Succeed in politics without really crying
Democratic engagement can be daunting, but it need not be depressing.
We are forever lamenting the decline of our democratic discourse, the strains in our social media intercourse, the uncertainty of our country’s future course.
Past columns have contributed to the gloom about our increasingly populist and unpredictable politics, but here’s a news flash: On the eve of a federal election, it’s too soon to give up.
About three dozen future leaders have been coming together at Ryerson University and will reconvene on Parliament Hill to learn about the good, the bad, and the unsightly — as seen through the eyes of old political warhorses and commentators. But the Institute for Future Legislators at Ryerson isn’t a campaign school, nor a partisan prep session to groom the gladiators of tomorrow (full disclosure: I’ve been a Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Arts).
To the contrary, it nurtures personal ambitions for public service of any stripe. If that sounds idealistic and unrealistic, suspend your judgment for a moment, as this jaded journalist did just this once.
We in the media spend a lot of time trying to make voters pay attention, by persuading them to be more attentive listeners or dutiful readers. Perhaps we need to devote at least as much time to training the next generation of leaders to be better-attuned and more authentic speakers.
Young people with political aspirations can be an inspiration. They don’t pretend to have all the right (or left) answers, but they are challenging old orthodoxies with questions of their own.
The group heard former legislative speaker Dave Levac on the painful limitations of question period, which reduces politics to performance art (rarely entertaining or illuminating). Conservative MP Michael Chong recounted his agenda for parliamentary and party reform to transform our political system in style and substance. Ex-premier Bob Rae echoed Chong’s view that Canadian caucus politics suffocates individual dissent compared to other parliamentary democracies.
The students didn’t just listen. They also talked about their own frustrations with the way politics intersects with mass media and social media.
Female students challenged the double standards imposed on their gender to fulfil public expectations of behaving with femininity while interacting with testosterone-posturing males. The men in the room wondered why they must always sound so serious and ponderous, slaves to gravitas versus levity at a time when political satire is so popular with their peers.
They also wondered what makes the media so unforgiving and seemingly biased. After a round of role-playing, where students assumed the personas of politicians held to account for controversial policies, many of them realized how hard it is to be (or sound) authentic when explaining the inexplicable or defending the indefensible.
You can’t always shoot the media messenger, not when politicians first shoot themselves in the foot by saying — or doing — the wrong thing. That’s not a journalistic gotcha, just a given.
Too often politicians make the mistake of underestimating not only the electorate, but their journalistic interlocutors. Reporters aren’t rocket scientists, but they are genetically endowed with oversized BS detectors.
Which is why politicians should avoid the temptation to pretend that they can present a steaming turd as if it were a gift-wrapped gem at news conferences. Just tell it like it is.
The challenge for these students is to connect with a younger generation that has no time for conventional politics: They must summon greater authenticity through connectivity in a world of social media that is transmogrifying from an echo chamber into a torture chamber.
How to succeed in politics without really crying?
It’s not as easy as it looks. A vote is a terrible thing to waste — but so too is a potentially great political leader.
Most of the students bring their idealism and a background in the institutions of political science. Now, as they mull over a career in public life, they must face the reality of retail politics that is not so much transformational as transactional — and motivational:
Will tomorrow’s politicians rally voters with hope or rile them up with anger? Will they become prisoners of the rhetoric of perennial tax cuts while promising better services?
One of the aspiring politicians, Jamile Cruz, told me she wishes more Canadians — on all sides of the divide — could be exposed to this kind of civic immersion program that elucidates and elevates the inner workings of our political apparatus: nominations, machinations, elections and post-campaign negotiations.
“I just wish more Canadians would have access to how it all works, and the influence all Canadians could have in politics,” said Cruz, an engineer who immigrated from Brazil and now works as a diversity consultant. “People are looking for ways to get involved and get engaged … and are frustrated with the current system.”
Armed with her new knowledge, will Cruz take the plunge into politics?
“Yes, but with a big ‘maybe,’ ” she mused. “It’s a bit scary.”
But too soon to give up.