Scandals are Non-Partisan

If the Duffy/Wright/Senate controversy has proven one thing, it’s that scandals are a non-partisan affair.

This news might shock many Conservative Party partisans who were certain that greed and arrogance were traits that formed part of the Liberal Party's DNA.

Indeed, Conservative Party dogma was that only Tories, free as they were of Liberal taint, could provide honest and accountable government.

Well, the Duffy affair has blown that theory to smithereens.

And that shouldn’t surprise anyone.

To paraphrase Friedrich Hayek, honesty and integrity in government are not a function of which party is in power but of the power over economic decisions possessed
by those in government.

In other words the Liberals had corruption problems while in power, not because they were Liberals but because they succumbed to the corrupting influence of government.

That same influence has now infected the Conservatives.

My point is, when it comes to corruption, the real bad guy is government, or rather the power of government.

As long as government has the power to influence and direct our economy, corruption will be inevitable.

It doesn’t matter who is in power.

That’s why Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s stern warning in response to the Duffy controversy, that “anyone who wishes to use and have public office for their own benefit should change their plans or better yet, leave this room” is simply empty rhetoric.

Decrees and rules and regulations won’t halt those in government from wrong doing.

The only true way to bring about cleaner government is to reduce its scope and its power.

The less influence government has over our lives, the less temptation there will be to do wrong.

In Defence of (internal) Polls

Canada’s political pollsters got it spectacularly wrong in British Columbia and in Alberta.

And so now many pundits and media types are questioning the credibility of the polling industry.

But before anybody relegates the science of polling to the same category as astrology, it should be pointed out that there’s a huge difference between the free public domain polls the media likes to cite and internal, private polling.

The fact is, the public polls we read about in newspapers usually only tell a superficial and partial story; they reflect what people are saying, but not necessarily what they are thinking.

I know that sounds odd, so to illustrate my point consider this imaginary dialogue between a pollster and a Mr. Smith:

Pollster: Do TV ads have any influence on your buying behavior?

Mr. Smith: No. TV ads do not influence me in anyway.

Pollster: What brand of toothpaste do you buy?

Mr. Smith: I always buy Colgate toothpaste.

Pollster: Why?

Mr. Smith: Because everybody knows it’s the number one toothpaste recommended by dentists.

So Mr. Smith says ads don’t influence him, but clearly they do.

Yes, this is a made up example, but it demonstrates the problem pollsters face: people often hold contradictory or confusing attitudes, especially when it comes to politics.

This is because the vast majority of voters don’t follow the political scene all that closely, hence their political views are often tentative and subject to change.

For instance, back in 1988 when I was working for the National Citizens Coalition, we commissioned a poll which showed that a significant number of Canadians supported then NDP leader Ed Broadbent, enough support that he could actually get elected Prime Minister.

Voters, the poll told us, liked Broadbent because they saw him as more “honest” than the other leaders.

To us -- the NCC is a pro-free market group -- this was bad news.

Of course, this is the kind of information you get in a public poll.

However, our internal poll also revealed Broadbent’s potential Achilles heel: many of the respondents who said they supported Broadbent, also opposed the NDP’s socialist policies.

In other words there was a disconnect; voters liked Broadbent, but they didn’t like his platform; they didn’t even know his platform.

Thanks to our poll, we were able to craft a strategy to undermine Broadbent’s support.

We simply pointed out to Canadians that while Broadbent might be a nice guy, he’s also promoting a dangerous and “scary” left-wing agenda.

By the way, that’s exactly the same strategy the BC Liberals used to successfully degrade the BC NDP, which had been riding high in the polls.

And I’m sure, like us, the BC Liberals adopted this strategy based on internal polling data.

My point is, understanding and analyzing a political poll is a complicated business. It’s more than just asking Canadians who they think will make the best Prime Minister.

To adequately study a single poll means investigating how respondents answered 30 questions or more, which means going over hundreds of pages of cross tabs.

And this is where pollsters earn their money; they wade through a morass of data to find that issue or attitude their clients can successfully exploit.

In short, despite its bad rap, the statistical science which underpins opinion polling works, which is why political parties will continue to rely on their own internal polls.

Public opinion polls, on the other hand, should be taken with a grain of salt.

That’s the true lesson of British Columbia and Alberta.

Are Intellectuals at War with Reality?

Canadian left-wing intellectuals have a habit of saying the darndest things.

And most of the darndest things they say are associated with Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his Conservative government.

Some intellectuals, for instance, like to suggest Harper is on the verge of establishing a reactionary Star Wars-style military dictatorship, while others fear he will turn Canada into an Evangelical Theocracy, where citizens will be forced to worship an Alberta-spawned deity carved out of oil sands.

But that’s not the worst of it.

What really seems to get their collective academic knickers in a knot, is their growing belief that Harper is “anti-science.”

What’s the left wing intellectual proof for this charge?

Has Harper burned astronomers at the stake? Has he banned technology? Has he imprisoned Bill Nye “The Science Guy”?

Nope.

It seems one of Harper’s main crimes against science is he has cut back funding to certain government-sponsored research projects.

Now before you lose any sleep over this, it should be pointed out that reducing government funding for “science” will not necessarily plunge Canada into a Dark Age of superstition and ignorance.

In fact, lots of scientific progress actually occurred on our planet before government funding for academics was even invented.

Important technological advances for civilization like the wheel, the telephone, the light bulb, the airplane, the steam engine and Playstation 3, were all created without government handouts.

That’s not to say government funded research isn’t important. After all, thanks to government money we were able to create a useful gadget that’s made the world a much better and happier place. It’s called the Atom Bomb.

Still many academics are concerned that Harper’s cutbacks will hurt the environment.

They pine for the days, I suppose, when the Jean Chretien Liberals poured unlimited amounts of money on scientists, while allowing them to dictate government policy.

Indeed, I’m sure it was Canada’s top scientists who came up with the brilliant idea for the Chretien government’s main environmental initiative known as the “One Tonne Challenge” program.

This program, which surely must have been based on “evidence-based” research and rigorous scientific analysis, concluded the best way to reduce Canada’s “greenhouse gas emissions” was to pay CBC comedian Rick Mercer lots of tax dollars to star in Kyoto Accord TV ads.

Anyway, in an effort to restore those glory days of scientific reason intellectuals are starting to emerge from their Ivory Towers to convince the unwashed masses (those who lack post-graduate degrees) that more taxes must be spent on science.

Just recently, in fact, close to one hundred intellectuals made their case in a letter to the editor to the Montreal Gazette.

And what a letter!

It paints a scary portrait of what a “dark” place Canada would become if the government doesn’t immediately divert tax dollars from things like health care and national defence so they can used to subsidize academic pursuits like history, literary criticism, philosophy, political science, anthropology, critical legal studies, political economy and feminist studies.

How dark would Canada become if these “sciences” are not properly funded?

Well get this: we would be unable, says the letter, to confirm things like Canada’s “long-standing colonialism in dealing with the First Nations” or the “patriarchal dividend” in employment or the “scapegoating of racialized immigrants.”

(Note: You probably have to be a government funded intellectual to understand what “patriarchal dividend” or “racialized immigrants”actually means.)

But wait there’s more. Harper’s war on science, the letter writers warn us, will also mean Canadians won’t have access to “data-based interpretations … that document elite, corporate, European and male abuse.”

Darn those elite corporate European males!

The letter also suggests the cutting of science funding will cause widespread “de-gendering”, which I must admit sounds awfully painful.

And finally, the letter writers bewail how the Harper government is embracing “reactionary commemorative practices, to militarize patriotic mythology.”

I’m not certain, but I think they are referring to all those War of 1812 events … you know the ones where middle aged guys in redcoats shoot muskets into the air.

At any rate, the bottom line for these intellectuals is that “in face of global capitalism’s mounting crisis, critical interrogation of social phenomena, causes and consequences is urgently needed.”

Translation: Only a massive influx of government cash will cure Canada’s drastically dangerous shortage of literary criticism

Clearly, a lot of superior intellectual brain-power went into writing this letter to the editor, yet I somehow doubt it will generate much public support for a social “science” crusade.

I suspect Canadians are more worried about how they will pay for their mortgages and about the price of groceries than they are about “patriarchal dividends”.

If anything, this letter might cause Canadians to demand these guys get even less money.

But then again, maybe I’m suffering from de-gendering at the hands of Canada’s elite, corporate, European males.

Is the Media a Bully?

There's a bible verse that asks, "Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?"

That's a good question for all those media types wringing their hands over those Conservative Party ads and flyers which target Liberal leader Justin Trudeau.

We keep hearing from columnists, reporters and editorial writers about how the campaign is an awful outrage.

A recent news story, for instance, wondered out loud if the Conservative campaign was actually designed to subconsciously plant doubts in the minds of voters about Trudeau’s manliness.

Some have even gone so far as to suggest the Tory attack is “bullying.”

Now I am not going to defend or try to explain the Tory strategy; instead I’d like to point out how the media isn't exactly as pure as the driven snow when it comes to attacking a politician’s masculinity or looks.

In fact, if anything, the media is often obsessed with a politician’s image.

Just consider how media types totally embraced Trudeau after he thrashed Conservative Senator Patrick Brazeau in a boxing match.

It was Trudeau’s toughness, his martial appearance, his talent with his fists that made him a media star, not his policy ideas.

Indeed, for the media that boxing match has achieved an almost mythic status.

The Huffington Post’s Althia Raj even made that fight the defining narrative of her Trudeau biography.

And just in case anyone missed the point, the cover of her ebook features a cartoon drawing of a heroic looking Trudeau wearing boxing gloves.

One might wonder if the media is trying to subconsciously plant the idea in the minds of voters that Trudeau is an alpha-male?

Certainly that would help the Liberal leader politically, since martial prowess appeals to that primitive part of our brain which still thinks its living in a prehistoric world, a world that needs physically strong leaders to protect us from marauding raiders and hungry saber tooth tigers.

But more to my point is that just as the media will paint politicians they like as warriors, they will also paint  politicians they don’t like as wimps.

Think of how, during the 1972 federal election, the media published an unflattering photo of Progressive Conservative leader Robert Stanfield dropping a football.

Many consider it one of the top “gaffes” in Canadian political history.

But was it also a case of the media subconsciously planting doubts in the minds of voters as to Stanfield’s masculinity?

If he can’t catch a football he must be a nerd, nerds are weak, weak people are bad leaders.

Or how about the time the CBC’s Rick Mercer launched a petition during the 2000 federal election to get Canadian Alliance Leader Stockwell Day to change his first name to “Doris”?

Was that funny or was it bullying? Was the subtext of Mercer's "joke" that Day was something less than a man?

Certainly it got voters laughing at Day.

Nor is Prime Minister Stephen Harper immune. Remember the mockery over his cowboy outfit? And the Huffington Post and journalists on Twitter once got a real “chuckle” over how Harper wore a hat.

Isn't that like school yard bullies picking on a kid because of  his or her clothing? I might even suggest the subtext of such attacks is that people who wear funny clothes are oddballs and thus are unfit to be our leaders.

And more recently, the media has taken to openly mocking Toronto Mayor Rob Ford because of his weight.

The Toronto Star, for instance, once posted a video on its site of a woman laughing at Ford as he ordered a meal at a KFC restaurant.

Is that cyber-bullying? Is it right to mock a man because he doesn't have Trudeau’s physical appearance? Does obesity make you less of a leader?

So it seems the media is more than willing to mock and degrade a person if it suits their purpose.

Now none of this is to suggest we should feel sorry for Ford or Day or Stanfield or Harper. Like it or not, mockery and attacks have always been a part of democratic politics; that’s why it’s not a business for people with thin skins.

Yet if those who work in the media are going to throw stones at negativity in politics, they should at least realize they live in a glass house.

Coyne, Negative ads and Freedom

National Post columnist Andrew Coyne has consistently (and rightly) castigated the Conservative government for discarding its conservative ideals.

Yet Coyne himself is passionately advancing a cause which would ultimately undermine those very same principles.

I am talking about his stance against so-called negative political ads, which Coyne despises with something akin to religious fervor. 

In a recent column, for instance, he declared that negative ads “pollute debate and coarsen the culture,” which ironically is an awfully negative way for him to make his point.

At any rate, although Coyne doubts these ads actually change people’s minds, he nevertheless wants to impose government regulations to discourage their use.

Why?

Because he doesn’t like their inflammatory “tone.”

As a result, he favours forcing political party leaders to narrate their ads.

The theory behind this idea is that a leader would be reluctant to voice negativity.

As Coyne put it, “If any of this filth came out of their own mouths, they’d have to be accountable for it. Their public standing would suffer. Indeed, they’d sound ridiculous.”

Coyne also asserts such a provision would not limit free speech, since politicians “Could still say what they liked. They’d just have to own it.”

Me, I’m not so sure about that. After all, having the government decide who can narrate an  ad is, in my view at least, an infringement on free expression.

What's more, it would give one party an advantage over the other depending on which leader has the better voice.

Can you imagine Jean Chretien narrating an ad?

But let's set such issues aside.

Would this result in our election debates getting more positive and more reasoned?

Don’t bet on it.

For one thing, political parties would just intensify their negative attacks through avenues besides TV and radio. They would, for instance, send out more nasty messages via emails, direct mail pieces, and robo-calls.

And by the way, such “under the radar” attacks are usually far more vicious than the TV variety.

Also Coyne’s plan would not stop “Third Parties” from running their own negative ads between elections on behalf of political parties.

Would any of this lead Coyne to argue for restrictions on partisan groups and for limiting other forms of political communication?

I am not sure it would, but it illustrates the danger of even minor infractions on freedom; when they don’t work, they often lead to more draconian measures down the road.

Indeed, Green Party leader Elizabeth May is already arguing for a complete ban on all political advertising during elections.

Now let me say, I fully understand that May and Coyne’s views on negativity are shared by many.

But we should also remember that democracy works best when there is a free market place of competing ideas and arguments.

And any attempt to restrict or muzzle or control free speech distorts that market and undermines democratic debate.

That’s why it’s better, in my view, to allow negativity than to censor or regulate opinion.

Besides, why do we need to control or ban political ads, when we can simply let the free market decide?

If negative ads are “corrosive”, then Canadians won’t buy their messages and political parties won’t use them.

It’s that simple.

In fact, Liberal leader Justin Trudeau has vowed to stay positive because he says Canadians are sick and tired of negativity.

So why do we need nanny-state-style laws to control politicians or to protect voters?

In the meantime, people like Coyne who object to negative ads on aesthetic grounds, already have a way to deal with them.

Whenever they see one on TV, they can just turn the channel.

Is Trudeau Anti-Fragile?

There’s an odd thing about political columnists.

Although they are usually bright people with highly informed views about politics, they generally tend to have a blind spot when it comes to negative attack ads.

Not only do they generally dislike such ads (National Post columnist Andrew Coyne calls them pollution) but they also don’t understand what makes them effective.

A case in point is the recently released Conservative Partyads which feature clips of Liberal leader Justin Trudeau performing a mock striptease and executing a dramatic operatic bow.

These ads opened to almost universally poor reviews.

National Post editor Jon Kay called them “disappointing;” Post Media columnist Michael Den Tandt said the ads marked a “new low” and that they were “mean-spirited, dishonest and incompetent”; while the Toronto Star’s Tim Harper predicted the Conservatives won’t “find any traction in mocking Justin Trudeau’s pretend striptease.”

At the root of their criticism is the idea that Trudeau, to use the Nicholas Taleb’s term, is “anti-fragile”, that is Conservative attacks will only make him stronger.

As Den Tandt put it, “Trudeau has further branded himself as a ‘positive’ force, adopting the mantle of democratic reformer and someone who intends to ‘do politics differently.’ The more savagely his opponents attack him, the more he will point to their tactics as proof of the truth of his narrative.”

And the Star’s Tim Harper noted, “Every time he is criticized for being a celebrity, his political stock is sure to rise.”

Now if Den Tandt and Harper are correct then the Conservatives and the New Democrats are indeed in trouble; a politician who only grows stronger from attacks would be a formidable opponent.

And yes, politicians can be “anti-fragile”. Take Toronto Mayor Rob Ford. The more the left-leaning Toronto Star attacked him during the last mayoralty campaign, the more it mobilized and energized his base.

Yet, it’s also true that every politician has a weakness and every weakness can be exploited.

The way I see it, Trudeau has three main weaknesses: a) he lacks political savvy, b) he is inexperienced at the leadership level, and c) he is known more for his dramatic flair than for his intellect.

The Conservative ads not only masterfully exploit each of these weaknesses, they also manage to do so with strong visuals and just as importantly with humor, meaning it doesn’t come across as a typical nasty political ad.

In the process the Conservatives are planting in the minds of voters the idea that Trudeau is “in over his head,” and that he just doesn’t have what it takes to run a government.

They make him, in short, look silly.

And for the life of me, I can’t see how such an attack would make Trudeau stronger.

Voters will forgive a lot of flaws in a politician, but one thing they won’t forgive in their potential leaders is incompetence and it doesn’t matter if the inept politician is likable or positive or a celebrity.

That means if Canadians start to view Trudeau as a clown, he’s finished

And given Trudeau’s lack of a resume, his lack of experience, his tendency to say ill-considered remarks, there’s a good chance the Conservatives’ branding of Trudeau will resonate.

Plus any rookie mistakes Trudeau makes in the upcoming weeks and months will only serve to reinforce the Conservative narrative.

I suspect, for instance, that Trudeau “bleeding heart” comments in the wake of the Boston bombing about needing to seek out the “root cause” of terrorism, will provide fodder for the next round of Tory attack ads.

So despite what the columnists are saying, the Tory attacks should concern the Liberals.

NDP Resolutions to Keep an Eye on

This weekend delegates from the New Democratic Party will be converging in Montreal to debate and adopt new policies.

As a public service, I've decided to highlight six key resolutions:

Here they are:

Resolution #500  - The impediment of  Facial Hair

WHEREAS the soon-to-be new Liberal leader is as cute as a button and ever so charming,

BE IT RESOLVED that NDP leader Thomas Mulcair adopt a younger, less threatening visage by shaving off his beard.

BE IT RESOLVED that he visit a unionized barber.

Resolution #501 – What’s Love Got to Do with it?

WHEREAS politics is a death sport,

BE IT RESOLVED that hate is sometimes better than love, especially when it comes to TV ads.

Resolution # 502 - Military History for Dummies

WHEREAS the NDP’s efforts to expose the roots cause of World War One was so successful,

BE IT RESOLVED, we will endeavor to reveal and highlight the capitalistic origins of the War of the Spanish Succession, the War of the Roses and Star Wars.

Resolution # 503 - What’s in a Name?

WHEREAS our party is more than 50 years old,

BE IT RESOLVED that we stop calling ourselves “New” Democrats.

Resolution #504 - Quebec Power

WHEREAS in the next election we might have trouble winning new seats outside Quebec,

BE IT RESOLVED that Quebec get 200 more seats in the House of Commons.

  

Resolution #505  --Getting with the Times

WHEREAS socialism is a word that conjures up images of parading, goose-stepping North Korean soldiers,

BE IT RESOLVED,  that we drop “socialism” from our constitution and replace it with the Canadian equivalent, i.e. Economic Action Planning.

If these awesome resolutions, don't get you to watch the NDP convention, I don't know what will!