook is still working. The Globe and Mail is still pumping out insightful political commentary.
But the things that make the Internet amazing – Reddit, Wikipedia, Cheezburger, Dailywh.at – are all going to be unavailable for the day.
The reason is to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act, legislation before the United States Congress that would allow copyright holders to seek court orders against websites accused of facilitating copyright infringement.
Actions envisioned in the legislation include ending payment to those sites through online advertising, banning search engines from reporting those sites, and ordering ISPs to block access. It would make downloading copyright material a crime punishable by up to five years in prison.
Uploading copyright material could similarly face criminal or civil proceedings. Taken to its extreme, the bill effectively criminalizes uploading to YouTube a children’s birthday party including the copyrighted song Happy Birthday.
At first blush, this is an extension of the classic battle between producerism and consumerism.
Consumerism is the well-known, American-invented philosophy of defining oneself by brands of consumption. I wear Nike, therefore I am an athlete. I drive a Suburban, therefore I am outdoorsy. I drink Starbucks, therefore I am cultured.
Producerism is the less-well-known French alternative philosophy of defining oneself by their output of production. I paint, therefore I am an artist. I draft legal arguments, therefore I am a lawyer. I throw cobblestones, therefore I am a protester.
Adam Gopnik defines the difference delightfully: “For [Americans], an elevator operator is only a tourist’s way of getting to the top of the Eiffel Tower. For the French, a tourist is only an elevator operator’s opportunity to practice his métier in a suitably impressive setting.”
Intellectual property is the most visible and graphic battlefield for this long-running clash, primarily because intellectual property is so liquid.
When you take physical property, you remove the property from another person’s possession. Theft is a clear action with few complications. I steal a loaf of bread from you. I have the loaf. You do not. Cleary, I have harmed you.
When you take intellectual property, typically you leave the property in the other person’s possession and make a copy. The issue is not theft, per se. It is failure to pay fair compensation. Harm is hard to prove, and still harder for the “criminal” to accept.
There are valid arguments both for and against the wide distribution of intellectual property.
On the one hand, copyright holders deserve compensation for their efforts. Intellectual property is a major employer in the United States (and Canada). Those who work to create something should not have to see their work sold illegally by someone else for profit, with no compensation or attribution. As a producer of art or music or a book of fart jokes, I deserve to receive every penny my work generates as compensation for my genius and sweat.
On the other hand, people around the world take original work and add to it with their own creativity, creating new art, music and ideas. From mashups to memes, the Internet democratizes creativity and allows any one of us to do something amazing. As a consumer of art or music or a book of fart jokes, I should have access to material at as close to zero cost as possible and with maximum ability to reframe the result as I see fit.
Intellectual property “theft” can produce benefits. For instance, this guy on Reddit who created one of the best Zombie-rated works of the last ten years. It’s nothing but intellectual property violations, but undeniably creative in its own right.
In another example, American consumers have long ordered prescription drugs from Canada over the Internet, avoiding higher costs due to more stringent drug patents in the United States. SOPA would criminalize the websites – operated by pharmacists and requiring doctor’s prescriptions – that offer these lower cost drugs to hundreds of thousands of Americans. Patent-holders argue they spend billions to develop drugs and need to maximize their profits to create the next Lipitor, but tell that to a pensioner who needs an expensive drug to live.
The issue is even more complex when the user of the intellectual property is not doing it for profit even in avoidance of profit. Wikipedia is a good example, where thousands of editors create entries in an on-line encyclopedia. Certainly, they are competing with Britannica and traditional encyclopedias, but their purpose is not to replace the original work but to catalogue its existence.
But property is property, and Wikipedia strives to limit the use of copyright material in their entries. The result is sometimes unintentionally hilarious, as Hollywood stars, with images carefully guarded by Hollywood publicists, enjoy photographs from random amatures taken at red carpet events. Red eye and bad lighting in one of their highest profile web entries is the price for copyright on better photos.
The best way to understand the opposition to the bill is to look at one of its key provisions.
In 1998, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act allowed for “safe harbors.” The argument was that owners of copyright material could contact hosts of material and request that their images or works be removed. The onus was on the copyright holder to police the Internet.
SOPA moves the onus from the copyright holder to the website. With loosely written provisions, even a single copyright image could result in the shutdown of an entire website. At its most extreme, Facebook could close because you uploaded an Anne Geddes picture of a baby in a flower.
Champions of the bill say it is aimed at foreign websites that specialize in offering copyrighted material for download, including entire films and albums. Having eliminated Napster and other domestic file-sharing services, Congress is now going after off-shore equivalents. The problem is that policing these sites is almost impossible, regardless of the law in the United States. When a pirate site is found and scoured from Google, it will only reappear hours later with a new name and address.
Short of recreating the Great Firewall of China around American consumers, and scouring with deep-packet inspection every bit transmitted, malicious copyright infringement will continue.
Like many bill, SOPA likely started with the best of intentions. The creative industries are major employers in the United States, and there is rampant, industrial-scale copyright violation going on in international markets.
However, the United States Congress only has powers over Americans, and the resulting law punishes domestic sites unduly, squelching innovation and creativity, while failing to materially impact the very target of the bill. Global property pirates will still be selling bootleg movies in Mumbai after this bill passes, but the Internet will be significantly less innovative.
The creativity and innovation of the Internet would continue, but pushed underground, chased and reviled by authority. The result is an Internet I wouldn’t want to be see: where anonymity is the first condition of free speech and creativity.
Where the free exchange of ideas is divorced from our day to day lives, building ever greater walls between the digital “us” that is free from accountability and the flesh and blood “us” that must implement our ideas in a real world. The result is an Internet of greater polarization and coarseness, rampant with tribalism and atomization of the individual from society.
Tighter provisions might focus this legislation to target global profiteers while leaving harmless domestic audiences free to openly engage in their Constitutionally-protected speech. But the real forum for this battle is diplomacy aimed at getting countries like China to recognize their own need to police domestic piracy rings, rather than targeting the innocent.
Friday, January 13, 2012 8:58 AM EST
Steve Jobs and how to present to government
This is an obscure video of Steve Jobs presenting the plan for the new Apple campus to Cupertino city council in June of 2011.
It provides some good advice to any business leader who is appearing before a regulator or government body.
1. Be humble. Jobs is CEO of one of the largest companies in the world. Here he is appearing personally before a small city council.
Predictably, he didn’t roll up in a Ferrari or wear a lot of bling. He doesn’t bring an army of lawyers. He waits in the audience to present like everyone else.
More importantly, his language is appropriately humble.
His tone is matter of fact and respectful. It is the job of the council to make a decision, and he takes their jobs seriously. He is the biggest employer in the town, but he doesn’t flaunt his power or rub anyone’s nose in it.
2. Establish an emotional tie. Jobs uses the story of his early relationship with Hewlett and Packard to explain why this piece of land is special to him.
The story isn’t just some random reflection. It is his first point and helps set the tone for the presentation: I grew up here, I want to stay here, Cupertino is my home.
As a result, there is some additional pathos for the company from the council.
Don’t underestimate how important it is to make your audience sympathize with you. It allows them to later see your request through your eyes.
3. Establish a common interest. Jobs clearly states the employment numbers and economic impact. He employs 9,500 people in town and wants to increase that to 13,000. That is a fact.
He also says that if he can’t expand, he would have to move to Mountain View and take his tax base with him.
But the key is the lack of direct threat. He doesn’t say “If you don’t approve this, I’ll move to Mountain View.” He says “We don’t have the room to stay where we are, and I don’t want to move to Mountain View, so let’s do this.”
He presents the choice to Cupertino in terms of positive benefits, not a gun to their heads.
Governments can react badly to threats, even somewhat irrationally. Protecting the prerogatives of the state is crucial for the long-term interests of any government. The wrath of one business can seem smaller than the loss of independence for a government or regulator, particularly if that business is imperious or disdainful.
Win-win solutions are always better than demands.
4. Anticipate concerns. Landscaping and parking are addressed immediately, the prosaic concerns of neighbours. “What will I be looking at all day and will I be able to get a parking spot?”
Energy will be generated internally in as clean a method as possible. They will increase the number of trees and moving parking spots underground.
City council zoning applications often get hung up on externalities like traffic snarls or construction noise, not grand issues of architecture or safety. Jobs effectively addresses most of those in the presentation.
The point is that he doesn’t wait for problems to come at him in the Q&A, but ticks them off in the presentation.
5. Brevity. Jobs only takes about eight minutes to make his point, and then takes questions.
Be sincere. Be brief. Be seated.
6. Doesn’t give things away to buy peace. Jobs gets asked several pointed questions about moving an Apple store to town or providing free WiFi. He doesn’t dismiss the requests out of hand, but instead answers them with a clear no and explains his thinking.
It’s a temptation when you are appearing before a government or regulator to try to buy peace, but often this isn’t necessary or appropriate.
Jobs gives a good example of how to say no: directly and with reasons.
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This is a pretty easy audience and the city council is clearly star-struck. But something like this could go very badly if the company had handled it badly.
Jobs handled it with humility and preparation that showed respect for the institution and its democratically elected representatives.
The results? The next day, Cupertino Mayor Gilbert Wong held a press conference to say “there is no chance that we are saying no.”
Tuesday, January 10, 2012 4:10 PM EST
McGuinty, Harper and the politics of spending cuts
According to The Globe and Mail today, Ontario universities and hospitals are “in shock” after the province ended $66-million in research programs.
There are a number of lessons in this for Dalton McGuinty, Stephen Harper, and the hospitals and universities themselves.
First of all, both levels of government are contemplating far more drastic reductions as this very minute. To put the cuts in the paper into scale, $66-million is about 0.4% of the current deficit in Ontario, or about 0.2% of the federal deficit.
And yet these (relatively) minor cuts were on the cover of The Globe, with breathless outrage from stakeholders about this cataclysm. If they had cut $660-million, there would have been a very similar 450 words by Karen Howlett and James Bradshaw, probably with the same headline graced with one more digit.
When McGuinty and Harper roll out their much larger set of reductions in the coming budgets, they would be wise to wait and announce them all at the same time and on a global scale.
Lesson 1: When cutting, big announcements and small announcements buy you about the same amount of pain.
A different but related point is timing. Part of why it makes sense to make big reductions all at the same time, not piecemeal over a long period of time, to stack the bad news and draw out any good news.
The worst stories – the sponsorship scandal and Watergate come to mind – are long reveals where every day has a new headline. Those impressions add up in voter imaginations, like a poison in the bloodstream.
The best managed communications will stack bad news so that the multiple criticisms blend into a cacophony. There used to be “take out the trash” days, when a government will work to put out multiple bad stories at the same time. This will create multiple competing stories that knock each other off the evening news, and quickly dissolve the toxin of bad news. The federal Tories have been using the practice with some regularity.
Lesson 2: If you are going to do something unpopular, do it all, do it fast, and then move on. Just like taking off a band aid.
I can’t imagine the McGuinty Liberals don’t know the first two lessons, considering they were taught to me by McGuinty Liberals. So what is actually going on in Ontario, if the government knows not to do one-off cuts in a relative news vacuum?
The reality is that these reductions were announced back in November as the way the government was paying for new regional development agencies. However, the sectors didn’t pick up on the announcement and are only noticing now.
So why the sudden “shock.” Clearly, the Ontario Grits are preconditioning the system to accept cuts.
After eight years of relatively strong economic growth, the publicly-funded system is geared to demand greater spending year after year. Hospital CEOs and university presidents haven’t had to think about transformational change or budget reductions since the late 1990s. There has been a steady drip of reliable increases year after year, a stable way to grow.
Unfortunately, there is no more money, thanks to the global recession. Executives will need to be ready to adapt to their new circumstances if they are going to ensure they institutions remain vibrant, independent and functioning over the next few years. Better the “shock” comes early, on a relatively minor item, than in a few months when much more fundamental changes are expected.
Lesson 3: If you are going to make major cuts, prepare the broader public sector with early “demonstration” reductions that remove the shock element when major change happens.
Another different but related point to Lesson 3 is that this was also aimed at the Ontario Public Service.
The civil service in Ontario has spent the last ten years being rewarded for thinking up smart ways to improve services with more money. Under Ernie Eves and then Dalton McGuinty, cuts were relatively sparse and used to fund other, more critical items. Deputy ministers who were smart and thoughtful used their energy to grow new programs or restructure their departments around new priorities. Deputy ministers who championed reducing their own budget were rarely rewarded, either by their colleagues or by a system geared toward stability and ensuring stakeholder institutions were not in “shock.”
The rules have changed. Now the province (just like the federal government) needs to demonstrate that the incentives have changed.
What better way to do that then ending programs developed by the Premier personally when he was minister of research and innovation? If those sacred cows can be eliminated, and the minister and deputy minister who championed that reduction supported and tacitly rewarded by the Premier and secretary of cabinet, then the rule of the game have clearly changed.
Lesson 4: If you are switching to making major cuts, signal to the civil service that they need to implement them.
The crucial element of making unpopular decisions is not announcing them or making sure the aggrieved parties notice them. The hard part is maintaining the will to go through with them after the outrage mounts.
By making the planned reductions, then going through with them unwaveringly, the government will demonstrate steadfastness. However, this is of limited utility, as many of the key spending decisions of the next few years – employee compensation, pension reform, transfers to individuals – strike at much more entrenched and militant groups than researchers.
But if the Liberals back down on this minor cut, expect these groups to be unmanageable.
Lesson 5: Once you jump, you can’t claw your way back on the diving board.
As Prime Minister Harper and Premier McGuinty contemplate the challenging year ahead, they would be wise to take note of this story and the lessons it provides.
Sunday, January 8, 2012 11:15 AM EST
Obama’s re-election and other perilous predictions for 2012
Predictions in politics and government are a fool’s game. The systems involved are chaotic and complex. The players change motive or exit the game unexpectedly. Choices are made for reasons that are often hidden, illogical or against one’s own self interest.
Despite this, last year I went out on a limb with 10 perilous predictions for 2011.
Surprisingly, eight of the ten guesses are generally correct, albeit some achieving the predicted result in different ways than envisaged. For instance, Stephen Harper did get his majority, but at the expense of the Liberals, rather than through NDP losses.
Gas prices failed to rise. China is certainly more wobbly than a year ago, but Beijing is managing to contain the evidence of that better than expected. And the biggest story of the year – the collapse of multiple Middle Eastern dictatorships – wasn’t on my radar at all.
It is incredibly unlikely that my guesses will be as reliable for 2012, but here goes anyway. Some of these are comfortable picks (Romney, Redford, polarization) while others are long-shots (Huckabee, Iran) or tough calls (Obama, Europe.)
1. Mitt Romney will be the Republican nominee
The post-caucus coverage from Iowa seems to say Mitt Romney had a bad day, when the opposite is true.
The Iowa caucus is only worth a total of 25 delegates for the Republican nomination, and winning it is essentially meaningless in predicting the nominee. What it does is serve to winnow the field of its pretenders. With a fifth-place finish, Rick Perry is seriously damaged, and throwing everything into South Carolina. A fourth-place finish robbed Newt Gingrich of his momentum and leaves him in the race essentially as an anti-Romney spoiler. Ron Paul is not viable. Rick Santorum has emerged as the consensus choice for the social conservatives, but he lacks the infrastructure, fundraising or scars from the media onslaught to sustain his rise.
There are plenty of ways Romney can be injured or even crippled in a long nomination fight, but he will be the nominee. His support among the Republican establishment, financial advantages and experience in running in 2008 give him too many advantages. It may not even be a long nomination, given Romney now leads the latest polls out of the third primary state, South Carolina.
2. Romney will pick Mike Huckabee for VP
Mitt Romney desperately needs to energize the Republican base to win the election. His single biggest problem will be the 41% of Republican voters who say he is an unacceptable nominee (and that was before negative ads about his record and positions began airing.)
He can’t pick a moderate nominee, as that would further demoralize the very social conservatives he needs, which takes the likes of Mitch Daniels and Rudy Giuliani out of the running. He would be ill-advised to pick a Washington insider in the age of anti-Washington anger, which takes away Paul Ryan or any other senator or Congressional representative of significant stature.
His current nomination opponents – the typical starting point for a VP pick – are a gaggle of weirdos. Gingrich, Michelle Bachmann, Santorum, Herman Cain, Perry and Paul each alienate a large segment of the coalition of voters Romney needs to win.
He would be crazy to pull another trick like John McCain and nominate an unknown and untested small-state governor or business leader. Sarah Palin was exciting and energizing to the base, but caustic to moderates and independents.
That leaves Romney with a very short list: big state governors or other media tested, nationally known Republicans, who are social conservatives and competent to be president.
Rick Perry would have been perfect on paper: Texas Governor with a good job creation record. Unfortunately, Perry ran and was exposed as a nincompoop. Bobby Jindal, the Governor of Louisiana, would have been great, except for his bizarre resemblance to Kenneth from 30 Rock.
Nikki Haley, the Governor of South Carolina, is a strong candidate, as is Chris Christie of New Jersey. But neither Haley has a low profile and has yet to be tested by the national media, and Christie tends to shoot from the hip, a dangerous habit for a VP candidate.
The most likely choice of the risk-adverse Romney is Mike Huckabee.
With a high profile among Republican activists and a strong populist streak, the former Arkansas Governor has been vetted by his 2008 presidential run. He attracted the support of many of the Republican activists who formed the basis for the Tea Party, but carries none of the Tea Party baggage. His positions are not outlandishly conservative, but his “just folks” footing will enjoy broad support across the more conservative elements of the Republican base. The former minister can explain Romney’s Mormon faith and abortion flip-flop in ways evangelicals will understand. Perhaps most importantly in a post-Palin world, he will not embarrass the presidential ticket or make people fear his becoming president who would not already fear Romney.
Huckabee provides a safe choice for VP that would excite the Republicans he needs to excite without risking alienating the moderates and independents needed to win. Their own personal relationship even appears to be warming after the vicious battles of 2008. Unless there is an animosity between the two that is so deep it cannot be healed by time and survival, Huckabee will be the VP candidate.
(As a caveat, trying to pick a single VP nominee from the two hundred potential candidates – before the presidential nomination is established – is a double fool’s errand with a side order of stupid, so triple points for getting this one right.)
3. Barack Obama will retain the presidency
The fundamentals are bad. Democrats trail Republicans in enthusiasm. Unemployment is too high, approval ratings too low, and these things correlate significantly (but not deterministically) to a president’s chances of reelection. Having set expectations far, far, far too high, Barack Obama presidency is the bitter disappointment it was set up to be.
But an election is not a referendum on the president. It is a choice.
As the Republican field winnows down that choice will become more clear. The next month will see Gingrich, Santorum and Paul attacking Mitt Romney as a flip-flopper who believes in nothing. Romney’s likely nomination will leave Republicans uninspired, erasing the enthusiasm gap. (Even a smart pick like Huckabee won’t be able to reverse much of the lack of enthusiasm for Romney.) A billion dollars in political fundraising will leave the Democrats able to saturate the airwaves in critical states with advertising further tearing down Romney.
Come the autumn, the choice will be between two flawed candidates, each with warts and disengaged bases. Here is where the differences will be:
» The Obama campaign is better organized, experienced, and ruthless. Romney’s campaign is untested with significant turnover from 2008.
» Obama will enjoy a significant advantage in fundraising. This will pay for more advertising in key swing states.
·» Obama faces no opposition in the primaries, and a party more or less unified around the President. The Republicans will be publicly divided at least until the summer and perhaps until Election Day.
» There is a vague threat of a third party candidacy on the right (Paul as a Libertarian or a social conservative.) While it’s a small chance, there is no significant third-party threat to Obama’s left.
» The potential for foreign policy challenges in 2012 will allow Obama to lead while Romney does politics.
» Most importantly, the Republican Party has no message of hope for the middle class. The innate negativity of the Tea Party movement makes for excellent opposition obstructionism and terrible Presidential campaigning. Those who campaign for the job of leader of the opposition will get it, as Paul Wells says.
All of this adds up to four more years for the Democrat in the White House.
4. The Democrats will lose the Senate
It seems a bit illogical, but while Obama will win the presidency, his party will lose control of the Senate. The President’s party holds 23 of the 33 seats up for election. Seven Democratic incumbents are retiring, including Kent Conrad in North Dakota and Ben Nelson in Nebraska, two states Obama will lose by a wide margin. The Democrats have to defend rookie Senators in Montana, West Virginia and Missouri, states Obama lost in 2008. They face tough races in swing states like Ohio, Florida, Michigan, New Mexico, Virginia and Wisconsin.
With just three seats to spare, it’s probable that the Democrats will lose control of the Senate, even if they pick up seats in Massachusetts and Nevada.
5. Alison Redford will win in Alberta
Yes, yes. Predicting a Progressive Conservative government in Alberta is as boring as predicting the sun will rise tomorrow. But it is less of a certainty than usual.
There are obvious challenges before Redford, not the least of which is the Wildrose Party. As the most credible threat from the right since the Western Canadian Concept ran on its quasi-separatist platform in 1982, Wildrose presents to the PCs the challenge of fighting on two flanks. However, the splintering of the opposition to their left between the Liberals, NDP and Alberta parties leaves the PCs with the ability to fearmonger in the cities against the Wildrose while holding the middle ground.
Expect some losses in rural Alberta, but the PCs maintaining enough strength in Edmonton and Calgary to hold the government. Their strategy of securing a lead among women voters is smart and should pay dividends.
6. Quebeckers rally to the CAQ
Quebec politics routinely makes a monkey out of pundits, and this coming year has all the simian signs. But here goes anyway.
Earlier in December, I thought Jean Charest would call a snap election in 2012. The threat to the Liberals has moved from the exhausted PQ to the Coalition-Avenir-Quebec. As a new party, the CAQ lacked the grassroots and organization to contest an election next year, so the opportunity was present to rush to the polls. This is a similar tactic to what Jean Chretien did in 2000 when faced by the new Canadian Alliance Party, and it resulted in an increased majority. The looming public inquiry into corruption in the fall provided extra ammunition for this theory.
However, the merger with the ADQ announced in December addresses the grassroots challenge for the CAQ, and provides a base of experienced campaign professionals and organizers on which to rely. And their message of ignoring the Constitutional babble in favour of a focus on the economy and services has real purchase in a province simply sick of forty years of endless debate. The breakthrough of the NDP federally shows that Quebec is looking for something new. This risk of going early just became too great, and now Charest will wait for the CAQ to make mistakes.
With the ADQ merger underway, the PQ tired and demoralized, and the Liberals under siege from corruption charges, CAQ’s new formula will have it well ahead in the polls in 2012, but not going to the hustings until 2013.
7. Europe muddles through
Last year, when I made my predictions for 2011, there was some criticism for ignoring the European bond crisis. The truth is I simply had no idea what would happen. This year, I feel more confident saying that the sky will not fall, Europe will not collapse and the largest economy in the world, the European Union, will muddle through.
The European Central Bank has restored confidence in lenders, at least enough confidence that they will keep lending. At the same time, the technocrat leadership of Mario Monti lowered the likelihood of Italian default, taking down Europe with it. Most importantly, there are enough vested interests agreed to keeping the casino running that the bumps along the way will sort themselves out. There are a myriad of tough decisions to be made as European countries dig themselves out of debt over the next decade, but the specter of a full-scale systemic collapse is quietly passing into the specter of individual country collapses.
8. Media moves from the mainstream
Back in the 1960s and even into the 1990s, people got their news from the same places. Most watched the evening news, a daily newspaper and radio. There was some minor differentiation in newspapers and radio, with some carrying opinion and editorials to the right or the left, but the news tended to carry objective pieces.
Today, objectivity is reduced. More and more people get their news not from dominant consensus sources but niche providers. Just by virtue of reading this non-journalist’s blog, you are demonstrating the trend in action. This is a technologically driven splintering of the news consensus.
As we move into 2012, this trend will accelerate in two ways.
First, consumers will increasingly get their news from non-traditional sources. Social media, blogs, live fees and YouTube will be seen as more credible news sources than traditional media, because they are referred by friends and endorsed by in-group opinion. Never mind that the yellow journalism they are transmitting is often error-ridden, biased or just plain wrong. (A great example is the recent “Iceland Revolution” story that went around.)
Second, traditional news outlets will move further from a consensus position to more radical views in order to excite their consumers and hold onto share in a hyper-competitive marketplace. This will mean more aggressive fear-mongering on the left and right.
9. Political polarization will accelerate
The polarization of news sources is both a contributor to and a result of polarization of the public.
In good times, it’s easy to take consensus positions. But the economic distress creates insecurity. People long for the certainty and easy solutions that comes from absolutes, rather than the grey positions of compromise and consensus.
The 1930s and early 1980s both saw significant economic downturns and resulting global political polarization. It’s obvious we in another period of growing polarization, one that has been underway for the last few years but is continuing to accelerate.
More voices will be heard on both the far left and far right and political parties will move to adopt some elements of these ideas. This is not to say the market for centrist ideas and compromise is to be ignored. Most Canadians will continue to be essentially moderate. Mackenzie King’s win in 1935 or Dalton McGuinty’s victory last year show the ability of strong centrists to play the “me or chaos” argument. But the likelihood of voters choosing more radical options goes up in periods of discontinuity (ie, UFO in Ontario in 1919, the CCF breakthrough in 1944, Mike Harris in 1995, Rob Ford in 2010.)
10. Showdown with Iran
There will be a significant global showdown between the United States and her allies and Iran.
2011 saw reports by the UN confirming programs in Iran had been underway to develop nuclear weapons and may be continuing. The British embassy was stormed and attempts to extend the Arab Spring to Persia were repressed violently. American authorities say they stopped a bizarre plot by Iranian backed assassins to murder the Saudi ambassador.
The United States tightened sanctions and now the EU is considering banning the importation of Iranian oil. This is would have significant dampening impact on the Iranian economy. In response, the mullahs are threatening to close the Strait of Hormuz, a major transit point for much of the world’s oil supply. They point to a captured American drone and explosions at a solid rocket development facility as evidence of American and Israeli spying and sabotage.
I am no expert on Iran, but I do know that domestic politics drive international politics. A bitter power struggle between religious and democratic conservatives in Iran is spilling into public. Only the threat of an external foe can keep the levers of power working, and compromise is not possible in those internal circumstances. At the same time, the United States, France and Germany all have major elections this year, increasing the demands on their leadership to look tough. These internal circumstances add up to increased sabre-rattling.
Basically, this domestic situation creates a type of “Prisoner’s Dilemma” where the leadership of each country can’t back down for fear of losing domestic support. This showdown will eventually reach a flash point in 2012.
Tuesday, December 20, 2011 8:01 AM EST
Are Liberals up to challenge of total strategic overhaul?
Strategy is a word that gets thrown around a lot, and defined too little. Often, it is confused with the challenges of problem solving, optimizing efficiency or issue management.
The word comes from the Greek, meaning the commanding role of a general in a war. The conduct of individual engagements is tactics; the marshalling of the individual engagements into a co-ordinated, war-winning effort is strategy.
Texts from The Art of War to Clausewitz, added to the general understanding of military strategic thinking with concepts like positioning and the culminating point. Military strategy emphasizes work beyond simple planning to the adaptations that take place in response to enemy movements and changing conditions.
However, the military applications of strategy themselves define war as a subset of Grand Strategy or the organizing principals of nations, reducing even their own work to a tactic in the overall national strategy. Examples of Grand Strategy are the “Germany First” decision the Allies made in 1942, or the concept of containment during the Cold War.
While Grand Strategy is a fascinating topic, the academic work around it is not generally applicable. Study of grand strategy often focuses on the historical choices or current options facing international relations, rather than how to theoretically optimize strategy at its highest level.
One of the best definitions of strategy comes from business theory, and Harvard Professor Michael Porter. He argued that the essence of strategy was “choosing to perform activities differently than rivals do. Otherwise, a strategy is nothing more than a marketing slogan that will not withstand competition.”
The argument he makes is that strategy is about building a sustainable competitive advantage, ideally one that is virtuous and builds on itself constantly.
It must be something that competitors cannot mimic easily, otherwise it is not sustainable. It must be something that provides a real edge in differentiating your offering from others, or it is not a sufficient advantage to matter.
Perhaps most importantly, a good strategy is about trade-offs, and picking what you will and will not do. There will be excellent tactics offered up that could bring temporary gains, even great ones, but if they do not reinforce your sustainable competitive advantage, they may not be the right tactics.
A great example is Wal-Mart. Their low prices lead to market share, which gives them the ability to squeeze suppliers, which leads to lower prices, and so on. Each move Wal-Mart makes a decision increases its virtuous circle, whether it is a new IT system to link suppliers directly to their inventory system or an advertising campaign. The clarity of their strategic vision makes decision making more simple at a tactical level, and it makes it very difficult for rivals to catch up to their low price-market share-squeezed suppliers advantage.
Strategy as sustainable competitive advantage is a definition that can be translated to different settings. Just as there is no one “perfect” strategy for a nation state, the realities of a political campaign or business must be grounded in the resources available, the position of the organization on the competitive terrain, and the actions of the competitors themselves, finding a niche that builds and sustains a competitive advantage.
Applying this definition to politics, you can see that federal Liberals received a catastrophic thumping in this year’s election due to the loss of any sustainable competitive advantage.
Liberals are foremost the “party of power,” an organization whose ability to broker consensus among competing interests keeps them in office for long periods of time. However, the advantages of ideological flexibility, incrementalism and moderation become disadvantages in opposition, where clarity, boldness of vision and consistency are typical virtues.
As such, the Liberal positioning in opposition is a non-ideological “natural alternative government.” The Grits will wait, generally aligned with government orthodoxy but opposing the Conservatives on some symbolic issues, and then wait for the Tories to implode and the country to come back to them. They hold their position of alternative government by virtue of history, shouting down other challengers with claims of inevitability and strategic voting, and resting on a base of past clients of their brokerage politics.
However, this last election saw the Liberals eclipsed not just by the governing Tories but the traditional third party, erasing not just their government advantage but their opposition differentiation as well. At the same time, the Conservatives may have developed the skills and patience to recreate the strategic advantage over the past few years, adopting a more flexible and incremental approach compared to the Mulroney, Diefenbaker or Bennett eras.
As such, the Liberals will be hard pressed to use their past strategies to regain power, and will have to rebuild an entirely new strategy different from their typical “wait for the Tories to blow up” approach.
Canada as a nation has a strategy as well. I wrote a long piece for The Globe last summer on Canada’s Grand Strategy, which I won’t repeat here.
The Journal of Military and Strategic Studies includes some of the most interesting relevant work on Canada’s strategy. Jack Granatstein argues that Canada cannot actually have a grand strategy akin to great powers, because we lack the resources to sustain them.
What is intriguing about strategy in the national sense is the difficulty in identifying all but the most obvious examples. China, for instance, clearly has a strategy, but defining it is a difficult effort, far more complex than the classic “Germany First” strategy of the Allies.
But what is certain is that the United States has failed to develop a coherent national strategy since the end of the Cold War, and that absence can be directly attributed to the scattered and incoherent responses to international challenges like 9/11 and the Arab Spring, but also domestic failures in political consensus building.
Like the Liberals, the current struggles of the United States are strategic, and require the hard work and decisiveness to decide what they will do differently from competitors and – perhaps most importantly – to make the trade-offs of what they will no longer do.
Friday, December 9, 2011 1:11 PM EST
Gay rights, Rick Perry and the arc of justice
“Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”
This is one of President Barack Obama’s favourite quotes, originally spoken by Dr. Martin Luther King during the days of the civil-rights movement.
The long liberation of African-Americans from the days of slavery to the present administration in the White House is its great proof point.
The conditions of blacks in the United States changed fundamentally in a single life time, from lynching and systematic disenfranchisement to a black president in less than 60 years.
It would be impossible for politicians today to successfully argue for segregation, a mainstream opinion in the 1950s. Those who occasionally revert to earlier messages can see their careers collapse in a blink. Trent Lott is the most high profile example.
However, the liberation of African-Americans is not the only example. Other liberation movements show the same long term movement in public opinion and threaten politicians with the same long arc of history.
Public opinion on gay rights experienced a sea change within recent memory. In just the last couple years, support for gay marriage went from a weak minority position (37 per cent in favour to 54 per cent opposed) to a bare majority approval.
“A March 2011 public opinion poll by ABC News/Washington Post showed support for gay marriage at 53 per cent among Americans, and a May 2011 Gallup opinion poll also showed 53 per cent support for gay marriage among Americans. A May 2009 Gallup poll indicated 54 per cent support for gays and lesbians being allowed to adopt children.”
Going back further, the gap was even wider. In 1996, just 27 per cent of Americans surveyed supported homosexual marriage rights, compared to 68 per cent opposed.
In 1971, homosexuality was still formally recognized as a mental disorder in the psychiatric profession’s bible: the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. How things have changed…
Bans on gays openly serving in the U.S. military have been lifted. Federal law in the United States requires hospitals receiving medicare to treat gay partners as spouses for medical decision making. Hate crimes law was recently expanded to include sexual orientation.
Here in Canada, the same sudden shift in public opinion occurred between 1997 and 2004. Mark Lehman did some excellent work on this phenomenon in a master’s thesis at U of T. And same-sex marriage has been recognized in legislation since 2005.
Despite the sea change in attitudes, there are still large and motivated minorities in public opinion who oppose gay rights.
These minorities are most visible in contexts where they are concentrated. The U.S. Republican primary is one such audience where gay-bashing remains a viable political strategy, despite its loss of strength among the broad sweep of Americans.
Texas Governor Rick Perry, his campaign reeling from disastrous debate performances, recently put out an ad attacking gays in the military.
Personally, I resent the inference here that people of faith automatically seek to deny others the ability to serve their country on the basis of sexual orientation, perhaps as much as I dislike the mythology that saying “happy holidays” disenfranchises Christmas. But I’m probably not Rick Perry’s target audience.
His campaign expects moderates to be a distinct minority among Republican primary voters, and that this issue can help revive his poll numbers by coalescing the voters scattered by Herman Cain’s withdrawal from the race around his standard. But for every step forward he is taking in the primary, he is losing one in the general election.
It’s not that general election swing voters will remember this ad run eleven months before voting and say “gosh, Rick Perry doesn’t like gays in the military. I won’t vote for him.” I doubt that a lot of swing voters in U.S. presidential elections are particularly concerned about gay rights. But the issue is in fact so completely tangential to their concerns today as to make Perry a caricature.
Americans are terrified of unemployment, economic uncertainty, and the potential fading of the American century. To focus your campaign on boutique issues is to make yourself a boutique candidate: “Rick Perry. He hates gays. Next.”
During Bill Clinton’s run in 1992, James Carville wanted to run the campaign on big economic ideas that would capture the imagination of people hungry for hope on jobs. He rejected side issues that didn’t project that transformational vision. “You don’t get elected president running for dogcatcher.”
Rick Perry is risking running for the role of “angry white conservative Christian Republican” at a time when people want a president.
A similar rear-guard action of the increasingly irrelevant was on display in Ontario recently.
The new Accepting Schools Act is designed to crack down on bullying. This topic is on the minds of parents after a rash of suicides among youths recently, be they gay, disabled or just different.
The bill is incremental change, giving principals some new powers and promoting tolerance of those who may be different. The point is to make sure students have the tools to focus on their education, free from an environment that prevents them thriving.
However, a group of conservative religious and anti-abortion leaders led by Dr. Charles McVety say that this is all a front for a radical sexual agenda.
The bill hardly promotes an agenda, but recognizes – among other things – the reality of gay students in publicly funded schools. Religious leaders who want the right to bully their students – or promote bullying by their students – should look elsewhere than the public purse or this parent for their funding.
To his credit, Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak distanced himself from his own MPPs, who sponsored and attended the press conference. “There should be, in all our public schools, some committee to help students who are being bullied for sexual orientation – also for disability, race, religious background, what have you,” he told reporters.
That distancing shows that Mr. Hudak learned the game of politics better than Governor Perry (or at least isn’t as desperate). His caucus will likely be able to keep these anti-gay activists in their tent, but he is smart enough to accept the changing attitudes of Ontarians and remain focused on the issues that matter to them.
The strength of Canada’s diversity rests on our tolerance of difference. Learning to accept that some people hold different views, and how to manage those differences while remain true to one’s self, are fundamental mandates of our public education system.
Managing the tensions of diversity is what makes Canada a beacon to the world. In contrast, Dr. McVety and Gov. Perry look like the George Wallaces of their era: standing in the schoolhouse door of ignorance and hate.
Andrew Steele Contributors
Andrew Steele
Andrew Steele is a strategy consultant in Toronto. He advises companies from start-ups to multinationals on strategic planning, stakeholder relations, crisis communications and government relations. Previously, Andrew designed and analyzed public opinion surveys and interpreted focus groups at one of Canada's top market research companies. Andrew is a veteran of more than 25 election campaigns in Ontario, British Columbia, the United States, and on the municipal and federal scene in Canada. He served as senior advisor to the Premier of Ontario, and chief of staff in several departments.
