Knee-deep in political mud and still sinking
Last week the Conservative party started another round of negative ads against Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff and, according to some pollsters, Canadians are fed up with it. So am I.
By Angelo PersichilliSpecial to the Star
Sun., May 17, 2009timer3 min. read
While I don't believe Stephen Harper is the one who started it all, I am disappointed that he has not been able to put an end to it. Rather than walk away from a shouting match, he has decided to join in.
Aggressive attacks have always been part of politics. But things really started to change for the worse in the 1980s with the Liberals' so-called Rat Pack. They attacked then Conservative MP Sinclair Stevens and destroyed his political reputation despite his eventual exoneration.
Brian Mulroney, for his part, was able to hang on in 1988 only after a negative campaign against Liberal Leader John Turner. But the negativity hit back at him when he eventually had to resign, leaving the Conservatives under Kim Campbell reduced to a caucus of two in 1993.
The Conservatives were divided, and the Liberals were able to lead the country for 10 years. I know that Jean Chrétien is very proud of his three back-to-back majorities, but he won the first majority in part because of a nasty negative ad against him run by the Conservatives and the other two were mainly the result of negative campaigns against the leaders of the Reform party, Preston Manning, and the Canadian Alliance, Stockwell Day. As soon as they opened their mouths, they were labelled as racists and un-Canadian.
In 2003 it was payback time. The Liberals were hit by tons of dirt from the sponsorship scandal that, along with some internal feuds, first reduced them to a minority, then put them into opposition. They were labelled as corrupt, and voters decided to give them a timeout.
With the Conservatives back in government, the Liberals tried the same antics with Harper, calling him heartless, stopping just short of racist and corrupt. The last Parliament spent almost a year talking about fraud and innuendos while the economy deteriorated.
Harper, however, was ready and, after learning the trade, he beat the Liberals at their own game: He unloaded a lot of negative stuff on Stéphane Dion, making him a lame duck before he even started.
And now we are about to see another round of dirty politics.
The Conservatives' negative ads started in the same week we saw Liberal MP Ruby Dhalla going through farcical questioning in front of the immigration committee and a former prime minister answering questions related to events from 15 years ago. Of course, in the former case, the Conservatives are trying to embarrass the Liberals and the latter sees the opposition trying to tar Brian Mulroney and Harper with the same brush. Truth be told, the Mulroney and Harper are as different as an apple and a fridge. Can you imagine Harper taking more than $200,000 in cash, stuffing it in a safe and paying the taxes six years later?
And the dirt keeps piling up with the Conservative negative ads against Ignatieff.
I asked two political strategists, one Liberal and one Conservative, why they keep doing something Canadians don't like. Their answers were identical to the word. "We don't like them either, but they work," they said. Am I missing something here? How is it possible that Canadians change their opinions because of ads that they don't like?
In reality, the contradiction is easy to understand: Even if we don't like the badmouthing, the message still sticks. But this works both ways, meaning Canadians might simply choose what they believe to be the lesser evil, giving government to one party but denying it a majority. Considering that there are currently four parties in the House, not three like before, this game will only lead to perpetual uncertainty and an endless stream of minority governments.
It appears that politicians are no longer interested in proving they are better for the country than their opponents, only that their opponents are worse than them. In this race to the bottom, there are no winners but many losers – the Canadian people.
Angelo Persichilli is the political editor of Corriere Canadese. His column appears Sunday.