Election season: one

Let the games begin - the first in our series

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ith just over eight weeks to go in the interminable U.S. presidential campaign, Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper launched the country into one of the shortest election campaigns possible.

On Sunday, September 7, 2008, Harper moved to dissolve Parliament and send the country to the polls. By law, Canadian federal elections must be no shorter than 36 days and election day must normally fall on a Monday.  This year, because Canadian Thanksgiving Day falls on a Monday, election day will be Tuesday, October 14th, and the election campaign will be exactly 38 days long.

The dissolution of Parliament was preceded by days of political posturing on the part of all party leaders, with no one wanting to take the blame for sending Canadians to the polls.  The Prime Minister asserted that Parliament had become dysfunctional and leaders of the other parties were just waiting for the right moment to take the government down.  Opposition leaders, some of whom had been publicly denouncing the government for months, called the Prime Minister a “law breaker” for violating his own fixed election date legislation.  Others asserted he was no longer interested in governing the country and was “quitting his job.”
While ordinary Canadians continued with their lives, enjoying the labour day weekend and getting ready for the start of school, political machines across the country kicked into high gear.

For politicians and their staffers, elections are high-stakes affairs.  They are, one hopes, a contest over who has the best vision for the nation and who will get to govern the country for the next four years.  On a very immediate and personal level, they are also about whether or not MPs and political staffers will keep their jobs.  No fewer than 1,000 jobs are on the line in the nation’s capital every time a general election is called.  Political staffers are thus very motivated to help their bosses get re-elected, or to begin looking for other employment opportunities.  Many political staffers take unpaid leaves during an election campaign to help in local ridings or to work in national campaign headquarters, also known as “war rooms.”

At the local level, candidates, their staff and volunteers hit the streets, the airwaves and community events in the hope of attracting voters and demonstrating their commitment to their local community.  At the national level, campaign headquarters plan the leaders’ tours and announcements, churn out daily messages, provide support to local ridings, launch slings at their opponents and duck the arrows launched their way.

Inside the election mania bubble, the adrenaline flows freely, people try to out-campaign or out-wit or out-perform their opponents, and people live the election one day at a time. As a friend and co-worker recently observed, there is no sense or mention of the transcendent in the day-to-day hustle and bustle of government, or in the political debate. Rather, with the 24-hour news cycle, and reporters who love to stir up controversy whether or not it truly exists, the tyranny of the immanent casts the transcendent deep into the shadows.

For example, during the first week of Canada’s election campaign, serious debate about substantive policy issues was overshadowed by media reports of childish antics.

On day three, Prime Minister Stephen Harper publicly apologized for an immature, distasteful graphic on a Conservative Party website that showed a puffin flying over and pooping on the Liberal Party leader’s shoulder.  The graphic was a jab at the Liberal Party’s leader-in-waiting, former Harvard professor Michael Ignatieff, who previously mused about making the little bird the symbol for the Liberal Party of Canada.  Unfortunately, the puffin was such an inside joke that very few people got it.

On day four, political parties argued over who would get to participate in the national televised debates.  Canadian broadcasters originally planned to exclude Elizabeth May, leader of the relatively new Green Party, from the national leaders debates.  The reasons were not entirely clear, however, there were suggestions that the other leaders would boycott the debates if Ms. May was permitted to participate. Following the threat of legal action, significant grassroots pressure and countless TV and print articles on the issue, both the broadcasters and the other political parties eventually caved and agreed, more or less reluctantly, to let her in.

Finally, on day five, the Prime Minister issued another apology to Canadians after a Conservative Party Director of Communications was suspended for making an off-hand, needlessly partisan remark about the father of a slain soldier.
Instead of articulating visions for the nation or outlining solid policy proposals, the Prime Minister had to apologize publicly for the childish actions of young and overzealous political staffers, Liberal leader Stéphane Dion (sort of) took the moral high ground with a “stupid is as stupid does” response to the pooping puffin graphic, and New Democratic Party leader Jack Layton ran attack ads against the Prime Minister, comparing him to George Bush (a tired and not particularly apt comparison) and calling for a different kind of leadership.

As a thoughtful person, I must confess I am ambivalent about elections.  On the one hand, I consider myself quite privileged to live in a free and democratic society.  I take seriously my freedom to participate in the selection of government, and count myself very blessed to have the freedom to critique that government and the opposition parties openly and without fear of prosecution or persecution.  On the other hand electoral campaigns do not always bring out the best in people.  At a time when we should be debating the best ideas of the party leaders in an informed and rational manner, we are exposed to negative attack ads, childish name calling and finger pointing and a circus of media reports that take our attention away from the weighty matters at hand.

In the current multi-party, minority government context, there is very little discussion about what unites us as a nation, what encourages us to be our best selves, contributing to the common good while tending to our individual or particular needs.  There is no sense, in the current political debate, that we ought somehow to be our brother’s keeper, or that we have any obligation to widows or orphans, or to the weak and vulnerable in our midst.  Rather, the current debate is about who is the more manly man, the better leader, the most Bush-like and scary or the most childish and immature.

It is this aspect of democracy - or rather of electoral politics - that leaves me feeling somewhat empty and wanting more.

Let’s hope that as we put the childish antics and name-calling behind us, we can move on to matters of greater import.

Writer: P. Hill has worked inside and outside of government, both as a senior advisor to politicians and as a spokesperson for religious communities.  P. Hill’s current position prevents him/her from publishing these columns for attribution, hence the pseudonym.

Read another article written for theRubicon by P. Hill

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