I’ve finally quieted my mind and collected my thoughts about the events in Ottawa this weekend — just enough to make sense of things by way of juxtaposing an older post on the meaning of integrity in politics. In that post I held up Barack Obama as a paradigm of integrity, arguing that:
Having established a sense of the whole, Obama can incorporate even greater conflict and variety without diminishing the overall quality and coherence — the integrity — of his program. He can give Hillary and Bill Clinton the stage at the Democratic convention without worrying about dissonance or degradation to his image and campaign message. This is what integrity means: the brighter shines any point in the Democratic party, the brighter they all become, like flames burning more brilliantly together.
And more importantly:
The big point that [was] missed by McCain and most Republicans is that Obama approaches every event and decision not merely as a matter of winning the media cycle, but as an opportunity to learn and develop, to build the skills, knowledge, and support that will make future challenges more manageable.
Now in Canada we very clearly have not learned the lesson of the US election. Instead of attempts to build integrity we have a whirling swarm of stupid assholes selling out the future for the sake of winning petty victories day-by-day.
The Conservatives proved they’re guilty of this when they introduced a controversial piece of legislation just weeks after an election in which it was never mentioned. Then the Liberals, NDP, and Bloc proved they’re guilty of this too when they suddenly decided to create a coalition to defeat the government, after years of being unable to even coordinate a confidence vote, against a weaker minority.
They’re incapable of building towards something, educating voters by signalling their intentions and opening up the process to different views, criticisms, accomodations, and the kind of small adjustments that make a political system dynamic and vital rather than just cracked and abrasive.
Instead of investing in the intellectual and social capital that we can use as a vehicle of growth towards solutions to our massive challenges, our leaders have just given themselves way, way more to work on and worry about before they can even begin to seriously address real problems and opportunities. They’re going to be going to bed every night and waking up every morning thinking about tactics and perceptions rather than constructive dialogue and solutions.
(As a partial aside, it rubs me the wrong way to see Ed Broadbent and Jack Layton especially having so much fun and not being at all afraid to show it. I can’t imagine how they expect to win over any doubters like myself. They’re quite openly treating it like a game. A lot of commentators are complaining “politicians are acting like children” and yet they continue acting like children in an even more literal – giddy, boastful, gay – and unselfcontrolled way.)
I took a break from writing this to watch The National a few hours ago. It struck me that this is the only story covered on Canada’s best one-hour newscast. Meanwhile, Charlie Rose was running a conversation about the increasingly complex and tense relations among India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Russia, China, the US, etc, including Fareed Zakaria on his current Newsweek feature calling for a new “architecture of peace for the 21st century.”
Regardless of how serious or silly you’re inclined to think the notion of ”architecture of peace” is, you can’t deny that supranational institutions will be remodelled in the next few years – the G7 is morphing into the a G20, global financial regulation is a mere germ of what it could become, the UN Security Council is a historical relic that needs to be fixed or replaced, not to mention perpetually broken-down trade talks – and where will Canada be as the world comes to the table? Who is our voice and what is our message?
We always knew not to take our politicians on their word, but this has gone beyond that. Now they’ve shown it’s impossible to even read their signals or even vaguely predict their future behaviour. This isn’t the typical flip-flop shenanigan, it’s a big-ass black swan coming out of nowhere. What crazy scheme will they get up to this week? And the next? And the one after that? As historian Michael Bliss wrote tonight:
The situation goes far beyond what some might see as a “normal” test of wills in a minority Parliament. It is a powder-keg that, once ignited, would have unpredictable consequences. Like millions of Canadians, I have been appalled these last few days at the blustering and scheming of a political class that seems to have utterly lost its senses, its moral compass and its sense of responsibility to the Canadian people. These politicians are behaving like spoiled, out-of-control children.
Thinking back, it’s suddenly apparent that Canadian politics has been building towards this for years. These kinds of uncalled for and instantaneous shocks and crashes are happening more often. Maybe it’s because strategists are becoming more influential. I don’t know, but whatever it is, I don’t like it. I’m thinking specifically of John Tory’s decision to suddently turn religious school funding an issue in the middle of the last Ontario provincial campaign.
Stephane Dion did it in the federal race too — essentially dropping the Green Shift platform a few days before the election in favour of a new set of plays: a full-court press to save the economy. Now, in mere months, the Liberals have abandoned their green initiative so radically they’re arguing it’s worth disrupting the whole political system for the sake of saving lumbermills and truck plants from natural economic forces.
Again and again we see shallow, short-sighted tactics like this leading to ultimate political failure. Stephen Harper is an exception who has been successful, until now, but we should look at his modest success being despite his tactical approach rather than because of it. My vague hope right now is that Harper might resign and everyone will wake up the next day refreshed, realizing the central source of stress has been removed, and even if the opposition isn’t reassured, they would at the very least be robbed of their reasons to continue along these drastic lines.
Nobody is infallible, and when you try to control everything within a hairs-width of perfection you will fall eventually. Centralized planning and control will lead to problems. (I complained about this before the election, and a few days ago I discussed a strategic alternative to dangerous command-and-control leadership more generally in this essay about organizational change at Cisco Systems.)
I’m sure tacticizing must be a difficult temptation to resist (if not impossible when the practice is so deeply ingrained in the culture), but we must start making the necessary sacrifices to turn this vicious cycle into a virtuous one. Turning it around is a long-term, ongoing practice that requires education and investment by a lot of different people in the willingness and ability to talk about big issues with intelligence, honesty, and integrity.
