Dissing the politically undead
By Michael Harris. Published on Mar 21, 2012 6:00am
Michael Harris is a writer, journalist, and documentary filmmaker. He was awarded a Doctor of Laws for his "unceasing pursuit of justice for the less fortunate among us." His eight books include Justice Denied, Unholy Orders, Rare ambition, Lament for an Ocean, and Con Game. His work has sparked four commissions of inquiry, and three of his books have been made into movies.
Somebody tried to steal a riding or two, (and maybe more), in the last election.
The most expensive military acquisition in Canadian history – $30 billion – is turning out to have been based on government misrepresentation that may or may not have misled parliament – again. Only AG Michael Ferguson seems to know for sure. Voters have been so docile on this file the Harper government got away with saying there was an actual contract to buy these duds during the last election.
Former Tories in the Vaughan Conservative riding association are asking for an investigation into the campaign finances of newly minted Harper uber-lieutenant Julian Fantino. So far, the Elections Canada audit of his by-election in 2010 is missing in action.
Our new Integrity Commissioner has apparently caught a dishonest public servant but will not divulge her name or the terms under which she left office.
Real federal public servants were used in a Conservative/Sun Media faux news special as fake citizens. Got a commendation from their boss. Hmmm.
Ottawa says Canadians who oppose the Gateway Pipeline are dangerous radicals under the control of foreign countries.
Vic Toews tells us that Canada now operates in a "with-us or with-the- pornographers universe."
The federal budget is just days away and we are told that big cuts are coming. But don't look for details in the budget, they won't be there. That info belongs to the government.
With all that and so much more happening, the Conservatives offer the country this political knee-trembler in the form of a new political attack ad – Bob Rae is a "Failure".
No, Bob Rae is the interim leader of the Liberal Party. He may even want to be full-time leader at some point – leader of the third party in parliament.
The trouble with the latest Tory attack ad, apart from its cerebral disconnect from everything except the Republican playbook of toxic partisanship, is that it tells us a great deal more about the attackers than the target of their assault. Could the Tory marksmen be starting to shoot off their own toes?
Even those who hate him have to admit that the "failed" Bob Rae is pretty much a dead horse. As a member of the NDP, he was elected premier of Ontario just about the time that icebergs appeared in the economic shipping lanes of the planet. The rest we all know – the short unhappy tenure of Captain Rae on the bridge of the S.S. Ontario. Twenty-year-old scoops are no more than ossified horse-balls and that is what this attack ad is.
The truth about Rae? He is currently a modest success story of political reinvention, who may or may not go on to bigger things depending on how elastic the public permits him to be on matters of principle.
I note in passing that an identical attack ad could be run about Stephen Harper – Failure. If you go back far enough, he failed in his first attempt to get elected to parliament. Once elected leader of a party, he failed to win a majority. After he won a majority, he failed to do what his ousted predecessors had done, balance the budget. (Damn those pesky recessions.)
But such an ad would be pointless. Everyone is a failure somewhere on the continuum of their career, even "Steve." (He actually ran as Steve Harper in that first failed campaign in Alberta.) The only political judgments that matter are made in the here-and-now about the here-and-now, and the lion's share are necessarily reserved for the party that wields power. At least that's the way it used to be. Now we resurrect the political undead to kill them again.
That to one side, consider for a moment what an unintended confession this tacky detour into dirtball politics contains. The Tories have been here before, effectively assassinating two Liberal leaders with ads that worked at the level of those game shows where they hold up cards and the audience applauds on cue. Not good on the Tories, even worse on the electorate. Cue card politics is for juntas and banana republics.
But the two previous victims were at least both leaders of the Official Opposition. They stood to be prime minister of Canada if the country had a quirky moment. As of today, Bob Rae is also-ran to the also-ran, government-in-waiting to the government-in-waiting. But even that lowly status is too much for the current government to abide. The Conservatives must not merely vanquish the political Opposition, they must raize their cities and sow their fields with salt. Hence the twenty year-old detour back into irrelevancy with the Rae ad.
Disinterring "Premier Rae" for retroactive indignities is perfectly in keeping with the core value of the Harper government – drowning even the smallest kitten of dissent while governing in near total secrecy.
What does the electorate get – political sideshows, partisan zingers, a tawdry appeal to patriotism reminiscent to Don Cherry on valium. And, oh yes, one other thing; the smallest possible quotient of solid information.
The same approach to politics south of the border has resulted in a permanently dysfunctional political culture. Maybe we have reached the point that Lewis Lapham warned about in his book on democracy at bay in the United States, The Wish for Kings. He opined that the ruling and possessing classes had decided that the practice of democratic government was both a risk and a luxury that they were no longer willing to finance. And he wondered about the value of free expression to people so frightened of the future that they preferred the reassurance of the authoritative lie to the truth. And why insist on the guarantee of so many superfluous civil liberties when everybody was having enough trouble just holding on to a job?
How quickly and efficiently Canadian democracy has been soundproofed.
By turning the committee system into a backroom show, the Tories have pulled the wings off the average opposition MP. If he doesn't fly in committee, the backbench MP doesn't fly at all.
Rival political parties have seen their public funding cancelled in the name of free market principles that give an immediate and maybe irreversible financial advantage to the Conservatives.
Parliament tries to hold the government to account but that is impossible without timely and accurate costing of government programs, which the government, of course, withholds. So instead there is the daily screaming match called Question Period that only paid professionals and near relatives can watch.
Non-governmental agencies have been punished by fiercely partisan government funding decisions.
Cabinet ministers rather than departments now decide which studies get published, a ploy which carries the handy benefit of never having purely ideological government policy embarrassed by the facts.
Scientists have to raise their hands and ask permission of political toads in ministers' offices before speaking about their work. Remember when you had to do that in Grade Three to get a pee break?
And as for the media, what are they but lepers in rags who, from time to time, get the smallest coin the PM has in his pocket. It is the best he can do to mask his otherwise utter disgust at the workings of a free press.
And then there are Stephen Harper's Greatest Hits, that long list of people who dared to oppose and found themselves swinging from the nearest tree. From Linda Keen and Helena Guergis to Richard Colvin and Rick Hillier, the message is clear: there is a price to be paid for not being with the program and it is exacted swiftly when a transgression is noted.
So far, and unbelievably, Canada under Harper has been a Come When You're Called kind of place. His fanatical defense of the corporate world, his silence when average people bite the dust as they did at Electro-Motive, his knee-capping of the legal rights of unions and his refusal to accept a role in governance for people who got votes from Canadians just the way he did and in larger numbers, has so far done nothing more than put the country to sleep.
Until that changes, all we have to look forward to is the next attack ad, which will feature "the dirty socialist" lucky enough to win the NDP leadership race. Did you know that Thomas Mulcair is a Failure?
Readers can reach the author at [email protected]. Click here to view other columns by Michael Harris.
Michael Harris is a writer, journalist and documentary filmmaker. He was awarded a Doctor of Laws for his "unceasing pursuit of justice for the less fortunate among us." His nine books include Justice Denied, Unholy Orders, Rare ambition, Lament for an Ocean and Con Game. His work has sparked four commissions of inquiry and three of his books have been made into movies. His book on the Harper majority government, Party of One, was a number one best-seller.