THE FOREVER CAMPAIGN
Our politicians have become so good at playing the game that they are in danger of undermining the whole point of elections
Democracy is a simple solution to an age- old problem — how to get rid of people in positions of political power once they ’ve outlived their usefulness. Ideally, it allows us to replace them with someone less jaded, less corrupt, and perhaps even with some ideas about how to improve things. The way we accomplish this is by staging a competition. The basic rule is simple: if you want to run the show, you have to go out and get the votes. More specifically, more votes than your opponents.
There has been a great deal of hand- wringing about the state of democracy in Canada. And yet, just as generals are always fighting the last war, democracy- watchers all seem to fear only the last threat to democracy. They imagine that we are in danger of succumbing to some kind of authoritarianism. I, too, worry about democracy in Canada, but my concern is forward- looking.
The question we need to ask is whether our politicians, and our political parties, have got too good at playing the game — whether they have developed strategies that, despite helping them to win, undermine the point of the competition.
We often forget that democracy is a staged competition, designed to achieve a narrow purpose, which is to produce good government. Yet many fail to see it this way. Part of this is due to the close conceptual connection between “democracy” and “freedom,” which leads them to think of democracy as nothing but the expression of individual freedom — as though you could take a bunch of “free” people, put them in a room, and expect a democracy to emerge spontaneously.
The mistake comes from a failure to recognize that democracy, like sport, is not an expression of our freedom. It is a carefully managed competition, one that has been crafted over time to produce certain outcomes we want.
Because of this, democracy is also breakable. It is possible, just by exercising our freedom and without even violating any of the rules, to undermine the point of the competition — to make it so that it no longer serves the purposes for which it was instituted.
Democracy is starting to show the signs of a competition run amok. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the emergence of “the forever campaign.”
Every two years, the U. S. Congress welcomes a new batch of members. They attend at least two weeks of orientation activities that provide advice on how to handle every aspect of their new job.
In 2013, many Americans were shocked by a leaked presentation by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. It told the incoming legislators the largest block of time, at least four hours a day, should be spent on “call time” — speaking to donors on the phone — and another hour doing “strategic outreach,” including fundraisers and press interviews. One or two hours were to be spent meeting constituents, leaving only two hours a day for the actual work of Congress, such as attending committee hearings or legislative sessions.
In Canada, former Nova Scotia finance minister Graham Steele raised eyebrows with his second rule of politics ( after the first, which was “get re- elected”): “Spend as little time as possible at the legislature. There are no voters there, so any time spent there is wasted.”
Increasingly, it seems we are electing politicians not to govern, but to get re- elected. They fundraise so they can finance further fundraising. Perhaps the best image of modern politics is that of the ouroboros, the snake swallowing its own tail.
There are two generic features of competition that tend to produce increasingly dysfunctional outcomes over time.
The first problem is that of wastefulness, as competition starts to consume more and more resources. One way to get a competitive advantage is to spend more time, energy, or money than your opponent. If your opponent matches this level of expenditure, the process becomes self- defeating. You’re both back where you started, yet now you’re spending a lot more time, energy and money.
The second major problem is that competitions can easily become self- defeating, or less effective at promoting the end they were instituted to promote. This is because people learn how to “game” the rules — to behave in ways that help them to win.
For more than a generation, each new Canadian government has come to power vowing to improve the way politics is done, and yet has proceeded to make it demonstrably worse.
In terms of sheer wastefulness, it is hard to beat a U. S. presidential election. Barack Obama and Mitt Romney each spent more than $ 1 billion in 2012. This coming year’s election is promising to be even more expensive, with some experts predicting total spending as high as $ 5 billion.
Yet, when all the ballots are counted, either the Republican or the Democrat will win. The money that is spent is non- productive. It doesn’t even generate beneficial side- effects, such as a more informed electorate.
Furthermore, whenever billions of dollars are being thrown away, there will be many who stand to gain. The usual concern about money in politics is that it allows the rich to exercise undue influence over the politicians. But it is beginning to look as though the donors are being taken advantage of — particularly the few ultra- wealthy men who are being persuaded to donate millions to political action committees ( PACs) in the U. S., and have been left in many cases with literally nothing to show for it.
One can see a similar dynamic in Canada, with the new “third party” groups that have begun to emerge, such as Working Canadians ( on the right), or Engage Canada ( on the left). Each time one releases an advertisement ( inevitably false or misleading), the other uses it as an occasion to put out a fundraising appeal, telling its supporters that they must intervene to set the record straight.
It is important to remember that, unlike a conventional industry, the political system is not able to expand production. It is a zero- sum game. There are a fixed number of political races, and a fixed number of winners. Inevitably, much of the money just goes to enriching insiders — strategists, consultants, pollsters, public relations experts, and ultimately, politicians.
Perhaps the signature accomplishment of the Harper government in accelerating the decline of democracy has been the transformation of Parliament and the legislative process into an instrument of the political campaign.
Governing parties have always passed laws they feel will appeal to their favoured constituencies. Historically, however, these laws have also attempted to achieve something, above and beyond merely appealing to these groups.
The Harper government’s most innovative stroke lies in passing bills that have no other purpose and no legal effect. Thus the legislative process becomes nothing more than an extension of the campaign, allowing the Conservative Party to position itself in a favourable way and issue the inevitable fundraising appeals.
Particularly egregious examples have been the Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Cultural Practices Act and the Protecting Canada’s Seniors Act, which introduce provisions that merely reaffirm existing law or judicial practice. The bills are nothing but an exercise in pandering to targeted demographics. Only when one considers the fundraising opportunities they provide can one make any sense of the government’s decision to introduce them.
The strategy is to use the legislative session to focus attention solely on issues the party feels it will benefit from. One begins by taking the legislative agenda and dividing it into two categories: areas in which the party is on the wrong side of public opinion and areas in which the party calculates it will benefit from public attention. Then, it is simple to take the first batch of legislative initiatives, put them into an omnibus bill and pass that as quickly as possible. The remainder of the legislative session is open for discussion of nothing but bills favourable to the party.
That way, even when the opposition criticizes your bills, you’ve still won, because they’re talking about the issues you want to be talking about. Parliament itself, the legislative process, becomes just one more instrument for political fundraising and campaigning.
This is clever and yet it risks undermining the purpose of electoral democracy. Competition among political parties was introduced as a device for improving the quality and responsiveness of government. But if laws are being passed just to enhance the competitive position of the governing political party, then there is no longer any point to the competition. The snake has swallowed its own tail.
Whether or not any of these problems can be fixed is an open question. It is always problematic when one needs to rely on the winners of a competition to oversee the rules.
At the moment, we are clearly feeling the consequences of the major rule- change introduced by the Harper government, the imposition of a fixed election date. Critics condemned the move at the outset, predicting it would merely deepen what John Stuart Mill called “the great mischief of unintermitted electioneering.” They have clearly been proven right.
Rather than fearing “the forever campaign,” the Conservative Party appears to be actively promoting it. At the same time, they have failed to advance any reason for thinking more campaigning, and more campaign spending, are good for the country. They appear to want more merely because they consider themselves good at it, or at least better than their opponents. As long as this remains the mindset, then the slow steady decline of Canadian democracy will continue.
Increasingly, it seems we are electing politicians not to govern, but to get re- elected. They fundraise so they can finance further fundraising.