TORONTO – It is also a saying that allows all prognosticators and political analysts to excuse away the mismatch between their explanations and the outcomes. In normal circumstances, “a plan” of commonly accepted goals and specific objectives is assessed against their timely achievements. Somewhere between the start and moments when the general public begins “to take stock”, the fog of smoke and mirrors of frantic activity and self aggrandizement begins to clear.
Whoever is in the chair of power begins to live a precarious [political] experience. Friends begin to melt away like freshly fallen snow under intense summer heat. Analogies and comparisons become the straws on which flounders grasp for [vain] hope of survival.
Historically, they turn to the international political settings in the hope that the implied [positive] comparisons will “sell” domestically. It seems to this observer a strategy doomed to failure unless the message back home is absolutely clear, as it was in President J.F. Kennedy’s address in Berlin on January 20, 1961 (you can read it here: https://www.ushistory.org/documents/ask-not.htm).
His [quasi] closing remarks invoked similar exhortations by Cicero, politician, philosopher, grammarian, orator of the late Roman Republic: ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.
“Different times, different conditions, long lost values”, you say. Two thousand years separated Cicero from Kennedy. And from Pierre Trudeau in the early 1980s when he wen on his international mission to evaluate his acceptability back home; so, also, with Brian Mulroney a decade later, and Jean Chretien a decade later and Steven Harper decade after that.
The Biden-Harris pair in the USA – now the darlings of Canadian politicos and [some] Media – are taking this concept back to what they imagine was a formula, tried and true, to demonstrate resolute leadership that brings verifiable results.
It does not seem to be working. The Greater Middle East is a powder keg – now more than ever. Its “issues” have spilled over onto North America and beyond. In Canada, one can no longer be pro-Palestinian without being anti-Semitic, or pro-Israel without being anti-Muslim. Protesters see to it at every turn. Gone is any pretence of inclusivity and “sunny ways”.
Pollsters are indicating increasingly negative attitudes among the electorate and even bleaker results for those praying for sanity. Media outlets are in a bidding war to interview “expert opinion” in an effort to explain what is happening… precisely on this past Thanksgiving weekend.
The CBC, long seen as friendly to government, cites “experts” which include 20-40 unnameable, “reliable sources” from within the Government Caucus “calling for/demanding” action [suitable to them]. CTV calls on its own reserve, former NDP leader, to assert that the government has a good list of achievements to defend, thanks in part to the informal Liberal NDP coalition.
Some pollsters and “old-timer” Ottawa columnists seem pressed to show how the public really does not like the Opposition. I am shocked (sarcasm intended)! The bearer of bad tidings is the tidings itself; the messenger is the message!
What may have been acceptable in the past is questionable today. Events are over-taking personalities.
The campaign for the US Presidency of Khamala Harris, the darling of the Canadian Center-Left, is struggling. Its success or failure may have implications for the Canadian political scene. In Quebec, Statistics Canada documents the demographic resurgence of [political] Quebecois nationalism in its breakdown of the “ethnicities” in the electoral constituencies in that province. It is a surprise to some that many Francophone residents now self-identify as Quebecois.
Who speaks for Canada?
