COVID-19 shows how politics has to adapt

We’ve always known our democratic system based on the need to get elected every four years has never exactly been the best method for solving big, long-term problems.

Why we still have debt, pollution, poverty, inadequate health care or man-made global warming isn’t because there aren’t solutions. It’s because solutions would mean big public investments (read: taxes) that would hinder voters’ lifestyles in the here and now.

So politicians feed off the less-charitable aspect of human nature and reassure us the big problems can be addressed by our future generations at some later date. Then it’s off to the polls every four years where governing parties remind us of their “balanced budgets,” big spending commitments and lower taxes and opposition parties argue that the government didn’t do nearly enough of all that.

But what happens if a crisis can’t be postponed to some later date?

What if it’s thrust upon on our political system in real time? What if we are hit by an immediate crisis with the capability of simultaneously swamping our health system and social safety nets and shutting down our industrialized economy?

The COVID-19 pandemic is challenging the very nature of our adversarial parliamentary democracy. Unlike us, it knows no partisanship and cares nothing for political strategies or four-year election cycles.

Today’s struggles seem to be teaching us that there is no perfect political philosophy in a democratic party system that’s been built to deal with the immediate health, social and economic disasters this COVID-19 crisis could very well create.

And the first problem is that some are still convinced that anyone — including any political party — has a one-size-fits-all answer that somehow neatly mirrors their own philosophical views.

We need business and jobs answers from the right. We need social service and health answers from the left. We need the best of whatever anyone — left, right or centre — can provide right now because nobody right now has all the answers.

However, the second last circle of hell should now be reserved for those — equally from the left and right — who see this pandemic as a way to take cheap partisan shots at lifelong political enemies because that’s simply what they’ve always done.

There should be another circle in hell for those who are simply refusing to heed the warnings of science that are telling us to avoid large gatherings, stay home, stay six feet apart and do everything we can stop the spread of this virus. That circle will be packed with the ignorance of those convinced by a Youtube video or something they found on the dark reaches of the interweb that this is all a conspiracy by the World Health Organization (WHO) to increase its funding.

Run in the opposite direction from morons like this. Follow science. Follow what WHO is telling you. In fact, the executive director of WHO’S emergencies program, Mike Ryan, might very well have uttered last week the most profound words of this pandemic if not of our time.

“Perfection is the enemy of good when it comes to emergency management. Speed trumps perfection,”

Ryan said a press conference two weeks ago. “And the problem we have in society at the moment is everyone is afraid of making a mistake ... everyone is afraid of the consequences of error.

“But the greatest error is not to move. The greatest error is to be paralyzed by the fear or failure.”

It’s a message every politician needs to hear every day because it has become painfully clear the solutions won’t be found in doing politics like we’ve always done it.

But it’s hopeless to expect them to change, you say? No. Surprisingly, it isn’t.

Yes, many of them, including Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe, were slow to react. But of late, about the only thing that’s risen as rapidly as worldwide COVID-19 infections has been how quickly most countries have shut down to keep from spreading the coronavirus.

Sure, the enormity of what’s happening makes this just the first step.

But maybe our political system that can never get its head around dealing with the big problems down the road, can deal with crisis right before us.

Mandryk is the political columnist for the Regina Leader-post and Saskatoon Starphoenix.