Two Fords and a Trump can’t be laughed away
Need I remind everyone that while we revel in the sideshow, there are Serious Issues From Which These Clowns Distract
There must be a metaphor in here somewhere: On Monday morning, much of Toronto’s financial district — including Bay Street from King to Richmond — was shut down unexpectedly because of a wobbly antenna atop the Trump hotel tower, causing traffic problems for more than a day. I mean, come on. An unstable Trump-related communications thing disrupts business as usual? Your physical-world parallels to political events don’t get much neater than that.
You’re almost tempted to think this was a calculated move by Donald Trump to casually one-up fellow Republican presidential primary candidate Scott Walker, who recently “appeared to entertain the notion of building a giant wall” between the U.S. and Canada, according to a report from The Canadian Press. “Who needs a wall when we can screw with them from the inside?” you can imagine Trump thinking.
Probably not, but given the real-estate-magnate-turned-television-celebrity-turned-politician’s demonstrated ability to captivate the attention of the worldwide media and shake the political landscape of the world’s most powerful country with every offhand comment, you do have to wonder.
Such is Trump’s power to ensure the sideshow takes over the centre ring that our own Toronto version of the populist political celebrity brand, in the person of Doug Ford, stirred up attention commenting on the phenomenon on CBC this weekend, in the middle of a federal election campaign.
“We aren’t the phony politicians. We say what the vast majority of politicians won’t say and a large majority of the people are thinking,” Ford said of both himself and his famous former-Toronto-mayor brother, and of Donald Trump. “There’s nothing worse than listening to some phony politician tell you one thing and do something else.” Like a modern political Holden Caulfield, he was, railing against the phonies.
The occasion for his visit to the public broadcaster was, of course, his brother Rob’s recent willingness to speak his unphoniness in the middle of an election campaign: that Doug might be a candidate to replace Stephen Harper if the Conservatives were to lose this election, or even possibly if they were to win a minority government.
At first I thought this was intended as a crafty threat: “If you don’t reelect Harper, look what might happen.” But at least some people appeared to find the prospect of the Ford Brothers’ Big Top going to Ottawa appealing. Even more seemed to find it entertaining enough that it gobbled up headlines.
And as of Monday morning, after the MTV Video Music Awards, we’re left with a prospect that might represent some kind of new high or low in the world of possible realityshow futures: Prime Minister Doug Ford negotiating a border dispute with President Donald Trump as the latter deals with a Democratic challenge for the White House from candidate Kanye West.
You can imagine senior PMO foreign affairs advisor Rob Ford might try to break out the old red track suit for a hip-hop summit to ensure continued good relations, whatever the election result.
This is the part where I’m obliged by convention to break the revelry by reminding everyone that even while we laugh and stare at the nutjobbery, there are Very Serious Issues From Which These Clowns Distract Us: economic uncertainty, the plight of the poor (and the getting-poorer), a potential housing bubble coupled with a housing affordability crisis, terrorism, racism, the prospect of ecological Armageddon. And so on.
And that with all that going on, and notwithstanding the probability that West’s political ambitions may pass or go nowhere, Trump is a huge force shaping American politics right now, and the Fords remain a viable and potent force in Toronto, Ontario and Canadian politics.
And we’ve seen in Toronto where the trainwreck politics of showbiz get you: years of constant distraction and outrage, the grinding to a halt of necessary and urgent business and a scorched-earth political scene in which fear of a return to the clownshow causes other politicians to adopt the clownshow policies. How much of Toronto debate is motivated by a fear that a healed Rob Ford will return as a challenger for mayor in 2018?
How much of the U.S. election will be shaped by Trump’s popularity, whether he wins the nomination or not?
What good is dismissing distractions from the big important serious business of governing when the distractions are actually popular, maddeningly entertaining in their outrageousness, potentially electable and not going away?
How to compete with this kind of entertainment-and-outrage-fuelled sloganeering politics is a tricky question for serious-minded policy wonks. But you can no more dismiss them than you can ignore a wobbly rooftop antenna that threatens to crash into the street.
Edward Keenan writes on city issues ekeenan@thestar.ca. Follow: @thekeenanwire