Sunday January 22, 2006
Campaign lacks vision of what Canada could be
Tomorrow, Canadians will voluntarily take a multiple-choice test. It\’s called a ballot. If we make the right choice, we get a new government.
On the other hand, if we make the wrong choice, we still get a new government.
Personally, I plan mark my “X” in the box for “None of the above.”
There\’s no such box? Too bad – there should be. Canadians need an option that would let politicians know we are seriously pissed off about their performance.
I\’m sorry if that language offends you. But I don\’t think that words like “upset” or “unhappy” adequately capture the depth of dissatisfaction I sense among acquaintances across the country.
For almost two months, Paul Martin and Stephen Harper have been competing as if they were bidding for our loyalty on e-Bay. Every day, they try to top each other\’s promises. If it isn\’t day care, it\’s university tuition. Or increased funding for the armed forces. Or for more police officers.
When they aren\’t throwing money at health care, education, or social services, they\’re promising tax refunds, rebates, adjustments, and amendments — so that we can throw our own money at whatever we want.
I gave up trying to keep track of the total bill for these promises. Any figure I came up with would be inaccurate – if only because, between the time I write this column and the time it gets printed, a bunch of new promises would render my calculations obsolete.
Absence of vision
Listening to the leaders, I sometimes suspect that the only issue in this election campaign is how to divide up the pie.
I have heard next to nothing about what kind of country we want to live in. Except from Gilles Duceppe, of course, whose primary goal is to break up the country we live in.
John Kennedy\’s famed speech comes to mind: “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask rather what you can do for your country.”
I have heard nothing, from any leader, about what they expect from us citizens. Other than to be greedy, self-centred, money-grubbing, individualistic… It\’s hardly a noble goal.
The Gomery Commission roasted the federal Liberal party for treating the public purse as their private slush fund for bribing Quebecers into supporting federalism. But in this campaign, both the Liberals and the Conservatives have set the same example by trying to bribe voters with handouts of their own money.
What principles?
A friend once described a boat as a hole in the water that its owner keeps trying to fill with money. An election campaign might equally accurately be described as an empty space between the ears that candidates try to fill with promises.
In all this, there has been an utter absence of principle, of vision, even of ideology. Do we know what anyone values so much he would never compromise it?
Lloyd Mackey\’s biography, The Pilgrimage of Stephen Harper, came out – with enviable timing – just before the electoral campaign. It portrays Harper as a principled man. But neither the book nor the current campaign tells me what his principles are.
Paul Martin says that voters have a choice between two people with dramatically different views of what Canada should be. That may be true. But I still have no idea what either of them thinks Canada should be.
Perhaps I should blame the mass media rather than the leaders. It\’s entirely possible that reporters have chosen to ignore anything that doesn\’t have a dollar symbol or a quotable sound bite attached to it.
Handout journalism
Last year, Bill Moyers delivered a scathing criticism of North American media, to the National Conference on Media Reform held in St. Louis, Missouri. He quoted several of his contemporaries about the inability of journalists today to go beyond handout journalism.
“The rules of the game make it hard to tee up an issue without a news peg,” said David Ignatius of The Washington Post: “If Senator So-and-so hasn\’t criticized postwar planning for Iraq, it\’s hard for a reporter to write a story about that.”
Why did journalists never write about the occupation of Iraq until it happened? “Because,” according to public television\’s Jim Lehrer, “the word \’occupation\’ was never mentioned… Washington talked about a war of liberation, not a war of occupation. As a consequence, those of us in journalism never even looked at the issue of occupation.”
“If the government isn\’t talking about it,” admitted Jonathan Mermin, author of Debating War and Peace: Media Coverage of US Intervention in the Post-Vietnam Era, “we don\’t report it.”
Charles Hanley, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the Associated Press, wrote about the torture of Iraqis in American prisons long before a U.S. Army report and photographs documenting the abuse surfaced. His stories were ignored by major American newspapers. Because, Hanley later suggested, “it was not an officially-sanctioned story that begins with a handout from an official source. Furthermore, Iraqis recounting their own personal experience of Abu Ghraib simply did not have the credibility of American officials denying that such things happened.”
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For a lighter look at ethics, faith, and life, I recommend Ralph Milton\’s weekly e-newsletter Rumors. You can subscribe to it at the Wood Lake Books home page in Ralph Milton\’s Site, or by sending a note directly to [email protected].
It\’s also worth pursuing Richard Fairchild\’s United Online site. Another site worth visiting is David Keating\’s \”SeemslikeGod\” page.
Moyers\’ criticisms of American media apply equally, I believe, to Canada. The media offer us a “show and tell” circus of leaders making promises at podiums. But no reporter apparently dares compare the promises with the leader\’s own convictions. No one explains how those promises dovetail with the leader\’s values.
So what are we voting for tomorrow? A pig in a poke.
I thought I knew what Paul Martin stood for when he was Finance Minister. Now he seems to believe only that dollops of money will solve anything.
If the campaign is any indication of the kind of government these leaders will run, I don\’t want any of them.
That\’s why I wish the ballot included a “None of the Above” box.
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Copyright © 2002 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
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