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.
