The invention of differences in paradise

Forgetfulness about childbirth helps mothers continue to enjoy sex. And truly forgetting is liberating. On the other hand, forgetfulness about human history can lead to dead ends and trouble. Because Canada has only recently done something noteworthy on its own initiative, our forgetfulness tends to just support mediocrity and sentimentality. It’s not life-threatening. However, it does bother emigrants and irritable bloggers. 

Jeffrey Simpson is the most solid practitioner we have who writes with one foot on the data and the other on yesterday’s puffy white clouds. 

In his Globe column “A Party defined by its enemies, by choice,” Jeffrey Simpson reflected on the rupture of our political culture: from the clubby politics of our past to the divisive politics of Stephen Harper:

“This kind of political differentiation is new to Canada. Of course, there has always been political competition among parties. And of course, parties have heaped abuse on their adversaries, exaggerating their faults.

“In the past, this competition has tended to be between or among parties – a political game, if you like. But the Conservatives have now focused their sights on other institutions outside of politics to help with their strategy of differentiation.”               

If you’re going to be bitter about the present, first be bitter about the past.

Simpson ought to scan the archives of his own paper, even his own early stories, and shake himself free of the winsome spin of vanquished Liberals: the theme that public life was more gentlemanly, more responsible, when we were winning.

There were every bit as many injuries on the field when Liberals and other "nobodies" played the "political game."

Today’s Conservative PM attacks his partisan adversaries by: (1) complaining that Michael Ignatieff was working abroad for 30 years (2) attacking Stephen Dion’s written platform and his legal opinion that the Governor General, on his own council, could make him prime minister instead, and (3) marketing the notion that Justin Trudeau is shallow.

Yesterday’s Liberal PMs attacked their adversaries by: (1) claiming that they were soft on Quebec nationalists and servile toward the provinces generally, (2) dismissing New Democrats as extremists, (3) describing a Harvard economic gold-medalist Robert Stanfield’s anti-inflation suggestions as “Zap! You’re frozen,” and (4) in the '90s, dismissing Preston Manning and Stockwell Day as American right-wing puppets. They were incompetent if they couldn’t control their caucus, or bullies if they could.

(Dramatizing the awfulness of now, Liberal winners transform safely departed adversaries into public-spirited gentlemen, my first leader being designated harmlessly as “the best Prime Minister Canada never had.” Simpson sees them as “more pragmatic.”)

Simpson’s principal argument, however, is about scope: in the past, PMs were hard on other politicians, not other institutions. This is both arbitrary and, again, unfair. In fact, it implies that our politics today are more vicious and dangerous than before and that’s just crazy.

Harper’s Government has fought with public institutions — the PBO, the Chief Electoral Officer, crown agencies, regulators, political journalists, and, most famously, the Supreme Court and the Senate. Life within Harper’s Ottawa is quarrelsome and that ill-serves Harper with Canada’s peace-loving mainstream. However, is that inherently bad? Were yesterday’s political targets better able to protect themselves and less important to maintaining a tolerant democracy?

You can "savage" a young Canadian’s freedom and future prospects by throwing him in jail without a judge’s warrant, as Pierre Trudeau did in 1970. Yet are heads of public institutions, with fixed terms, public profiles, public mandates, and constitutional or Parliamentary protections, being "savaged" when Harper publicly questions their public positions?

Before political parties were subsidized — and, yes, when they were directly subsidized — monies, campaign workers, newspapers, leadership delegates, core voters, and swing voters were mobilized by fear of the other guy’s ideas and the promise of one’s own. We divided, often bitterly, on religion, the monarchy, republicanism, capitalism, socialism, the Vatican, the Cold War, US "imperialism," immigration welfare and work incentives, bilingualism, the official status of the French Language, capital gains taxes, and the character, health, and associations of our political enemies.

In Simpson’s alternative paradise, Liberals are "pragmatic" in office and their opponents are "pragmatic" once they retire. Ideology would have no place.

This is a fantasy and it's no fun. Popular democracy, most conspicuously in Quebec and the West, didn’t invent ruthless politics, divisive ideas, and ideologies. It simply let the people join in the fight. 

America: a 50/50 democracy or just half crazy?

Liberal and foreign pundits have made up their minds: Today’s Republican Party is either suicidal or crazy. In winning so many fights with Democrats over the last year, they’ve lost their reason. They will blow next year’s presidential election by nominating a dim, offensive, or unsound nominee.

“Republicans want anyone but the pragmatist” writes Jeffrey Simpson in the Globe and Mail. They hate Obama “with a frenzied passion,” and, so, can’t think straight. Maclean’s magazine headlines its analysis of the Republican primary race with “American idiots: Gaffes, mistakes, scandals and humiliation.” The Toronto Star’s, Heather Mallick’s verdict: “The Republican catastrophe has been their faith in ideology over effectiveness. They would rather break than bend.”

The above Canadian observers only report what American pessimists say about themselves.  

The Economist’s Lexington column offers a nuanced, hopeful note. It ends a damning profile of Newt Gingrich by saying, “Unless they are feeling particularly suicidal, the Republicans will reject him, just as they have rejected Mr Perry and the Mr Cain."

The Republican Party had over 30 million members in 2008 and will have more by the end of the presidential primaries in 2012. With a base larger than the adult population of California or Canada—a base lovingly monitored by the press—it is certain that many silly, crazy, and mean things will be reported, worldwide.

However, the Republican Party is not a cult: it doesn’t practice frenzied rituals in secret cells or ignore what others think. Despite its noisy romantics, it’s still conservative because it’s heavily invested in the status quo—it’s mainstream plus.

Republican voters are older, whiter, more affluent, more likely to have completed four years in college and have kids living at home than typical Democrats. They have a winner’s stake in the existing order—a pro-business climate and a public sector financially strong enough to keep them safe and to provide generous support for seniors and for their school-age kids. They pay more taxes than the poor and get far more out of government as well.

Click on: http://pewresearch.org/pubs/2067/2012-electorate-partisan-affiliations-gop-gains-white-voters

The dearest hope of Manhattan and Hollywood Democrats is that the Republican Party will nominate a goofy candidate and, with their powdered wigs, muskets, handguns, and Confederate flags, they’ll agree to pose for a group photo for National Lampoon.

(Again, Obama relies less on hope than they would like. He’s assuming they’ll elect Mitt Romney or, if not Mitt Romney, someone who will try carefully to tailor his message in order to win next fall’s election.)

Of course, Republicans can miscalculate, especially when they’re out of power and facing a still popular opponent. Their ideal presidential candidate probably decided too early to defer to Obama; being a loosely managed human institution, the Republican convention could mistakenly pick a dud.  

Yet, as The Economist noted, so far Republicans have reacted to bad news in a brutally rational fashion. The undeserving high profiles that were granted Sarah Palin, Michele
Bachmann, Rick Perry, and Herman Cain drove up their polling numbers in the Republican Party—and then news of their flaws and shortcomings drove their numbers down just as fast.

War of 1812 made people mad but it didn’t make Canada

Middling-nation nationalists and their incumbent governments leap at opportunities to “celebrate” significant war anniversaries. Wars harden feelings and kill off collective options. Unlike elections, wars, at least from a distance, seem to settle things and flesh out national narratives.

The Government of Canada, with $30 million and a clutch of professional storytellers, is out to excite Canadians over the War of 1812-1814 between the US and its old belligerent—the British Empire and its northern colonial assets.

That war left Britain’s colonies intact and spent sufficient treasure and blood to close the angry wound between the UK and the US. It made British subjects in Upper and Lower Canada angry with their southern neighbor and more resolved to stick with the British Crown.

Pow! Canadian consciousness got its start.

While Canadians scorn the gross beautification of American history that permits Americans to constantly call America exceptional, they are every bit as accepting of a self-serving narrative of Canada’s birth and persistence as a separate nation.

In this age of nerve racking choices it’s not surprising that many find comfort, even virtue, in believing they are living within a firm coherent story. This temptation is too easily praised and too rarely challenged.

Yet, human history is also about how stories unravel and how people persist in re-opening their choices and discovering new ones. Our generation of Canadians shouldn’t feel less free now to think about our future choices simply because the British didn’t lose the War of 1812.

Along with the 1812 celebrations, the intention of Canada’s Heritage Minister James Moore to support organizations that support Canadian history and at the same time promote Canadian identity should be seen for what it is: a way to turn the real study of history into feel good propaganda. Canada’s future should stand or fall on what’s going on now; studying history should make us more intelligent decision-makers not more ardent nationalists.

Click on:  www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/history-goes-to-head-of-the-heritage-class/article2198082/

Jeffrey Simpson who confessed to not need fresh memories of a “stupid” war to appreciate Canada’s strengths or America’s shortcomings received a scolding by CP Champion of The Dorchester Review.

“Simpson claims to disdain “the cardboard version of history taught in Canada.” But if anything is made of “cardboard,” it is the Globe writer’s imagination. If he cannot see the origins of an independent Canada in the battlefields of 1812-14 after reading Alan Taylor’s The Civil War of 1812 (which Simpson calls “outstanding”), he should pick up a text on basic philosophy: specifically, the principle of potentiality. Just as a tree grows from an acorn, Canada grew from its colonial origins — but only because there was not an American takeover to cut it off.”

Click on: http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2011/10/11/c-p-champion-the-war-of-1812-was-canadas-war-of-survival/

The problem in free societies is that potentialities keep happening.

The War of 1812 didn’t settle anything. A liberating and true history of Canada—to date—would also draw attention to the Annexation movements in both Upper and Lower Canada. It would note that John Abbott, Canada’s highly esteemed second Prime Minister, signed the Annexation manifesto of 1849. It might acknowledge that so-called loyal Ontario voted for complete free trade with the US in 1891, despite the existential warnings of Canada’s first Prime Minister, John A Macdonald.

Human societies worth studying are not like oak trees or even English gardens.

Friday wrap-up: 9/11, liberal despair, and the promise of America

War against another superpower calls for extreme sacrifice; war against an abstraction sounds extreme. The language of the War Against Terror hasn’t been exceptionally bombastic. (Did George Bush ever say anything as utterly rhetorical as “Mr. Gorbachev, take down that Wall!”) Nevertheless, an axis of three evil midgets and a terrorist in a cave in Bora Bora never excused the Churchillian rhetoric that war leaders employ to keep people in line, focused on the enemy, and not on the errors of their government. 

No one will look back at the last decade with any of the bittersweet memories of genuine solidarity that emerged during World War II. The people of the United States have not rallied as one, and America’s critics haven’t dropped their guard. There will be no peace dividend, only unpaid bills.

The term “9/11 Decade” may be convenient for filing data. But it misrepresents the times. An ugly crime happened ten years ago. On that day, however, America was not dragged into a new order. 9/11 dramatized the underlying drama of existing as a spectacularly successful liberal democracy in a competitive, dangerous world. That drama—like all the others in her history—is being played out within a divided, noisy society.

George Packer, appropriately in the New Yorker this week, captured how the last decade has pulled people apart, especially liberals:

“For most of the decade after September 11th, liberals from New York and elsewhere felt marginalized, misrepresented, ridiculed, scapegoated, and worst of all, ignored. For this treatment to befall that group of Americans who, by their own lights, got the decade mostly right—to be so reviled and so vindicated—inflicted a kind of painful pleasure. But the enduring problem for liberals, as for everyone else, is not whether history will judge them wise or foolish regarding the war on terrorism; it is, rather, the way that the past decade has splintered them away from other Americans.”

In the United States, at least, one liberal—the president—still insists that America’s governing institutions aren’t too corrupt, too divided, or too representative to work. One should give him even odds that over the next year he’ll be able to pull, or shame, American liberals out of their funk and back into politics.

America’s logical allies—fellow liberals in other privileged places like Canada, not the 60,000 Chinese-born people who became legal permanent American residents last year—may simply continue feeling the pleasure of being pained by the conduct of American government.

Jeffrey Simpson writes in the Globe and Mail:

“Canadians now understand that the U.S. remains an indispensable trading partner, but it no longer offers a model for economic development. As for the U.S. political system, Canadians are horrified at what they see – with good reason.”

Click on: www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/america-as-a-trading-partner-yes-economic-model-no/article2155332/

Tories in the 18th and 19th centuries invented and polished this line of thought. The proposition that America is permanently dysfunctional had to sit out the 20th century. However, it’s no less stale or more credible now as the sigh of western liberals.

Taming political change in Canada

Even in springtime in Canada they worry about things getting out of hand.

After giving Stephen Harper a majority government, the second most important feature of the May 2nd national election was the extraordinary success of federalist New Democrats in Quebec. Because of their success, the NDP will form the Official Opposition in the House of Commons; some 70 or so of its members were elected for the first time.

The election involved many surprises and, consequently, has been hard on political observers in Ottawa. They need to be able to make mature guesses about what will happen next. So, they have real problems with the exotic and the new.

They’ve settled on three predictions for now: (1) Harper may be more relaxed with a majority but he isn’t going to change (2) Liberals won’t merge with the NDP because they’re different, and (3) the Quebec caucus is potentially a lethal management problem for Jack Layton.

Let’s concentrate on the freshest. The two week old Quebec Caucus of social democrats hasn’t been branded yet. However, it is already seen as a looming problem—a crucial test of Jack Layton’s ability to lead.

This worry about managing neophytes in Ottawa has a long inglorious tradition. Twenty years ago it turned on the Reform Party “cowboys from the West” and saw that they were poorly managed. Now, after demonizing Stephen Harper as a control freak and saying the election was about democracy, this concern for order is back in Ottawa with all its fussy passion.

The Globe and Mail’s Jeffrey Simpson warns Layton that his Quebec lieutenant Thomas Mulcair is known to not be an easy person to manage:  

“Already, it’s obvious that work needs to be done to make sure Mr. Mulcair remains in step with the leader and the party.”

Click on: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/managing-tom-mulcair/article2020212/

The National Post’s Kathryn Blaze Carlson writes reassuringly:

“NDP TO GROOM AND HIRE

“With fresh faces comes a need for training, and the party will continue prepping its 70 or so rookie MPs for their parliamentary debut. New MPs will rotate in and out of Ottawa, meeting with House of Commons officials for orientation sessions.”

Click on: http://www.nationalpost.com/todays-paper/What+store+parliament+Hill/4782616/story.html

In light of the suicidal group-think that lead to the election of May 2, political handlers and pundits would be better employed de-briefing these first-time politicians about what is actually going on in the country.

Fitting them into the political culture in Ottawa is hardly Canada’s number one problem. And treating a whole new class of elected members as “rookies” betrays a shabby establishment bias.

All too quickly, those without strong views of their own will learn to toe the line. And those few who will make a difference—who will lead or cause trouble or both—will learn the formal rules as well as the others.

Jeffrey Simpson has been around long enough to observe that discipline grows in organizations and individuals the closer they get to power. Ambition is the surest source of discipline. Free-lancing within the NDP and bickering with Liberal Party seatmates will not be prevented by better training. They’ll act like the professionals the media like to cover when they see a chance to win power.

Imagining Canada was somewhere else

As predictable as the decline of the US economy and its adolescence, mass democracy has been the idea of leading Canada to safer shores. Choosing the world over America has been the lapel pin of sophisticates since Richard Nixon floated the dollar in 1971. The credibility of staking Canada’s future elsewhere has been maintained by two conflicting realities: the US’s success in driving globalization and the US’s volatile business and political cycles. Every time she’s down, the globalists in Ottawa say, “This time, it could be for keeps.” 

Surprisingly, Jeffrey Simpson, a Globe and Mail’s national columnist, joined the dreamy pessimists with the article “Uncertainty over the US means a shadow over Canada.” He casts an alarming scenario and concludes with an austere fantasy as a national strategy.

“But what would happen if a major ratings agency downgraded U.S. debt, or a big lender began to diversify away from U.S. debt, or the U.S. dollar plunged? This is a country accustomed to making the rules, then breaking them with impunity. But what happens if that impunity is removed, and the very forces of globalization that the Americans have trumpeted turn against the chief trumpeter.”

Click on: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/uncertainty-over-the-us-means-a-shadow-over-canada/article1919397/

  

America can’t “govern itself properly” and Canada becomes a high dollar “safe haven.” How do we prepare for this dangerous vindication of Canadian superiority? Simpson tells us we should repeat what we’ve been saying to ourselves for 40 years:

“With so much uncertainty, the best option for Canada is to get deficits down much faster than federal and provincial governments are now intending, refocus as much spending as possible on improving competitiveness rather than politically attractive subsidies and useless tax expenditures, and diversifying our economy like mad outside North America. The resulting life jacket would be thin, but it might provide a little insurance against the storms ahead.”

Forget about slashing the deficit. That’s what everyone thinks you should say when you’re talking about life jackets. Hanging onto his life jacket, however, are three unlikely assumptions. The US political system will drive the US market into a catastrophic recession; at the same time, other markets will grow and drive up the Canadian dollar; and federal government policies and spending can re-orient and tone up the Canadian economy. 

Sure, we sell 75% of our merchandise to the US. And, increasingly, those exports are made up of resources, not high-value manufactured goods. We’re not beating a declining America, but we’ll do better somewhere else. Somewhere, perhaps, where we are new might be easier? Why would those markets be easier—especially the ones that are beating the Americans? Demographically, where will there be better growth than in the US? Why will another Ottawa industrial strategy—that is not “politically attractive”—close the 20-25% productivity gap with US manufactures? 

There’s too much that’s escapist about an insurance policy that counts on the unknown. It looks defeatist to invest in North America when the others are moving pins on maps of the globe. Surely, however, the best insurance policy would be to drive greater North American integration so that North America can continue to prosper and compete. 

Diplomats and visionaries in Ottawa may be fed up trying to tell Americans how to practice democracy in a mixed economy. However, if they aren’t up to Washington, they better think twice about Beijing, Moscow, and Cairo.

Is Canada trimming its hopes for an open border?

“Former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney) says he believes a new security perimeter arrangement with the United States would represent no threat to sovereignty but does offer a necessary insurance policy for the Canadian economy.”

—The Globe and Mail, "Perimeter deal with U.S. good for Canada, Mulroney says,"   December 22, 2010

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/perimeter-deal-with-us-good-for-canada-no-threat-to-sovereignty-mulroney/article1846656/

“So here we have the federal government proposing a perimeter around North America to facilitate the flow of goods and services, and prevent further thickening of the Canada-U.S. border, while, inside Canada, manifestations of Little Canada – the securities regulator being only one – are everywhere apparent.”

—Jeffrey Simpson, national columnist, The Globe and Mail, December 17, 2010

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/the-parochialism-of-little-canada-is-killing-us/article1841323/

Earlier this month, Canadian officials were spreading the news: the governments of Canada and the United States were negotiating a continental security perimeter in exchange for lowering the Canada-US border.  Canada would look more like America to the rest of the world, while Canadians would be treated more like Americans at the border. As pundits prepare to stick their necks out about next year’s big story, the Canadian government’s little media helpers now appear to be telling us not to expect anything very bad or very useful either.

Jeffrey Simpson sees Ottawa working to “prevent further thickening of the Canada-US border,” while Mulroney tells us not to get excited: the deal will only be an “insurance policy for the Canadian economy.”

Taking Brian Mulroney literally often understates what he’s getting at. “Insurance” against rising congressional protectionism was, in fact, his modest rationale for the Free Trade Agreement of 1988. That agreement did facilitate a meaningful expansion of trade and, for a while, an increase in Canadian productivity. At that time, as well, he also insisted that the FTA had nothing to do with Canadian sovereignty. Nevertheless, major compromises over Canada’s future economic flexibility were made, especially on the treatment of American investment.

The sovereignty issues today around security, however, are direct and immediate—not long-term and impersonal. They’d be very hard to fudge. Simpson reports, while Mulroney advises: Mr. Harper, don’t try something big.

Early in the New Year, Prime Minister Harper will have to settle for something very cosmetic and strictly at the executive level or he’ll have to invest serious political capital and time convincing US political leaders and Canadians that it’s time to take another step in integrating our two countries. That ultimately, erasing the border would be a good thing because it would allow us to be more effective as North Americans and problem-solvers.

It’s tempting to believe he will. Obama also needs something new to sell and both leaders seem temperamentally unexcited by borders and protectionist strains in the politics of both countries. (Furthermore, the issue in Washington would not divide automatically on partisan lines.) However, if the two of them go with prevailing insider opinion, they’ll say to themselves: I’m looking OK now and have enough to explain without asking people to re-think what they think of their neighbour.   

Then again, both have undertaken big gambles before and neither one sees himself as an insurance agent.