Major Acid's E-Rag
It Strikes Me...
Thanks, Joe
Ah, the interviews, the post-election interviews laced with platitudes
covering a basic problem – what the heck happened? Pollsters were
stunned. So were politicians. The latter, more used to dealing with the
unexpected, trotted out the platitudes. Canadians delivered a message;
the government will govern better; we will do what the people have asked
us to do; the party did better than before and remember, we’re new;
we’ll do even better when people realize we aren’t right wing zealots;
we have the balance of power and will hold those scoundrels to account;
we will defend the interests of Quebec as long as we’re stuck in Canada.
Okay, so that last one is a constant.
Nowhere, however, will you hear this: the Liberals succeeded because of,
at least in part, the Joe Clark effect. He was barely mentioned in the
national press, but he was out there – campaigning for a Liberal or two.
Joe Clark, once a Tory Prime Minister, twice head of the Progressive
Conservative party, campaigned for the Liberals.
You might say he was just exorcising sour grapes picked at the demise of
his once proud Progressive Conservatives (PCs). The Conservative Party
of Canada (CPC), the party that scavenged the bones of the PCs and
grafted them to the Reform/Alliance mouldering corpus, is not a newly
revitalized Progressive Conservative party. It is a terminal reflex
trying a desperate hanging on to a dream of religiously driven,
conservative dictatorship of your private life, a dream disintegrating
in the face the citizenry’s widespread acceptance of Canada’s Charter of
Rights and Freedoms.
The CPC failed to heed the obvious, something said so often that people
no longer hear the meaning: they’re all the same. When asked about
federal politics that’s what you hear: they’re all the same, meaning
especially the Liberals and the (old) Conservatives: Paul Martin is a
Conservative in a red tie, or the Liberals and the Conservatives were
happy with Free Trade and the GST, promises notwithstanding.
Aside from personalities, there hasn’t been much to choose between the
Grits and the Tories for many years. They were busy fighting over the
middle ground, the generally tolerant, ‘small l’ liberal individualist
majority.
Both the CPC and the NDP fail to understand this. The unsolved mystery
the NDP have pondered for many years is why so many of their
blue-collar, dues-paying, unionized members ignore the solidarity
propaganda sent out from union head offices and vote Liberal behind the
voter’s frail, cardboard privacy screen. The screen may be frail; the
privacy is real; the middle ground is where they want to be.
Joe Clark was a nice guy firmly centered in that middle ground. He was
rather hapless, but likable. He was believable. People liked that he put
up with being outsmarted by Trudeau, lost his minority government, but
hung in there. People liked that he worked with Mulroney, even though
Mulroney had deposed him. People liked him because he seemed firm in his
beliefs, constant, someone to be trusted. So when Joe Clark refused to
sign on to the CPC, many people understood that something was not quite
right with the CPC.
The political bean counters who spent time calculating the combined
strength of the former Alliance and PC parties failed to recognize that
something was not quite right. If Joe Clark wasn’t going to be a CPC
supporter, then a lot of the rank and file former PCs weren’t going to
be either. Granted, the polls seemed to show something different, but in
that tiny zone of political freedom, behind that frail cardboard screen,
gut instinct took over.
Yes, voters were annoyed with the Liberals, annoyed at a lot of things.
Billions were wasted on a gun registry that only law abiding people
would put their names to. If you want to control gun violence, control
the criminals, not the duck hunters. Guns are worrisome, but stupid is
stupid and voters can smell stupid a mile away.
Millions were sunk into secret and therefore blatantly stupid plans
allegedly designed to fight separatism. As with any secret transfer of
money, greedy hands siphoned off what they could. If you want to fight
separatism, get out there in the open and fight it. Confront the
separatists, make your arguments; secret deals in backrooms carry the
stink of corruption, and voters can smell corruption a mile away.
Even in an election where voters were rightly angry with a long-term,
arrogant governing machine, the CPC couldn’t overcome a fact of Canadian
life – that tolerant middle ground far to the left of the CPC is where
most Canadians choose to live, even in an election where voters wanted
to send a message.
Between the Liberals and the NDP the popular vote amounted to nearly
55%. The BQ got 12%. The BQ logo over the numbers obscures the
calculation, but there is a middle ground vote in those numbers, too.
Quebecers have a history of and disdain for religiously driven political
domination. It took Quebecers well into the 20th century before they
broke away from Catholic Church domination. I estimate that the Quebec
middle to left ground is probably closer to a 75-25 split. Add even
half, however, and the 55% number climbs to over 60%. There are the
Greens, too.
This is where comedian Rick Mercer comes in. In one of his walking
tirades, he urged citizens to vote. He took on the standard excuse –
people didn’t feel they should have to choose the best of a bad lot.
Mercer pointed out that in a democracy it is important that the best of
the bad lot gets voted in. Consider the alternative!
Joe Clark apparently understands this, too, and he put himself out there
in support of the best of a bad lot. He did this despite being snubbed
by Paul Martin. On the day that Clark retired from parliament, a day
when even enemies say nice things to enemies, Paul Martin didn’t show
up. Still, Joe Clark did what he had done all his career. He soldiered
on.
I don’t know if it is possible to measure the effect, but I can guess at
it, and I guess that many, many voters stood behind that frail cardboard
screen and followed Joe’s example. Leadership by example. Thanks, Joe.
