“Oleanna” and Michael Ignatieff
Years ago, I saw a production of David Mamet’s “Oleanna” at the Palmerston Theatre in Toronto. The play is about a power struggle between a middle-aged male academic and a young female student who accuses him of sexual harassment.
My take on the play was that it worked better as a portrayal of the division between classes than the division between the sexes. The academic was secure and comfortable, which allowed him to live life in a bubble, protected from the harsh realities that the impoverished student faced every day.
As I see it, part of why Michael Ignatieff has not been successful as Liberal leader is because of the awareness that Ignatieff lives in a similar bubble of security. He has no financial worries; he has a wife that he loves and who loves him back; he has a well-deserved sense of accomplishment and a corresponding lack of resentment of the success of others.
When Conservatives attack Ignatieff for being “arrogant” and “out of touch”, what they’re really doing is pointing out that most Canadians are not as happy with their lot in life as Ignatieff appears to be. And many Canadians are resentful of those who are happy and comfortable.
This is why Stephen Harper’s message resonates with a lot of people. Although Harper isn’t any more of a “common man” than Ignatieff is – how many “common men” become president of the National Citizens’ Coalition, or earn a master’s degree in economics? – voters who resent the comparative security that others enjoy are aware that, for one reason or another, Harper appears to share much of this anger and resentment. Anger and resentment are not a strong foundation for a country, but they are a way to build a strong base of core voters.
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One-man government
Yesterday, the Impolitical blog spotted this Government of Canada web page:
Harper Government Reduces Taxes For Canadians
This isn’t a Conservative Party web page – this is an official Canadian government web page.
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The man who would be king
Dan Gardner’s recent column in the Ottawa Citizen, titled The Man Who Would Be King, neatly summarizes many of my concerns about Stephen Harper.
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Canadian political web sites
Here’s some Canadian political web sites worth checking out:
- Threehundredeight.com is a site dedicated to Canadian electoral projections.
- openparliament.ca keeps tabs on Parliament.
- And there’s also the Pundits’ Guide to Canadian federal elections.
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Realism versus idealism
Something occurred to me today: one of the biggest problems facing the Liberal Party these days is their supposed lack of vision – what exciting new ideas do they have that would encourage voters to vote for them? It occurred to me that one of the reasons why the Liberals lack ideas is that many of the young idealists who used to flock to the Liberals are now in the Green Party.
So what we have is a division between pragmatists without ideas, and idealists without a practical hope of getting their ideas put into practice.
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Thirty seven point seven
The other day, I was looking at a list of Canadian election results by popular vote, and I noticed something. Compare the vote percentages from the 2008 election with those of the 2000 election:
- 2008: Conservatives 37.7; Liberals 26.3; NDP 18.2; Bloc 10.0; Green 6.9.
- 2000: Liberals 40.8; Canadian Alliance 25.5; PC 12.2; Bloc 10.7; NDP 8.5; Green 0.8.
When you add up the vote totals for the Canadian Alliance and Progressive Conservatives in 2000, the total is 37.7 percent: exactly the same total as voted for the Conservatives in 2008. In 2008, in an election in which the Liberals were at their lowest point in popularity in Canadian history, the Conservatives were not able to capture more than their usual core base of voters.
While the Liberals have been less than impressive lately, they face a united right and the Green Party, neither of which existed when Jean Chretien was Liberal leader. (It’s safe to say that the Greens are not capturing any votes from the Conservatives.) Michael Ignatieff may not have done a particularly good job as Leader of the Opposition, but he and his Liberals face challenges that his predecessors did not face.
(By the way, the phrase “good job as Leader of the Opposition” is an oxymoron. By definition, according to one way of thinking, a Leader of the Opposition is only good at his job when he stops being Leader of the Opposition and starts being Prime Minister.)
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The great divide
I haven’t written here in a long time.
The problem that the Canadian political system faces is that the electorate is polarized. On one hand, there are the staunch opponents of Stephen Harper and his politics, many of whom came out for anti-prorogation rallies. These people (and I am one of them) have long since lost faith in the Conservative government, believing that the Tories are putting their own political fortunes ahead of the country. The epicentre of this group seems to be downtown Toronto.
On the other hand, there are those who deeply distrust the Liberals and NDP: so much so that they sincerely believe that Parliament cannot be trusted with sensitive national secrets such as whatever is in the Afghanistan documents. These people felt deeply outraged when the opposition parties threatened to form a coalition to unseat Stephen Harper. The centre for this group appears to be southern Alberta.
Because of Canada’s first-past-the-post system, the pro-Conservative faction commands a large enough bloc of seats to ensure, even now, that the Conservatives would retain a minority government if another election were to be called. This may explain why Michael Ignatieff appears less than decisive at key moments: the polls are telling him that forcing an election would be futile.
For the Conservatives, the situation is pretty much the same. The polls are also telling them that a majority is very unlikely. So we are in a situation where, basically, whoever forces an election next loses.
The only real hope for change – unless we go to a proportional representation system or something like that – is if either (a) the Conservative base becomes so disgusted with them that they are willing to vote Liberal, or (b) somehow, Stephen Harper starts to seem moderate enough to appeal to some of his hardcore opponents. Neither scenario seems likely at the present time – hence, the great divide.
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Two random thoughts
Two random thoughts, since I haven’t posted here in so long:
I read the Globe and Mail’s multi-part series on retirement planning – or the lack of same – and found it fascinating. I was startled to realize that I am in better shape than most Canadians my age when it comes to retiring – and I have nowhere near enough money to retire on. A significant percentage of Canadians in their forties and fifties have no retirement savings at all.
Many people my age (I’m 49) or younger have pretty much assumed that there won’t be any Canada Pension Plan left by the time we reach retirement age. All the money will be gone, in this view: deficit financing and the baby boom will swallow all of the available pension money, leaving the rest of us with nothing.
I also believe that, by the time people my age are eligible to retire, there will be tremendous societal pressure to keep working to be less of a burden on the smaller percentage of the population that is still below retirement age. And there may very well be generational resentment: younger people today have had to endure higher tuition fees and fewer job opportunities, in part because people my age are unwilling to pay taxes. You can’t predict the future, but I can’t help but think that what goes around, comes around.
My other thought for the day: I know a number of people who are planning not to get the H1N1 vaccine when it becomes available to the general public. For the most part, this is because they don’t trust the government to have tested the vaccine adequately enough. I wonder whether this is the fallout of having had three-plus years of a government that works hard to try to spin the news to portray itself in the best possible light. If you’re used to your government being less than totally honest with you, you’re not going to believe their pronouncements on public health either, no?
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Grit versus fun
Recently, I read an article on the Boston Globe’s web site that fascinated me. Entitled “The Truth About Grit“, the article made the claim that success is not possible without the willingness to overcome obstacles instead of giving up: in other words, that success is not possible without grit.
I’m not so sure about this. I agree that success does require putting in the hours: Malcolm Gladwell recently wrote that it takes ten thousand hours to become an expert at something. But the most successful people seem to be those who put in all this time because they were enjoying themselves. Success came almost as a by-product.
For example: in Wayne Gretzky’s autobiography, he mentions that his father built a backyard rink for him not because he was ambitious for his son but because he wanted to see him every now and again. Wayne loved hockey so much that he was spending all his time at the rink.
There are some successful people who got there through grim effort, of course. Many 19th century financiers fit into that mould (such as John D. Rockefeller). But I’m not sure it counts as “successful” when you’re rich but not happy.
(This might be why I’m not particularly successful, of course.)
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It’s okay – they’re not like us
Recently, some Toronto residents complained about a Coors Light beer ad that was appearing on billboards across British Columbia. The ad slogan was “Colder Than Most People From Toronto”. Coors eventually pulled the ads in response to the complaints.
The problem with ads such as this is that they reinforce the notion that Torontonians aren’t “real Canadians” or aren’t “people like us”. They’re different, so it’s okay to make fun of them. We need a new name for this, similar to racism or sexism – let’s call it “cityism”.
If cityism stops at the cultural level, everything’s fine, more or less. Torontonians can take it (mostly because, if truth be told, we kind of don’t really care what goes on in the rest of the country). But if the notion that Torontonians aren’t “real Canadians” begins to spread, it will be easier for federal and provincial governments to leave Toronto out of their long-term plans or ensure that Toronto is forced to endure more than its share of spending cuts. After all, if Torontonians are strange people who aren’t like us, it doesn’t really matter what happens to them, does it? It’s the first step down a dangerous slippery slope.
And I suspect that the fine citizens of Calgary and Vancouver would be somewhat unhappy if we Torontonians called them (to pick regional stereotypes at random) ignorant cowboys or navel-gazing potheads. It’s probably healthier for the country to leave that sort of thing alone.
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