‘Sunny ways’ and ‘voodoo economics’

The expression “sunny ways” was coined by Wilfred Laurier to spin the compromises his government had to fashion to hold an intolerant, very young country together. He was a careful builder, befitting his time. Justin Trudeau uses the same expression proudly, as an unqualified optimist.

Laurier, however, was a classic anti-authoritarian, small-government Liberal. He carried on nation-building infrastructure projects and honored the debts incurred by that binge conservative John A. Macdonald. Above all, he looked to trade an individual initiative to grow the economy.

Laurier is not the inspiration behind Justin Trudeau’s fiscal policy.

The greatest contemporary practitioner of “sunny ways” was Ronald Reagan. He understood that lecturing tolerance and applying a traditional conservative fiscal policy wouldn’t sustain his extraordinary popularity. And he liked being liked.

According to the Joint Economic Committee of the US Congress (1996), over his eight years in the White House, personal income tax revenues declined from 9.4% of GDP to 8.3% of GDP. US federal government spending and deficits, as his critics warned, soared.

Justin Trudeau has Reagan’s nature, only with new demons to throw money at. Allegedly, he too has been underestimated all his professional life. As with Reagan, his critics are simply those who still don’t get it. Reagan would shrug; Trudeau worries that they’re “deranged.”

So, as George H. W. Bush, a dogged evidence-based politician, complained about Reagan’s sunny growth strategy in the 1980s Republican primaries, Canada now has a fiscal policy in place in Ottawa that can, as well, be called “voodoo economics.”

Rhetoric: Living in the Age of Bluff?

Even on this lucky continent, resourceful politicians must learn how to survive periods of constrained resources. There are many tested ways to perform on the cheap: For instance, amend commercial, consumer, and environmental regulations; update the criminal code; make a solid impression at international conferences; and assign blame to others, those who aren't liked by most of their voters.

This new century’s signature ploy may be the bluff, hints of heroic intention that fall well short of heroic action.

Here are a few familiar subjects worthy of heroic treatment: climate change, Russian military aggression, the middle class’s disappearing American Dream, nuclear proliferation, Iran, and North Korea. And here is an eclectic, short list of active practitioners: Barack Obama, Stephen Harper, William Hague, Hillary Clinton, Chrystia Freeland, and all Western neocons and recent premiers of Ontario.

Here are a few illustrations (If you laugh spontaneously, they’re flops. If they remind you of Sir Winston Churchill — out of power — they work):

William Hague, foreign secretary of the most literate and shrinking English-speaking power, declares that the crisis in the Crimea represented the “gravest security threat of the 21st century.”  

Chrystia Freeland, Member of Parliament for Rosedale, calls for sanctions against Russia that “bite.”

Stephen Harper suggests that Russia be kicked out of the G-8.

Barack Obama’s applies the cold war Domino Theory to Crimea.

Hillary Clinton calls for a “mass movement” to stop global warming.

At first glance, I was most impressed by Hague’s alarming historical framework. He implied that brave action by everyone must be taken, that failure to act will haunt us in the history books. But the record of this busy century quickly gets in the way. Is today’s Crimea crisis actually more dangerous than 9/11 and global terrorism, the Iraq War, the Great Recession and the sovereign debt crisis in the Eurozone, and all that’s looming in Iran, China, and North Korea?   

Only Hillary Clinton’s radical sounding exhortation has staying power. Her heroic challenge won’t be taken off the public agenda merely by behind-the-scenes diplomacy. It has awful staying power. More importantly, her statement in no way leaves her accountable. She can make a fortune giving speeches about a terrible problem or, conceivably, become America’s third president waiting for "mass" encouragement to exercise responsible leadership.

Is bluff always dangerous or bad for us? Not necessarily.

In the '80s — when his declaration was meant have effect — Ronald Reagan’s belligerent declaration that the Soviet Union was an “evil empire” struck many as irresponsible, a charge best made by a bishop, not a president in a nuclear cold war.

Even-tempered Barack Obama is not good at bluffing — fortunately.

His “red line” assertion about Syria was taken seriously by the Economist, Senator John McCain, and, allegedly, by factions in Syria’s civil war — but not across America. Consequently, when his line was crossed, America didn’t have to get into another war to preserve its honor and another president’s credibility.

Defiant American and Canadian rhetoric about effective sanctions on Putin’s Russia, however, are probably doing more harm than good. The more we "own the podium," the less that affluent Europe has to sacrifice for its own security.

Finally, should we be embarrassed about our tolerance for and today’s promiscuous use of the bluff? Not this year, for sure.

The year 2014 is the hundredth anniversary of a slaughter that was caused and sustained not by bad intelligence and the stresses of rapid change, but by leaders and peoples seduced by hateful myths about their neighbors and ridiculously extravagant rhetoric about honor.

Better to be alive now — in an age of comics and cynics. Our political leaders can still be persuasive, but we’re not as easily taken in or enslaved by their bluffs.

‘Historic’ speeches and elections aren’t what we need

We live in an age that pines to witness history—if not make it.

The most entertaining and convenient opportunities for experiencing together the tingle of big news are: "historic" presidential elections and "historic" presidential speeches.

We’re told that history may be made; the odds are usually set at 50–50. In effect, "historic" is now a promotional term.

"Historic" is a high-powered polemical benchmark we use to advance our agenda and derail our opponents. Last week, the word was busy undermining Barack Obama and advancing Hillary Clinton.  

We could see for ourselves that Obama’s second speech in Berlin didn’t inspire. He appeared tired, fumbled too many words, and didn’t lift his heat-drenched audience of invited sophisticates. Later, it was duly reported that they were generally disappointed. For failing to inspire—to transcend concerns in Europe about America’s numerous wrong-doings —columnists including the National Post’s Rex Murphy labeled Obama as the "Ordinary President."

Murphy compared Obama’s performances to the speeches of Jack Kennedy in 1963 and Ronald Reagan in 1987—both during the Cold War, when Berlin was surrounded by tanks and a cinder-block wall capped with shard glass and barbed wire. Obama didn’t offer one remarkable line in league with “I’m a Berliner” or “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this Wall.” Apparently, those lines were historic; Kennedy and Reagan demonstrated their reach as charismatic presidents.

Berlin, then, was a dream city for US presidential oratory. It’s less so today.

Then, Berliners were literally anxious and eager participants; they came out in the hundreds of thousands to help the Leader of the Free World make a great speech about their freedom—and, by doing so, help all Americans like Berliners that much more.

Berlin’s prosperity and survival as a free city depended on the support of the President of the United States and each president’s confidence that voters back home also supported massive US commitments to West Europe and the democratic city of West Berlin. (Can you imagine influential Berliners then complaining aloud that American presidents talk too easily about freedom, while permitting discrimination against American blacks and ignoring the importance of building a more robust social safety net?)

Today, Berliners don’t worry about their freedom. If you want to excite German nerves today, in fact, you talk about what Germany must commit to maintain Europe’s solidarity and how much more they must sacrifice to restore the economies of the rest of Europe.

If Obama had wanted to give an exciting speech, he could have talked about America’s more complete and more successful economic federation. He could have scorned the complainers in London and elsewhere who think Europe’s unifiers went too far in creating the Euro-zone and a European Parliament. Maybe next time.

Great speeches are influential. However, they are usually divisive. Only in time do we learn whether they made a difference. And that’s when we should feel free to call them "historic."

By that measure, neither Kennedy nor Reagan nor Obama, as yet, made historic speeches in Berlin. Kennedy made no new friends or enemies. Gorbachev didn’t take down the Wall. And Obama hasn’t yet convinced Europe to pay its fair share of the burden of maintaining the peace.

Apparently, it’s also okay today to bill elections in advance as "historic." Politico reports: Hillary Clinton wants a female president "in my lifetime":

“She added that President Barack Obama’s election was historic, and said, ‘I hope that we will see a woman elected because I think it would send exactly the right historic signal to girls, women as well as boys and men. And I will certainly vote for the right woman to be president.’”

Clearly, Hillary Clinton has recovered from her exhausting years as a diplomat. Unsheathed self-promotion, also, can be fun and, in her case, is reassuring. She can thrive in serving a former rival and then enjoy serving herself.

Her thesis on the presidency, however, is shopworn and weak.

Obama’s first term record and its vindication in his re-election made his first election historic, not the 2008 election itself. His victory simply confirmed that a black man could win the presidency. Electing Hillary Clinton would confirm that the polls and conventional wisdom are right: that a woman can be president of the United States. America can join the ranks of such high-regarding and demanding democracies as Great Britain, Germany, Israel, and India.

Another successful role model for young women would be welcome but wouldn’t, in itself, solve or even improve the odds of solving those problems at home and abroad that may make the next presidency historic.

Furthermore, there’s much that is parochial and arbitrary about the proposition that an American women is needed in the White House to inspire American women to succeed in politics. Liberals may not identify with Angela Merkel or Margaret Thatcher. However, in addressing "women problems" in professional politics, they set excellent examples.

Anyway, other than nagging self-interest, why can’t the Clinton clan acknowledge that Obama’s success—in elections and in office—has already made a bonfire of those stereotypes that hold back talented individuals with political ambition? Hasn’t Barack Hussein Obama already sent an inspiring invitation to white as well as black girls and women?     

A New Deal with Canada? “Not a snowball’s chance in hell”

Great political egos don’t rest when they retire. Without advisors and restraining consequences, they are simply freer to roar.

Former Progressive Conservative Prime Minister Brian Mulroney recently informed a hall of university students that Canada’s development on this continent effectively stopped when he stopped leading the country.

Here’s Maclean’s magazine John Geddes’s report:

“Which brings him to a broader point: any Canadian prime minister must not only nurture the U.S. president’s friendship, he must let the world know about it. ‘Look,’ he explains, ‘one of the main instruments of your strength is if you’re perceived as having influence in the Oval Office.’ He illustrates this with another story, one from the very last day of negotiations on the Canada-U.S. trade deal in 1987. James Baker, the U.S. treasury secretary who was heading the American bargaining team, called him to say talks had stalled. Mulroney replied that he would have to phone his friend Reagan at Camp David then. ‘You mention that,’ he says, grinning roguishly, ‘I want to tell you, the Americans, they’re transfixed.’ (So are the St. Thomas students.) Baker got the deal finalized, needless to say, within the hour.

“And that, kids, is why you gotta cultivate your connections. But one last point. Without mentioning Harper by name, Mulroney caps his reminiscing on U.S. relations by observing that Canada, in his opinion, these days lacks the inside-Washington credibility that ultimately secured his trade deal. ‘You try to get that agreement down there now,’ he says, ‘you wouldn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting that done!’”

Brutal. The Mulroney legacy grows as history stands still? Students, don’t give up!

For one thing, don’t worry too much about the telephonic skills of your Prime Minister. Canada’s place in Washington is limited, but not by a Prime Minister’s personal rapport with the President of the day.

It’s cringingly vain for Mulroney to suggest that he could get between President Ronald Reagan and James Baker—his first Chief of Staff, his National Campaign Manager, and his brilliant Treasury Secretary—on any issue of importance to the United States. Reagan and the US Senate made a deal with Canada because it served America’s interests. Period.

And please don’t be intimidated by the idea that what a "legend" did nearly a generation ago can’t be repeated—even improved on—now. 

There wasn’t a snowball’s logic to Brian Mulroney’s entire record of economic accomplishment.

The man was considered a political junky and ruthless cynic when he was elected in 1985. His economic pronouncements appeared ghosted; he talked mostly about business-like government and never endorsed free trade with the US. Smart public servants in Ottawa never imagined that he had the discipline or courage to reform Canada’s sales tax regime, let alone negotiate a comprehensive free trade deal with the US government. 

Furthermore, the times didn’t favor such an adventure. Ontario’s government wasn’t supportive of free trade. The cheap Canadian dollar was giving Canada’s manufacturers a competitive assist. But, generally, they didn’t relish competing on an open and level playing field with the US. In addition, their Republican President wasn’t popular with Canadian voters, and their Congress was full of protectionists.

Still, into hell Mulroney went—and came out with an historic deal.

The odds that Steven Harper will try something big appear slight. Yet prospects for success could be better today than they were in 1987.

Obama is very popular and trusted in Canada. The US economy is growing again. Free traders dominate Ottawa and Washington policy circles, and they have 30 years of success to bolster their arguments. 9/11 thickened the border, but experience argues strongly that further reducing barriers and integrating economic forces is in both country’s interests. Raising middle class incomes is pre-occupying politics on both sides of the border, but it isn’t driving either side to favor protection or reliance on economic nationalism.

Tradition has it that Canada makes the first move. What does Canada need to get the ball rolling? A Canadian agenda and a Canadian Prime Minister who won’t tolerate being patronized by Brian Mulroney.