 |
| That all-important swing voter |
I’m not a big fan of using extended quotes in columns. For one thing, it seems somehow like cheating off another boy’s exam paper; for another, it’s boring to type out someone else’s words. All that said, I’ve been reading Tony Blair’s autobiography A Journey: My Political Life and I was struck by the following passage concerning the 1997 election that swept Blair to power in the UK:
I believed the current prime minister John Major was much better than others thought. He had real appeal as a person. Fortunately, his party had gone off the rails, to a heavy, hard-right position, and over the seemingly interminable time I had spent as Leader of the Opposition - almost three years - I had learned how to play him and his party off against each other...
(The Tories’) hope was that we would trip up, I would suddenly lose my head, by some trick of fate or fortune the mood of the public would switch. It was never really going to happen.
Instead, and rather more predictably, the Tories fell apart. Every time Major tried to get them on the front foot, someone in his ranks resigned, said something stupid, got caught in a scandal and frequently all three at once and occasionally the same person...Amazing how a political party can go like that, though it is possible to tempt them into it if their opponents are smart enough; and by occupying the centre ground, make them foolishly go off to the side.
There are enough similarities between Britain 1997 and Canada 2010 to make for a comparative study. Equally, the differences between the two years and countries illustrate What Must Be Done by either the Canadian Tories or Liberals must do between now and election day to secure victory in insecure times.
Stephen Harper’s Tories have clearly gone the hard-right route. It actually amazes me that Harper is burning personal time and power in attempting to win a vote that now appears doomed - the long gun registry. The PM showed up in Thunder Bay this past Thursday, just coincidentally a few days before the registry vote; and just coincidentally the home base of two NDP members starting to waver away from voting with the Conservatives. He has been making red meat speeches and red meat answers to questions about the registry. And for what purpose?
This is not a vote-winning issue, but the government is being so bull-headed about it that clearly they must believe it is. Please don’t express any poppycock about opposition to the long gun registry being a matter of honour! ethics! cost savings! Rubbish. It’s about appealing to the Canadian version of Floyd R Turbo, the simple-minded hunter played by the late Johnny Carson. But isn’t that social subset already voting Tory? Granted the base must be served now and then, but a glance south of the border shows us a series of Republican Presidents starting with Ronald Reagan who campaigned against abortion with the fervour of a Catholic bishop, then shut the hell up about it once inaugurated. Harper is trading cities for sticks. Not a good deal.
There are more signs of the hard tack to starboard, seeking a favourable wind that may not be there. Building big new prisons is a classic hard right issue. So is sneering against ‘Toronto elites’ as Conservative House Leader John Baird did recently. Indeed, the sense that Baird is the only Tory allowed to speak without having every verb, noun, um, eh or burp vetted by the PMO also shows the rightward shift.
I’m not sure where the long form census debate fits into the left-right spectrum. The handling of it by the government has been atrocious. One is left thinking that not only does this government not seem to like people very much, it doesn’t even want to know them. Although it must be observed that along among the world’s peoples only Canadians would rise in protest at being denied the opportunity to do more paperwork.
So that parallel fits. I’m not so sure that Harper, like Major, runs ahead of his party in public favourability. Not that it really matters. The Orwellian PMO has ensured that no Cabinet Minister stands a chance of being seen as a viable successor to Harper. You could argue for Jim Flaherty I suppose. You could, but I won’t.
And those that are in Cabinet still manage to implode in public. Just for s***s and giggles I Googled ‘Canadian Tories saying stupid things.’ I found 312,000 results. There may be some duplication within that number. One has to wonder aloud about the seeming chauvinism of throwing Helena Guergis out of caucus and under a bus for allegations which were proven untrue, whereas Stockwell Day gets to flat out lie about crime statistics while announcing those new prisons - and he gets a free pass.
The long and the short of it is that there is a sufficient and growing weakness in the government that creates a golden opportunity for the Opposition Liberals. But is Michael Ignatieff a Tony Blair, and can the Liberals become New Liberals as Labour in the UK became New Labour?
Ironically, the counter-argument that there is no need for the Liberals to become “new” anything merely underlines the Grit problem. Labour had to transition into New Labour because there were a series of socialist positions that Labour had campaigned on over the years (severely high upper end tax rates and de-denuclearizing the armed forces being two examples) which had proven unpopular. Therefore, when Blair’s predecessor John Smith died, and Blair and Gordon Brown made their historic deal where Blair would be the leader for ten years, it was a necessity to change Labour into something more palatable, popular and electable.
The Canadian Liberals do not have that particular problem. Now, the arched eyebrow set would say that the Liberals do not have principles that require changing because the Liberals do not have principles. And yes, there is something to that jab. When the Liberal Party has had a visionary for a leader - Laurier, Trudeau - it is a visionary party that can cascade to massive victories. When it has a likable, yet non-visionary leader like Jean Chretien, it is just a cruel winning machine.
Chretien had no vision - we as a nation were not all going to shrink in size and move to Shawinigan - but he did have shrewd sense of history and knew how to sell the Liberal Party successes. He targeted the most unpopular Tory positions - the GST - and swore he would eliminate them - he didn’t.
So what is Michael Ignatieff, who like Blair became leader as a result of an entente with a rival, in Iggy’s case that being an entente imposed on Bob Rae? Is he a visionary? Is he a non-visionary? Has he staked out the middle as Blair did?
I’m willing to bet that you the reader had to think for a while before answering the previous paragraph’s questions. Ignatieff admitted this week in a televised interview with Peter Mansbridge on CBC TV that he had more work to do in order to reach the Canadian public.
Well, Iggy is rather wrong on that score. He has reached the Canadian people. He has high awareness, his every word on the issues of the day are sought out, he speaks well, he flips a mean burger. He is visible, but his words ... well, it’s rather like someone reading a comic book where all the speech and thought balloons have been erased with white out.
The Tories are doing everything they can to make the upcoming campaign season a tight race by consistently opening up then blowing leads in the public opinion polls. But can the Liberals take advantage? That’s the end of it I’m not so sure about. When I’m playing poker I never go all-in on a 50/50 hand. The Liberals seemingly are willing to play those cards. Good luck with that.
Hubert O’Hearn
for Lake Superior News
I believed the current prime minister John Major was much better than others thought. He had real appeal as a person. Fortunately, his party had gone off the rails, to a heavy, hard-right position, and over the seemingly interminable time I had spent as Leader of the Opposition - almost three years - I had learned how to play him and his party off against each other...
(The Tories’) hope was that we would trip up, I would suddenly lose my head, by some trick of fate or fortune the mood of the public would switch. It was never really going to happen.
Instead, and rather more predictably, the Tories fell apart. Every time Major tried to get them on the front foot, someone in his ranks resigned, said something stupid, got caught in a scandal and frequently all three at once and occasionally the same person...Amazing how a political party can go like that, though it is possible to tempt them into it if their opponents are smart enough; and by occupying the centre ground, make them foolishly go off to the side.
There are enough similarities between Britain 1997 and Canada 2010 to make for a comparative study. Equally, the differences between the two years and countries illustrate What Must Be Done by either the Canadian Tories or Liberals must do between now and election day to secure victory in insecure times.
Stephen Harper’s Tories have clearly gone the hard-right route. It actually amazes me that Harper is burning personal time and power in attempting to win a vote that now appears doomed - the long gun registry. The PM showed up in Thunder Bay this past Thursday, just coincidentally a few days before the registry vote; and just coincidentally the home base of two NDP members starting to waver away from voting with the Conservatives. He has been making red meat speeches and red meat answers to questions about the registry. And for what purpose?
This is not a vote-winning issue, but the government is being so bull-headed about it that clearly they must believe it is. Please don’t express any poppycock about opposition to the long gun registry being a matter of honour! ethics! cost savings! Rubbish. It’s about appealing to the Canadian version of Floyd R Turbo, the simple-minded hunter played by the late Johnny Carson. But isn’t that social subset already voting Tory? Granted the base must be served now and then, but a glance south of the border shows us a series of Republican Presidents starting with Ronald Reagan who campaigned against abortion with the fervour of a Catholic bishop, then shut the hell up about it once inaugurated. Harper is trading cities for sticks. Not a good deal.
There are more signs of the hard tack to starboard, seeking a favourable wind that may not be there. Building big new prisons is a classic hard right issue. So is sneering against ‘Toronto elites’ as Conservative House Leader John Baird did recently. Indeed, the sense that Baird is the only Tory allowed to speak without having every verb, noun, um, eh or burp vetted by the PMO also shows the rightward shift.
I’m not sure where the long form census debate fits into the left-right spectrum. The handling of it by the government has been atrocious. One is left thinking that not only does this government not seem to like people very much, it doesn’t even want to know them. Although it must be observed that along among the world’s peoples only Canadians would rise in protest at being denied the opportunity to do more paperwork.
So that parallel fits. I’m not so sure that Harper, like Major, runs ahead of his party in public favourability. Not that it really matters. The Orwellian PMO has ensured that no Cabinet Minister stands a chance of being seen as a viable successor to Harper. You could argue for Jim Flaherty I suppose. You could, but I won’t.
And those that are in Cabinet still manage to implode in public. Just for s***s and giggles I Googled ‘Canadian Tories saying stupid things.’ I found 312,000 results. There may be some duplication within that number. One has to wonder aloud about the seeming chauvinism of throwing Helena Guergis out of caucus and under a bus for allegations which were proven untrue, whereas Stockwell Day gets to flat out lie about crime statistics while announcing those new prisons - and he gets a free pass.
The long and the short of it is that there is a sufficient and growing weakness in the government that creates a golden opportunity for the Opposition Liberals. But is Michael Ignatieff a Tony Blair, and can the Liberals become New Liberals as Labour in the UK became New Labour?
Ironically, the counter-argument that there is no need for the Liberals to become “new” anything merely underlines the Grit problem. Labour had to transition into New Labour because there were a series of socialist positions that Labour had campaigned on over the years (severely high upper end tax rates and de-denuclearizing the armed forces being two examples) which had proven unpopular. Therefore, when Blair’s predecessor John Smith died, and Blair and Gordon Brown made their historic deal where Blair would be the leader for ten years, it was a necessity to change Labour into something more palatable, popular and electable.
The Canadian Liberals do not have that particular problem. Now, the arched eyebrow set would say that the Liberals do not have principles that require changing because the Liberals do not have principles. And yes, there is something to that jab. When the Liberal Party has had a visionary for a leader - Laurier, Trudeau - it is a visionary party that can cascade to massive victories. When it has a likable, yet non-visionary leader like Jean Chretien, it is just a cruel winning machine.
Chretien had no vision - we as a nation were not all going to shrink in size and move to Shawinigan - but he did have shrewd sense of history and knew how to sell the Liberal Party successes. He targeted the most unpopular Tory positions - the GST - and swore he would eliminate them - he didn’t.
So what is Michael Ignatieff, who like Blair became leader as a result of an entente with a rival, in Iggy’s case that being an entente imposed on Bob Rae? Is he a visionary? Is he a non-visionary? Has he staked out the middle as Blair did?
I’m willing to bet that you the reader had to think for a while before answering the previous paragraph’s questions. Ignatieff admitted this week in a televised interview with Peter Mansbridge on CBC TV that he had more work to do in order to reach the Canadian public.
Well, Iggy is rather wrong on that score. He has reached the Canadian people. He has high awareness, his every word on the issues of the day are sought out, he speaks well, he flips a mean burger. He is visible, but his words ... well, it’s rather like someone reading a comic book where all the speech and thought balloons have been erased with white out.
The Tories are doing everything they can to make the upcoming campaign season a tight race by consistently opening up then blowing leads in the public opinion polls. But can the Liberals take advantage? That’s the end of it I’m not so sure about. When I’m playing poker I never go all-in on a 50/50 hand. The Liberals seemingly are willing to play those cards. Good luck with that.
Hubert O’Hearn
for Lake Superior News
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar