— John Robson,
Erin O’toole ‘stuck a finger in the wind then let it blow his tongue around.’
Erin O’toole just announced that he has no principles. Which I suppose has the merit of avoiding subsequent disappointment. But otherwise it is not a boast in public life, as it would not be privately.
“The Conservatives are a moderate, pragmatic, mainstream party — as old as Confederation — that sits squarely in the centre of Canadian politics” sounds reasonable and pleasant. As intended. But it is a renunciation of principles first because in the federal Conservative leadership campaign he positioned himself as the “true blue” candidate unlike that awful red Tory Peter Mackay. By admitting this labelling was partisan trickery, understood as such by all sophisticated persons, he alerts us that anything else he says should be regarded the same way.
Talk of moderate centrist pragmatism might seem to commit him to split the difference on any contentious issue, from small deficits not big ones or balanced budgets to abortion that is safe, legal and rare. But he immediately contradicted himself by rattling off a list of fashionable leftist pieties. And the bigger problem is that my long list of politicians who self-identified as “pragmatic,” “moderate” or the once-fashionable “beyond right and left” stretches from Lucien Bouchard and Tony Blair to richard Nixon and indeed from Vladimir Putin to Benito Mussolini.
yes, really. Mussolini once said “Fascism is pragmatist, it has no a priori nor longterm goals.” In such cases there’s no hidden agenda. Just a void into which the will to power rushes or creeps.
Obviously O’toole is no fascist, whatever pragmatic Liberals may howl. But Monday’s Post quoted a conservative strategist that “when Conservatives in caucus make statements or otherwise act counter to his stated positions … O’toole will need to ‘crush them and take them out’ to prove his convictions.” Like the one about empowering backbenchers, or tolerance?
In case you think politicians are misusing words that actually have meanings, as has been known to happen, commentators too have pinned “pragmatic” on maniacs from Omar al-bashir to Fidel Castro and Kim Jong-un as well as legitimate characters from Jack Layton and Hillary Clinton to George W. Bush and Pope Francis. Which again tells us the meaning of these words is they have no meaning.
There’s a kind of relativism lite here where it seems pleasant and non-confrontational to say everybody gets their own beliefs. until you cancel derek Sloan for unwittingly accepting a cheque from a neo-nazi under a different name, confirming that once someone tells you their words have no meaning you should not be surprised to find it is true. And that pragmatism amounts to having two conflicting “principles” from which to choose in any given situation depending what best enables you to look out for number one. But words do in fact have meanings, as ideas have consequences, and the right one here is “unprincipled.”
I realize why O’toole wanted to distance himself from the Capitol riot. But instead of saying there’s “no place for the far right” in his party, he could have said breaking the law is not conservatism and Trump was not conservative in important ways from trade policy to personal character. Instead he stuck a finger in the wind then let it blow his tongue around.
The bottom line is that his words frankly bear no connection to his thoughts which in turn bear no connection to his deeds. Which makes listening to him as pointless as trying to probe his philosophy. As for his actions, as C.S. Lewis warned through Augustus Frost, someone who thinks their actions are random will increasingly find that they are. So will their constituents if they are a politician.
He’s far from alone. Kathleen Wynne once sneered, “I’m not in politics because I’m trying to put into practice the musings of a longdead political philosopher.” A.k.a. I make no promises of reliability or adherence to fixed rules including that long-dead philosophical chestnut honesty. I will do what I like when I like and give any explanation I like.
Likewise this spring Jason Kenney claimed the pandemic would make him do things that as a “fiscal conservative” he was “not normally comfortable with.” But he sure got comfy fast, because the subtext was that his principles would not determine his actions because they do not determine, or describe, how he thinks about the world. They’re just slogans designed to bring tactical advantage, psychological comfort or both.
O’toole’s oiliness won’t even win him the election. Pragmatists’ plans rarely work because reality is not a shifting, formless chaos. To abandon principles is to abandon the effort to make sense of the universe and or, more exactly, to understand how it makes sense and act accordingly. Then you reap what you have sown.
If someone you knew openly disavowed any commitment to consistency, you would despise them. And rightly so.