There are easy things to say about Don Cherry’s appearance at Toronto Mayor Rob Ford’s inauguration a few days ago. It was time for some “blue collar” people to run city hall – says a millionaire putting the seals of office around the neck of another millionaire. Time to get the “artsy” people out of city hall – says a public-broadcasting television comedian. Time for a fresh new start – and the “lefty pinkos” can put that in their pipe, setting the scene for four years of gracelessness, thuggishness and pointless conflict, so it would seem. Was that really a fresh new start?
But there are far, far more important things to say about this important and eye-opening event. Mayor Ford’s inauguration is a good symbol of a critically-important strategic issue that progressive-minded people would do well to think very carefully about. Our opponents have, for many years.
To begin, let us not dismiss either Mr. Cherry or Mayor Ford as clowns or fools. They are neither. Mr. Cherry and Mayor Ford are both smart, crafty and carefully-calculating players in their own worlds, and they know exactly what they’re doing. What we need to do is understand what they’re up to.
A good place to start is here, on the website of the American Enterprise Institute – one of the many murkily-governed and business-funded think tanks dedicated to spreading kleptocracy in the United States and around the world. The author is Henry Olsen and the article is a pickup from National Review Online.
This article is an interesting and thoughtful look at how the soldiers of kleptocracy view U.S. politics, with a particular focus on the recent Congressional midterms. The whole article rewards a careful read. But let’s go about two-thirds of the way down the piece, where Mr. Olsen is trying to understand why ordinary working people tend to support progressive parties:
“Ask an American working-class voter why he supports Democrats and he or she is likely to say it’s because Democrats support ‘the little guy’. ... I found exactly the same phrase used by English miners to describe their support for Labour. When I found the same phrase being used by Australian working-class voters to describe their attraction to the Australian Labor Party. I decided I needed to learn more.”
Now things get interesting. Read on:
“So I reached out to Patrick Muttart, former chief of staff to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Muttart is perhaps the world’s leading expert on working-class voters in English-speaking countries, having studied their behaviour and attitudes not only in Canada and also in Britain, Australia and America. He has found that in every country working-class voters may form the base for successful center-left governments but are crucially responsible for the rise of center-right leaders like Harper, Australia’s John Howard, and Margaret Thatcher.”
There then follows a detailed analysis of what motivates and interests working-class voters, with a focus on how to manipulate them into voting against their own economic and social best interests. Mr. Olson, quoting Mr. Muttart, notes the deep seams of optimism, fear, pride, anger at disrespect, belief in public order, patriotism, and concern about rapid change that motivate working class electorates. And he describes how conservative politicians can frame campaigns around these themes.
This is the intellectual underpinning of Stephen Harper’s “Timmy’s” campaign – and also of the Ford campaign, and of Mr. Cherry’s appearance to frame Mayor Ford’s term.
