CAMPAIGN FROM AFAR
O’Leary’s style is ‘quite bizarre’
As what was once ordinary becomes strange, and what was once outlandish takes on the appearance of the everyday, we may struggle to recall what normal has always been, and why it has ever mattered, and in what ways it may matter still.
We must ask questions like this, for instance: Is it normal for a politician to live mostly in one country while campaigning to lead a political party of another? The short answer: no. The long answer: It is not only abnormal (as my colleague Andrew Coyne suspected) but without precedent in the history of every democracy in the world.
This, at least, is the answer given by people more qualified than myself to distinguish between the slightly odd and the stark raving mad.
Freedom House kindly asked half a dozen of its international politics researchers about Canada’s Conservative party leadership contender Kevin O’Leary’s living arrangements in the United States; meanwhile, I pestered nearly as many foreign academics.
Around the world, experts agree: O’Leary’s run from abroad is, as Freedom House’s Distinguished Scholar in Democracy Arch Puddington puts it, “quite bizarre.”
To truly appreciate the peculiarity of O’Leary’s preferred address, we must first consider that a couple dozen democracies comprise the West alone. We must then imagine that in just these countries, throughout a century or so of national elections, thousands of people have tried to lead national political parties.
After all this time, in all these places, all these politicians have seen fit to submit their credentials to the parties they wish to preside over while remaining in the democracy they hope to govern, establishing a pattern never once broken until this year, when a Canadian reality TV star made the determination: Nah, I’m good over here.
Indeed, if another candidate has ever tried to seduce voters while going to such elaborate lengths to avoid actually meeting them, the campaign was so obscure we might surmise it was a bad joke, a publicity stunt or a grift. Granted, these possibilities cannot be ruled out from a man whose best defence for habitual piggishness is that he’s not really a marauding simpleton, he just plays one on TV.
But O’Leary’s closest allies are probably hustlers of a different kind. Granted, they dabble in politics from afar, not because they prefer life abroad but because their lives are in danger at home; meaning, O’Leary has none of their excuses and should want none of their notoriety.
Like O’Leary, though, while they’re hardly around they never really go away.
I’m referring, you understand, to various exiled heads of unstable states and coup plotters on the lam. In some small sense then, to a list that includes Iran, Ghana and Lebanon, we can now add Canada.
And we can say that politicians normally campaign in the countries they campaign in. Of course, it’s fair to ask why.
But the answer is self-evident. Politicians don’t operate this way merely because they’ve always operated this way (although they have); nor because it’s easier to campaign in a place when you’re in that place (although it is); nor because voters distrust politicians who avoid being in close physical proximity to them (although they very well ought to). It’s simply that if one wants to show that he is committed to leading a country, showing up in it regularly may not be enough, but it helps.
Here, then, what is normal is also best. But while norms still matter, they don’t matter in the way they normally do. Normal is now a prop that bullies use to prove they can push the system around.
And if they break rules they set themselves — as, say, an anti-immigrant president might by marrying an immigrant — they look that much stronger.
For a party that wants to be in power more than it wants to be good, looking strong is enough.
One norm, at least, must prevail over O’Leary. He hasn’t yet defied the law of physics that dictates a man cannot be in two places at once. Perhaps Canada will get lucky and he’ll eventually stay where he wants to be.