My advice for Scheer and Trudeau
Coming soon to a political party near you: Exciting promises of yet more government. Unless my bucket of cold water gets there first.
My Post colleague John Ivison just offered some “observations and advice” for 2018, starting with, “The Liberals really, really need to legalize pot by Canada Day” to shake “the ‘ promise- breakers’ tag” and at #2 “Justin Trudeau needs to find new ways to keep voters enthused,” despite good polling numbers, so he needs “a new slate of ideas that are more radical, more inclusive and more ambitious than the last batch of promises.” Meanwhile (#3) poor “Andrew Scheer is going to have to move the dial on public support” and to get past his core 30 per cent support he “needs to define the values that would guide him in government — and they need to be a little more progressive and a little less conservative.”
Now anyone in need of public relations advice from me is already in deep trouble, and anyone who takes it soon will be. But Ivison’s advice, though plausible and probably appealing to its intended recipients, seems to me to misread the Liberals’ current problem and the Tories’ perennial one.
It doesn’t misread the Liberals’ current situation, namely having blithely made sweeping promises they hadn’t thought through. But making further sweeping promises looks like trying to dig your way out of a hole. As for the Tories, trying to outbid the Liberals is a dubious way of getting elected let alone of governing successfully.
Thomas Sowell famously said “Reality is tricky.” That (like Philip K. Dick’s classic “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn’t go away”) is in some sense an inherently conservative “truism.” Most political arguments, though they appear to concern de- tails, really concern the underlying mental dispositions Sowell calls “visions,” including how much you emphasize proven methods versus good intentions. But the Liberals must have had a queasy feeling about the limits of good will, at least since they felt obliged to hire a “deliverology” guru in 2016 as the unmet promises piled up.
Unfortunately for them, delivering on promises is not some specialized technical art. It depends on understanding how reality is tricky and making promises compatible with its hard bits. You can’t make bricks float in mid- air by wishing for it, but you can build high on well- laid foundations. So stop star-gazing and start studying blueprints.
The Tories’ problem is very different. They are philosophically inclined to expect disappointment from grand, poorly thought through schemes for the betterment of mankind. So their job is to explain why these castles in the sky can’t even be built, let alone kept up there. It’s not an immediately popular position. But when the bricks start raining down and you say “elect us because we not only knew it would happen, we predicted it,” it becomes convincing.
Conservatives have a l ot of trouble sustaining that position long enough to reap the political and policy rewards given the mudstorm every time they say something won’t work, especially from the good- intentions crowd saying you must be a meanie who doesn’t want it to work. So they often react in two understandable but incompatible and counterproductive ways.
First, they adopt liberal positions. Second, they become surly and offensive. Hence the most harshly partisan Tories are often also the reddest. Not coincidentally, they win majorities federally only once a generation (1930, 1958, 1984, 2011) and spend the resulting brief term in power thrashing incoherently between what they think and what they said. So it’s not a great plan even compared to mine.
Which is, don’t panic and lurch left or try to get Andrew Scheer jiggy socks. Instead, point out that the Liberals’ good intentions are not working, politely but firmly and at every opportunity. Sooner or later voters will see that you were right. Unless you’re not, in which case you shouldn’t win.
As for the Liberals, I’m not sure what might qualify for Ivison’s “new slate of ideas … more radical, more inclusive and more ambitious than the last batch.” What has government not already promised us, from freedom from want to freedom from gender to freedom from sin? Shall we repeal the law of gravity and bid farewell to skinned knees? Or outlaw aging? But in any case, their problem is not their failure to dazzle. It’s creeping doubts that they know how the world works, reinforced by the languid pace of legislation in 2017.
So Liberals should combat their natural instinct to close their eyes, click their heels together and repeat “nation to nation reconciliation,” “higher minimum wages,” “big spending balanced budges” or “perfect voting system” and instead try to figure out how to steer a hot air balloon.
Otherwise a bucket of cold water might melt their electoral prospects.