Post 119 Election Mudslinging

US Campaigns in the Media

The media, especially TV, have inundated us poor Canadians with election rot. There’s this interminable US presidential campaign that’s been going on for ages--for years it seems, especially if you’re not particularly enamoured with that kind of public engagement. Though we don’t have a voice or any influence whatsoever in this process, even our own TV stations bombard us with talk shows and news talk about that drawn-out procedure, if you can dignify it as such. Of course, our stations are nothing compared to CNN and its competitors. With CNN it seems it’s 24/7. 

Canadian Campaigns

And in the middle of all that, we had a double doze with our own Canadian road show that ended with Harper out and Trudeau Jr. in, this boy who, the Harper wordsmiths continually maintained, was not ready for such elevated office as Prime Minister of the world’s second largest country. In hindsight, there’s a lot of evidence that this claim may well have been right on. As to the rest of their claims and the opponents’ counterclaims, it was at the same sordid sewer level we still suffer daily from down south.   

Campaign Levels 

The language political opponents use to describe each other is really out of control. In any other cultural segment the insults and outright lies would end up in legal suits and in the courts of the land, with our friendly lawyers having a hay day. What’s unacceptable in every other segment seems to be the thing to do or say in the realm of political campaigns. Of course, that should not surprise you, since the segment is laden with lawyers in whose realm half truths and outright untruths appear to be the daily diet. 

You, readers of this blog, have witnessed the Canadian show and continue to witness its prolonged American variety. You probably shake your head occasionally in consternation at the level to which our honourable leaders can sink. Just now, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a US Supreme Court Justice, one burdened with the awesome responsibility of speaking and judging the truth of things told CNN that Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, is not consistent and says “whatever comes into his head at the moment. He really has an ego.”  Of course, Republican leaders disagreed, while some on the other side agreed.  However, even some left-leaning newspapers called the justice on it. As a Supreme Court justice, she is expected to maintain an impartial stance and not sink into the sewers of politics. The Washington Post commented, “There’s a good reason the Code of Conduct for United States Judges flatly states that a ‘judge should not . . . publicly endorse or oppose a candidate for public office.’ Politicization, real or perceived, undermines public faith in the impartiality of the courts.”  That may be true, but such public comments are an indication of the low level to which participants in the race and their henchpeople sink today. (Sorry for the awkward neologism. “Henchmen” would not do it today and a bare “hench” is not acceptable to the Webster crowd. I’m caught between the linguistic “devil and the deep blue sea.” I am open to suggestions here, please.)

Fathers of the Nation

But if you think this is a recent phenomenon, think again. You may have a surprise coming.  People identified as fathers of the United States used the same kind of language. The Denison Forum shares the following shockers:  

The 1800 election pitted John Adams against Thomas Jefferson. A Jefferson surrogate labeled Adams a "repulsive pedant" and "gross hypocrite" who "behaved neither like a man nor like a woman but instead possessed a hideous hermaphroditical character." An Adams surrogate warned that electing Jefferson would create a nation where "murder, robbery, rape, adultery, and incest will be openly taught and practiced." Stephen Douglas claimed that Abraham Lincoln was a drunk who could "ruin more liquor than all the boys in town together." (Actually, Douglas was a heavy drinker, while Lincoln abstained from alcohol.) Lyndon B. Johnson ran an ad against Barry Goldwater claiming that the latter would bring about nuclear destruction, killing America's children.

A Questionable Corollation 

So, if these greats did not shun such language and, apart from Johnson, they left us with the legacy of a great nation, I guess we should not worry about the low level of our Canadian politicians. There’s hope for us. Is this a case of the deeper the filth the greater the legacy?  Who knows what greatness lies ahead for us in Canada! Hmmm. This conclusion somehow does not have the ring of truth about it. Can anyone point out the logical fallacy I employ here? 

Exporting Democracy

Apart from the legacy question, one of the problems I recognize here is that the nations who practice this kind of shenanigans are also the nations who export “democracy” to the “primitive” nations of other continents and, by so doing, destroy the unity of ethnic groups. I will try to bring some details of this in the next post.

If you have been with me long enough, you may remember previous posts in which I promised not to make any more promises to you, my readers. You may have noticed that in the previous sentence I have just sunk back into the morass of promises, a place where long ago I promised not to descend. I retract that promise. I just can’t live without making promises. But if that’s true for politicians, perhaps I should loosen up as well and just fly with them. If I can’t live without promises in this blog, then I will just have to break that one promise. Just that one!

Post 111—Liberal FG and Transparency

Canada underwent an election in the 2015 fall. That first sentence contains a pun, something I, along with newspaper editors, always enjoy. It was fall, that is, autumn time, but it was also the fall of the Harper Conservative government, a double fall situation. The victorious Liberals promised this was going to be a change from dark opaque government to transparency and disclosure.

The Harper Record

First of all, was the Harper government all that disastrous?  Den Tandt, whose writings I increasingly appreciate along with those of Andrew Coyne as I proceed with this blog, acknowledges that it is fashionable “to belittle and insult the outgoing PM. What good he did is forgotten amid the rush to assign blame for the loss.”  At the same time, he strongly argues that Harper’s was a government marked by “responsible fiscal management” that handed over balanced books and a growing economy.  Harper may have had his nasty dictatorial and centralizing side—and I fully agree with that—but Den Tandt’s list of five positive points for the defeated Conservative government was not balanced by a charge of lack of fiscal transparency, something he would surely have included in his article of November 2, 2015. Nasty personality? Yes, that was Harper’s downfall. But fiscal opaqueness? Lack of fiscal transparency? None of that surfaced—except of course from the victorious Liberal side. But that’s to be expected in the Canadian political culture of nastiness, blackball and blame; it has nothing to do with truth or fact.

The Transparency Tumble

      Den Tandt

Half a year after the above Den Tandt article, he wrote a column with the title “Liberals hiding budget plans.” Now that does not sound like transparency to me. So, let’s see how he unpacks this charge. There is this institution called Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) that apparently keeps an eye on the Federal budget. According to Den Tandt, this office had been given data by the Finance Department “that would have allowed for a five-year breakdown of the government’s taxing and spending plans.” However, Finance prevented PBO from releasing this data because it allegedly is “confidential.”  The problem here is that it was not deemed confidential under the Harper or even the Liberal Paul Martin regime. Den Tandt lashes out:

The fair questions, then, which only a cretin (Boer: from a Webster-- stupid, vulgar, mentally retarded) would not think to ask: Why is this information confidential now, when it was not before?  And how can this Liberal party, whose leader lashed himself to the mast of transparency long before he became PM, justify a move that appears to limit the PBO’s power to publicly dissect government projections, and thus, this independent office of parliament’s freedom of action?

The article contains more of the same. There is the talk of openness, but not the walk. There is the claim of transparency, but it is not an honest claim. Den Tandt did not expect a reasonable answer from the PM himself, for, he charges, “The PM himself responds to fair questions with the most outrageous nonsense” (VS, April 8, 2016).

      Coyne

Coyne chimed in on a similar strong, not so pleasant, note.  “The face on TV may bespeak a commitment to idealism and honesty, transparency and fairness, but the government behind it has already amassed a record od cynicism, deception, secrecy and cronyism that for most governments would take years.”  He hands us a long list of things promised on which they have reneged. I won’t go into the gory details, but, as I noted above, nothing pretty about it. Words and phrases used in his article include “political chicanery,” “carelessness,” “recklessness.” “the scent of money and expediency” that surround this government. He concludes his piece with this statement, “The Liberals are building up a deficit of trust and ethics to match the fiscal deficit. It has been just six months since they were elected” (VS, April 21, 2016).

Den Tandt and Coyne are two writers for whom I have the highest regard. They don’t play politics; they are straight shooters, the kind I go for.  All I can say is,  “Phew! Wow! Was there something substantial after all about the Conservative election claim that Trudeau was “not ready” for the PM office?” 

Aboriginal Transparency  

But to take it one step further, there’s the case with Canada’s Aboriginals. Everything one reads about them leaves the impression they wallow in poverty. That is a terrible shame, especially since the Feds pump so much money into them year after year without any apparent success in raising them up out of the poverty level. I have written earlier posts to which I refer you in which I discuss how the Harper government began insisting on disclosure on the part of the chiefs who were/are the beneficiaries of that government largess.  The reports I have read indicate that this was a good move supported by most Aboriginals, especially the commoners among them. During an RV trip to Canada’s far north some years ago, we stopped in various Aboriginal communities and spoke with some of their inhabitants. We were surprised how open they were with respect to the corruption, especially amongst their own chiefs. I could not believe how they freely volunteered such info to an unknown white couple. Things were obviously bad.

But now comes the clincher: The Trudeau government is intending to unwind that disclosure standard! Now that leaves me totally floored. Disclosure is part of the gold standard of modern progressive nations. Joe Oliver, the former Conservative Minister of Finance, writes, "The Transparency Act was designed to protect Aboriginal people" (VS, May 3, 2016). On what basis would one lower a demand for disclosure when, as has been revealed abundantly, that many Aboriginal chiefs receive millions while their people live in absolute misery. The documentation is there all over the place for people to see.

I am simply dumbfounded! 

I need to change to another subject, for I don’t want to be seen as a negative politician who loves to berate the current government.  I surely don’t. I am basically a positive citizen who appreciates good government, but what we’re facing now seems to be something else!