Party Politics

This election driving you to drink? Yeah, me too.

I tried the Coalition Drinking Game the other night. Every time the word "coalition" was mentioned, I took a drink. The last thing I remember, Peter Mansbridge was talking about an airstrike in Libya.

Anyway, I don't think it's fair that the politicians should have all the fun, and burger polls are so 2008, so let's put the party into party politics with Political Cocktails 2011.

For you Conservatives, we have the Jets and Jails Julep. Start with 1½ ounces of Alberta rye whisky (what else). Add a dash of day-old Tim Hortons coffee, black, to give it that bitter edge. In keeping with Stephen Harper's personality, the drink should be neither shaken nor stirred, but served over lots of ice. Makes one minority strength drink. Or try it majority strength: adding 3 more ounces of rye turns it into a Harper Hangover. But, be warned: try it and you'll be sorry.

Or, there's a Liberal libation called the True Grit for those in the mushy middle. You say you're not sure what's in it? Doesn't matter; you can put whatever you like into this drink and change the ingredients to suit your mood and the occasion. Just be sure to use a muddler (you do have a muddler, don't you?), so everything gets thoroughly, well, muddled. Usually served on the rocks.

How about a You Don't Know Jack? Everyone says this one sounds great, but few people are willing to try it. Its fans prefer it straight up.

Available only in Québec, the Bloc Buster is one distinctly differently cocktail. In a tall glass combine 1 ounce pique, 1 ounce insouciance, and a dash of je ne sais crois. Gilles Duceppe finds this one great for washing away the taste of humiliation every time he demands another tanker load of money from the rest of the country.

Green Party supporters can try the May-be Someday. To an ounce of wheat grass juice, add 4 ounces of water from a melting glacier. But since it doesn't contain any alcohol, I don't know why you'd bother.

Our first prime minister, John A. MacDonald was a noted drinker. One evening, while on the campaign trail, an over-refreshed MacDonald threw up on the platform. Responding to his opponent's scornful accusation of drunkenness, MacDonald told the audience, "I get sick sometimes not because of drink or any other cause, except that I am forced to listen to the ranting of my honourable opponent."

I know how he felt.

Why You Hate Politicians

If you aren't already disgusted, or at least slightly disenchanted, with our political leaders after only a few days of Election 2011, you just haven't been paying attention.

The accusations, justifications, oversimplifications, obfuscations, and outright lies are enough to make any sentient being who loves this country despair.

How did we get to this sad point? I have a theory about that (or course). Or rather, I used to have a theory; recently I had to revise and expand it.

For the last few decades there's been a steady drumbeat, generally from the corporate-owned, right wing media, aimed at what I'll call the less sophisticated citizen. Or in their own demographic terms, the Tim Hortons Nation. The message goes like this: all politicians are the same – venal, corrupt, untrustworthy liars concerned only with their own perks and pensions.

This is, in fact, a favourite theme of Conservative politicians. Remember Mike Harris and his Fewer Politicians Act? We were all going to be better served if we elected fewer people to represent us. The Reform Party's disdain for MP's pensions, conveniently forgotten once they got elected, only served to reinforce their own stereotype.

But the corporate and financial elites know this is nonsense. They know politics and politicians matter. They just don't want you to think so. It's simply the law of supply and demand: once you're out of the market, they can get their pet politicians elected and they can buy them on the cheap.

So in time politics comes to be dominated by political waterboys – people whose entire careers have been in the service of the elites (google the resumés of Stephen Harper or Tim Hudak, for examples, though they're far from unique). Ever wonder why the right thing, the good thing, the sensible thing never seems to get done by government? Now you know.

A corollary to my theory is that once politics becomes dominated by these pet poodles, good people, people with a desire for seeing that the public good is served, stay away from politics. The problem continues to get worse.

That, as I say, was my original theory: we've been told politics is a load of crap and politicians are all crooks so that we'll stay away. That way, the elites and their right wing lackeys are allowed free rein. And that's what's happened over the last thirty years.

And with predictable results. Canadians are so estranged from their own public debate that a record low of only 58.8% of voters cast a ballot in the last federal election in 2008. The turnout is expected to be even lower this time. And this constitutes a very grave danger.

We have a prime minister, Stephen Harper, who has not only deliberately degraded the reputation of politics and politicians, but has also demonstrated flagrant contempt for the very principles and institutions of Canadian democracy.

I believe this is a deliberate strategy. Harper knows that Canada is not a conservative nation. His core constituency accounts for little more than a third of voters. But if he can rally his supporters with the kind of divisive issues that appeal to them, while turning off most of the rest of us, he could win a majority of seats in Parliament and accomplish his goal of transforming Canada in his own image.

So my theory boils down to this: If you're disgusted by the state of politics in this country, it's because you're supposed to be. If enough of us stop caring, and stay home on election day, Stephen Harper wins.

First Casualties

Truth is not only the first casualty of war, there's a great big bull's eye painted on its back during election campaigns as well.

The 2011 federal election campaign is only a few hours old, but already the baloney is being sliced thick and fast.

The Conservatives have been trying for a long time to demonize the idea of a coalition among the parties that represent the votes of nearly two-thirds of Canadians. Stephen Harper, in fact, kicked off his campaign by denying that he had been willing to enter into a coalition with the Bloc Québecois and New Democrats in 2004 when Paul Martin was Prime Minister. Here is the text of the letter that he, Gilles Duceppe, and Jack Layton sent to the Governor-General at the time. You be the judge.

He pretended to be gracious, retreating from his earlier position that a coalition would not be "legitimate" (he shut down Parliament to prevent the opposition parties from forming one in 2008). But, referring to the Bloc, he contended that it would not be "principled to have a party dedicated to the break up of our country having a hand in running the government."

He's onto to something here: Canadians outside Quebec are extremely uncomfortable with the notion of a coalition that includes the Bloc.

Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff promptly tried put the coalition issue to rest, going so far as to state, "We will not enter a coalition with other federalist parties."

In an election campaign, no one runs hoping to form a coalition. Both Harper and Ignatieff are hoping to gain a majority, but you can bet we haven't heard the last of coalitions from the Conservatives.

Another major theme of the Conservatives' campaign appears to be that the opposition is threatening the viability of the Canadian economy by defeating the government. They point to their stillborn budget as the blueprint that would have ensured prosperity for all.

But the Conservatives' own Economic Stimulus Program, on which they spent $26 million in public money to promote with an avalanche of advertising just this month, expires in five days. Their budget, a combination of corporate welfare aimed primarily at the big banks and oil companies and "boutique" tax cuts for select groups, was designed to push a few votes their way during the election campaign they knew it would provoke.

And in 2008, Harper was untroubled by the uncertainty an election would cause when he called an election just as the world economy was sliding into the Great Recession.

Canada survived that crisis better than most nations mainly because our banks (for once) didn't engage in the risky practices of their American and European counterparts, and because of the credibility of our central banker, Mark Carney. Harper and his finance minister, Jim Flaherty had to be forced kicking and screaming to adopt the Liberal and NDP measures that came to be called the Economic Stimulus Program.

Am I being more critical of Harper and the Conservatives than I am of the Liberals and NDP? Well, yes. But that's because Harper has a record in government for which he must be accountable. All we can do with Ignatieff and Layton is try to take their measure based on how credible they seem.

Harper would like you to ignore his record. That's why the Conservatives are trying so hard to smear their opponents. Hold on: this is going to be one dirty campaign.

The Blog is a Year Old

I wrote my first blog post just over a year ago, on March 3, 2010. This is my 67^th post, so I've been cranking them out at the rate of one every six days since then.

Some have been slightly shorter, some longer than 500 hundred words, but I try to stay close. This one is exactly 500 words.

I've written about politics, economics, travel, cocktails, daily life, Kurt Browning – anything that interested me and that I was just bursting to tell someone about. I've tried to inform, explain, persuade, praise, question, criticize, and ridicule. Sometimes I just needed to vent. Sometimes I tried to be funny.

Some posts have been easy to write, the work of half an hour. Others have taken days and many rewrites. Some I never published. One or two, I took down after posting them briefly. If you're thinking about writing your own blog, here's a tip: don't drink and blog.

I've know I've made some mistakes and I not every post was a winner, but there are a few that I particularly enjoyed writing and am proud of. I think I've improved as a writer, but you're a better judge of that than I am.

There have been nearly 3,000 visits to the blog, about 60 a week, and I know many of you are family and friends who return regularly. Thank you for your support and encouragement.

As you might expect, the majority (about 70%) of my readers are from Canada, with the U.S. taking the number 2 spot. After that, there are a few surprises: Germany, Russia, and the Netherlands round out the top 5, followed by the U.K., South Africa, Kuwait, China, and Taiwan. There have been visitors from Malaysia, India, Philippines, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Ghana, Slovenia, Venezuela, Brazil, and the United Arab Emirates. I don't know who you are, or how you found me, but thank you for dropping in. You're always welcome. And feel free to bring your friends; there's lots of room.

At the bottom of the post, you'll find an icon of an envelope with a right-pointing arrow. Click on that to forward to a friend (or enemy). There are other icons there, too, for doing social media-type things that I don't really understand, but if you do, go ahead.

I'd love it if you'd leave a comment. People seem to have no trouble doing so if they're a follower, but other comments don't seem to make it through unless posted anonymously. Keep trying.

A year ago, I invited you to be my audience, to give me 500 words to say what I had to say in the hope that you'd find it interesting. When I started, I had no idea how long I could keep it up, but it seems I haven't run out of things to say yet. I hope you'll stick around.

Yours sincerely,

Aeneas

In Other Words

This week may bring the fall of Stephen Harper's Conservative minority government and a possible federal general election in Canada. You can probably guess my opinion of the "Harper Government™". Here are some other voices.

"… Ignatieff, not a latter-day Nelson Mandela or Angela Merkel, is going to lead the Grits into the next election, whenever it comes. We owe it to ourselves finally to take him seriously."

"As Mr. Trudeau said when the press got on his case, 'Consider the alternative.' And so we thought of poor Bob Stanfield and Joe Clark. And Trudeau lost an election and won four, and served some 15 years as PM. As we should have given Harper his chance – and trust me, we've seen as good as it gets from this cold, mildly paranoid, mean-spirited and visionless man – the most viable alternative now deserves its chance."

"If Harper were kind and competent, there'd be no election talk." (David Olive, in his Everybody's Business blog for the Toronto Star)

"The Cons have laboured mightily to craft an Everyman persona for Stephen Harper. They've expended a few fortunes to convince you hockey rinks and Tim Hortons franchises are the summit of all Canuck wisdom — and it is Harper alone who loves it there.

Pardon me, but that's horsecrap. If anyone can produce a single undoctored photograph of Stephen Harper lined up for a double-double at a Tim Hortons prior to the 2004 election campaign, we'll happily post it in this space and issue the requisite mea culpa. But they can't. The Tim Hortons thing, like every other political affectation that preceded it, is the invention of boys in the backroom. It's BS. Ipso facto, he doesn't connect.

Ignatieff? To his credit, at least he doesn't pretend Timmys is the new Lourdes, with apparitions of Mackenzie King and Lester Pearson hovering above the doughnuts, imparting wisdom. He's John Kerry, and he knows it.

The question, then, isn't who will win the next election. It's this: Why is the choice between two men we feel don't know us, or even particularly like us?

Why is the choice between two men who don't connect?" (Warren Kinsella, in a column in the Ottawa Sun)

"While I guess while others may feel a bit squeamish about our PM ordering double-doubles and dipped donuts while the world, literally, moved on without him, I, for one, am grateful. The leader of our country has chosen to re-announce a three-month-old decision by a donut company instead of taking part in a conversation at the United Nations. In so doing, he's given me a whole bunch of fodder for research about how politicians see us now as shoppers/eaters now instead of educated citizens. Thanks, PM." (Susan Delacourt in her blog for the Toronto Star on the occasion of Stephen Harper passing up a United Nations conference to attend a Tim Hortons ribbon cutting)