Stephen Harper must be looking over his shoulder

I told myself I wasn't going to post on politics anymore. Yeah right.

It's Michael Ignatieff's fault. A speech he gave in Regina this week really underscored how dangerous he is to the Conservatives.

Michael Ignatieff says it was western Canadian rage which -- in part -- convinced him to back away from a proposed governing coalition with the New Democrats and the Bloc Quebecois.

...

"You are, after all, looking at someone who turned down the chance to become prime minister of Canada, and I did so, in part, because I felt that it would divide the country," said Mr. Ignatieff. "I want to be someone who unites the country, and that includes the West."

Westerners probably had trouble believing their ears. After Pierre Trudeau's open contempt for Westerners sunk the Liberal boat for decades anywhere west of Thunder Bay, the concept of a Liberal leader who actually cares what they think (or at least says he does) must be positively intoxicating.

Now, Ignatieff is probably making a virtue out of necessity, but having been raised in the West, I can imagine how delighted his listeners must have been. A Liberal Party that is intent on becoming a national party in fact and not just in name is a real threat to Harper's Conservatives, and I'm sure they know it. Western alienation is a force that they've tapped very effectively and if Iggy can compete in that arena, they risk seeing one of their strongholds crumble.


Technorati tags: Michael Ignatieff

Michaëlle Jean proves her worth

I'm so glad there was an adult in the house who sent the kids to their rooms to cool off. I sincerely hope that Prime Minister Harper has learned a valuable lesson on playing nicely with others, and that the other parties have time to see that manufacturing a crisis out of what is merely an unpleasant situation, at least here in Canada, does not win them points for audacity, but rather disdain for their presumption. At least that's the way the early polls are tilting. It's certainly the way I feel.

I'm not sure that it was necessary to suspend Parliament all the way till January 26th, but at least we are guaranteed not to have election lawn signs competing with Christmas lights this year.

Will the Liberals be able to hold their own party together until then, let alone their coalition? Early signs there are not encouraging for them. It only took a couple of hours after Parliament was suspended before Liberal MPs began breaking ranks. Scott Simms and Keith Martin are two other MPs questioning the wisdom of pursuing the coalition's agenda.

May cooler heads prevail. While I think that Stéphane Dion gets some unfair press too, it should be painfully clear that his leadership abilities just aren't up to snuff. This is not the hand I would want to see on the tiller right now.

And, if anybody from the Conservative party is listening, please cut the hyper-partisan swagger. That plays well only to hard-core supporters. The rest of us are sick to death of chest-thumping and spin doctors and arrogance. You'd be much more attractive without it.


Technorati tags: Crisis in Canada

Surrealism in Ottawa

I haven't commented on the shenanigans in Ottawa yet, because they struck me as so surreal that I couldn't believe it was anything more than hot air. I did comment on the Conservatives' ill-advised and quickly withdrawn proposal to cut public funding of political parties, but the possibility of changing governments mere weeks after an election seemed too preposterous to be real. I had trouble processing it. Surely this was just political posturing.

Well, now I've processed it. Trying to explain it to American friends has been challenging. A legal coup, stable instability, what do you call it? I'm having trouble finding any good guys in this story. They're all nuts.

First of all, I think the Liberals and the NDP are just plain wrong. The cautious, stay-the-course economic strategy of the Conservatives may not have been sexy, but given our position of relative economic strength, a very wise one. It's like steering on ice, the last thing you do is jerk the steering wheel around. Bringing down the government over this issue is insane, and could cost Canada dearly. (In passing, why do parties criticize each other most loudly about the things they're doing right? It makes me despair of ever seeing rationality in politics.) (OK, so I'm not that naive. I gave up on that years ago. But I keep trying anyway.)

Of course, it will likely backfire on the coalition in the long term if they actually take power. They will get blamed for the mess, and they will probably deserve some of that blame, although by no means all. I doubt this has occurred to them.

And it is really not clear to me just who the prime minister will be. Stephane Dion is a lame duck. Is he still planning on stepping down as Liberal leader, or will they relent in their desire to have his head on a platter after he engineers a successful power grab despite their worst showing at the polls ever?

It is also rather dishonest, given the Liberals' repeated election promises not to form a coalition with the NDP. I suspect it might take me more elections than I had foreseen before I'll be able to stomach voting Liberal again.

On the other hand, the Conservatives' stance of offended virginity is a bit much. And trying to turn this into a Canadian unity issue is disingenuous. The Bloc Quebecois is very pragmatic about all this and much too comfortable in Ottawa to seriously want separation. They'll support the coalition the same way they often supported the Conservatives, with no more negative impact on national unity. Trying to demonize them to score political points is arguably much more damaging.

And Ed Schreyer is unfortunately right. What the coalition is proposing is entirely legal and within the rules. While Jean may grant the Conservatives a brief prorogation of Parliament, ultimately the other parties are fully within their rights to bring down the government and propose themselves as an alternative and she should give them the chance to try. They are playing by the rules, much as it galls me to admit it. I think it's political insanity, and rather reprehensible, but they have the right to do it.

You know, I'd been telling people that I couldn't vote Liberal for a while because they had dug themselves such a deep hole that it would take a term or two or three before the Conservatives had dug themselves deeper. Well, the Conservatives were digging, all right, but now the Liberals have pulled out a shovel of honking big proportions. The only thing that could possibly redeem them is if they shock me with astonishingly adept governance. I'm not holding my breath.

And when I'm finished being really, really mad at the Liberals and the NDP I'm going to be furious with the Conservatives for bringing this on themselves with their partisan arrogance.


Technorati tags: Stephen Harper, Stephane Dion

Cynical political opportunism?

I'm not naive. I know that politicians can get petty. I know political parties can get petty. My persistent case of chronic idealism makes me keep thinking that every now and again politicians can surprise me and act for the common good, or in defense of principles, instead of merely jockeying for political advantage.

So I would really like it if the Conservatives backed away from their current fit of pettiness. The proposed cutting of public subsidies to political parties based on their share of the popular vote looks more like an attempt to kick the Liberal party while it's down than an attempt to save money.

Heaven knows I have been no fan of the Liberals in recent years, and I am still of the opinion that a few more years in the political wilderness would do them a world of good. They'd had a free ride into government for too many years and they stank to high heaven and it's going to take a while longer before the lingering stench has been washed away. But they did do a couple of really praiseworthy things while they were in government that strengthened popular democracy in this country. Drastically reducing the permissible size of political donations was one of them; its corollary of funding parties from the public purse was another. Both worked against their own partisan advantage, which is why it amazes me they ever did it at all, and I applaud them for it.

Now I would like to applaud the Conservatives for resisting the temptation to dismantle this excellent system. Why do I think it is excellent? Firstly, because it helps diminish the political power of deep pockets. Secondly, because it increases the financial viability of small parties. It might seem strange that I care about this, seeing as I almost never vote for them. But they have a very important contribution to make to political discourse, sometimes popularizing issues enough that the more powerful parties take notice. That alone would be sufficient cause. But they also help prevent a two-party system. The last few years of observing the American system have been enough to convince me that a two-party system breeds social polarization and blind partisanship. I don't want us to fall into the same cesspool.

Which is why I also fervently hope the Liberals will rise again, hopefully with a little less arrogance and a few more principles. A centrist party, flanked by viable opponents on each side seems to me to be a good recipe for moderation and stability. (OK, the NDP doesn't quite rank as viable, unfortunately, seeing as it tends to make the Liberals tilt more to the left to compensate for their weakness.) So please, let's not kick them too hard while they're down, however much they deserve to be down there.


Technorati tags: Canadian politics

Election blahs

With elections coming up both north and south of the border, I am finding great difficulty drumming up enthusiasm for either contest. Amba is even worse off:

I'm so disgusted all around that I'm teetering on that "UNDECIDED: whether to vote or not" precipice these days. Each campaign keeps going to extremes that drive me toward the other. Right now I'm feeling that the Republicans don't deserve to be rewarded for this kind of anything-goes campaigning. Yesterday it was Obama supporters' clueless arrogance that was driving me towards McCain.

It is rather a sad thing when you have to vote for whomever disgusts you least. Do all the nasty, sneering partisans not realize that they are driving undecideds further away?

Granted, the Americans have the disease of nasty partisanship worse than we do. Perhaps that is one of the inherent failings of a two-party system: it is so much easier to become polarized.

Still, there are plenty of Canadians who are afflicted also. Some of them, unfortunately, work for political parties. I suspect the puffin incident will blow over rather quickly, seeing as it was so quickly disowned by the Conservatives. People who are too young to remember kitten-eating aliens and the Charest Conservatives' attack ads sneering at Chrétien's facial paralysis and how disastrously they back-fired should not be put in charge of websites unsupervised.

I personally am trying to ignore political advertising as much as humanly possible. No one party excites me. Unlike Amba, I am not going to fall off a cliff. As a moderate, the smaller parties are unlikely to get my vote. Of the two major parties, neither one excites my admiration. But one has dug a larger hole in my esteem over the years than the other, so for this election, I'm probably going to vote for the one with the shallower hole. Not very inspiring, but a girl has to decide somehow.

If anybody can cite me reasons why either the Liberals or Conservatives deserve some admiration, I am willing to listen. I can think of a couple of things myself, but they neither one has enough positives to turn those holes into hills.

And if anybody wants to put a good word in for one side or another in the American race, feel free too. The operative term is "good word". I am sick to death of sneers and mud-slinging.

(Yes, I know my recent post about Jack Layton had a bit of a sneer to it. But just a bit. That level of political cluelessness is hard to ignore.)

Technorati tags: Canadian election

The fallacy of binary thinking

Binary thinking has become my newest pet peeve. No, wait! Don't run away. It's not as eggheady as it sounds.

Binary thinking is the kind of thinking that says: "If you aren't A, then you are B. End of discussion." Or: "If you don't do A, then you must do B. End of discussion."

It raises its ugly head all over the place, but most especially in politics. It is the thinking of division, of facile labels. It is highly effective for pressuring or bullying someone who has not recognized it for what it is.

It is doubtful whether it qualifies as thinking at all, seeing as it falls short of even one dimension in its complexity, let alone the three (if you're normal) or four (if you have pretensions to scientific thinking) or ten (if you're a confirmed physicist) that the rest of the world lives in.

Let me illustrate. Binary thinking reduces everything to two points, thusly:

A. .B

In politics, especially of the American variety, this means you're either a bleeding-heart, pinko, atheistic commie or a flinty-eyed, redneck, heartless fascist.

This, of course, ignores the possibility of a complete first dimension, which looks like this:

A................................B

There are lots of intermediate points (an infinite number, if you want to get picky) between A and B. There are a lot of gradations of colour, even between the pinko and the redneck.

And all of this conveniently ignores the fact that there is more than one dimension. (No, I am not going to try to illustrate this with a keyboard. You are going to have to draw your own mental pictures.) There is a point C above the line and a point D below it. Now we are dealing with an embarrassing number of points. Because there are, yanno, God-fearing liberals and atheistic conservatives. And generous conservatives and skin-flint liberals.

It gets better. Between you and the line AB, (Yes, I know it's a square now. Don't get difficult.) there is a point E. And on the other side of AB there is a point F. Because there are, yanno, authoritarian liberals and libertarian liberals. And authoritarian conservatives and libertarian conservatives. And the vast majority, who fall somewhere in the muddled middle of what is now a cube.

In all the vast space of the cube, it seems beyond childish to try to pile every single issue into a box on point A or another on point B. I would be greatly in favour of scrapping the terms "liberal" and "conservative" altogether. They generate more heat than light, and obscure thinking more often than encouraging it.

Please note that binary thinking is also a handy tool of salesmen and advertisers the world over. If you don't buy car seat Brand A, your children will die horrible deaths. (Of course, they are a little more subtle about it, but that's the message they want you to get.) Because a couple of cars have been broken into in your neighbourhood, you had better buy my security system, so you won't be facing a raving lunatic with a knife in your dark living room. (Yes, this one was used on me recently. He put lots of sentences in between Point A and Point B so that I wouldn't catch on to the absurdity. It didn't work.)

Reality can almost never be reduced to an either/or situation. Be suspicious of such simplistic analysis whenever it comes along. And look for the intermediate points, because out on the extreme edge is rarely a good place to be.

ETA: After posting this, I found this quote in my Quote of the Day box:

Thanks to TV and for the convenience of TV, you can only be one of two kinds of human beings, either a liberal or a conservative.
- Kurt Vonnegut

Technorati tags: Binary thinking, Extremism