Canadian Cincinnatus

Who is the Strong Mayor Now?

"Unintended consequences" has become a buzz phrase lately, mostly used by left wing latte sippers.  It's an indication of a shift in power from left to right over the last few months, and Toronto's election of true conservative Rob Ford is the most dramatic example.

Four years ago David Miller won his second term with unprecidented powers, bestowed upon him by Ontario's libreral premier, Dalton McGuinty, who felt Toronto's mayor needed to be a "strong mayor," with powers like the mayor of New York, the power to push through a socialist (oops, I mean "progessive") agenda without needing the support of right wing councillors.

I warned friends, especially socialist friends, about the danger here: what if a right wing mayor were elected?  Would they be happy then?  I was no fan of Miller, and I was trying to get them to understand how I felt about the City of Toronto Act and Miller's new powers, which allowed him to have an executive council of his socialist buddies, limit debate on the budget and shut right wing councillors out of city government, giving key positions only to his loyalists.

My socialist friends scoffed.  David Miller was going to be mayor for years, at least until he annoited a successor.  No right winger could ever win Toronto.

In their defense, I envisioned Doug Holiday, Case Oates or maybe Denzil Minnan-wong coming to power.  Even I didn't see that the left's arch-nemisis, favorite council punching bag, and the man endlessly ridiculed by the Toronto Star could ever come to power.

But now Rob Ford is the strong mayor with power that McGuinty and the socialists unwittingly endowed him with.  He has already shut out the downtown socialist from his executive, and while the left wing councilors point out that Rob Ford is only one vote on council, they are quietly cringing that they gave him the power to corall many votes without the need to compromise.  The unintended consequences of the City of Toronto Act make it clear that it is a mistake to increase the power of government to support a particular ideology.  Governments must be contained and constrained.

I'm delighted about the election and Rob Ford's strong mayor powers, of course.  Rob will be able to fundamentally change the way the city works, and I'm looking forward to that.  But I'd still like to see the end of the City of Toronto Act, because I prefer it when the mayor has to build a consensus, something Miller always talked about but never bothered to achieve.

Unlike my socialist friends four years ago, I can see that a pendulum swings.  Rob Ford has more staying power than David Miller, of that I'm sure, but stuff happens.  One day, unexpectedly, a socialist mayor will be voted in, probably disguising himself as a centrist.  I don't want him to be a strong mayor.  I want him to have to include the right wing councillors.

But for now: Go, Rob, Go!

Mike Downtown

The reason why Rob Ford won in Toronto and John Tory lost

The results of Monday’s municipal election in Toronto validated a theory I have been evangelizing for some time in this space. My hypothesis is that the conventional wisdom, that moderate conservatism appeals to ‘moderate’ voters more than principled conservatism, is wrong. In fact, I assert, principled conservatism has the greater track record of success among centrist voters and the uncommitted.

The Red Tory line is that if the left puts forward a set of policies x and the right puts forward a set of policies y, then the voter in the ‘middle’ will favour something midway between x and y. Therefore, to get their vote, some of your more ‘extreme’ policies have to be jettisoned. 

I contend that us political junkies (both on the left and the right) completely misunderstand the motivations of the uncommitted voter. We project out interests onto them and assume that because we are interested in public policy, then they must be as well. In reality, the centrist voter doesn’t care a whit about policies at all. He finds political policy boring and bases his decision on other factors entirely. To call him a ‘moderate’ is to completely mischaracterize him, which is why I have put the word ‘moderate’ in scare quotes as many times as I can. 

Typically, the ‘moderate’ votes for the candidate who he thinks is the best leader, irrespective of policies, which he assumes are lies anyway. What is a good leader? The leader must be decisive, resolute, fearless and calm – in short, an alpha male. Why does the ‘moderate’ favour alpha males? It is natural for humans to follow the alpha male because back on the good ‘ol hunter-gatherer days your chances of survival varied directly with how good your leader was. You don’t follow a beta male wuss, even if he is a nice guy, because he will get you killed. On the other had, you have a fighting chance if an alpha male a-hole leads your pack. Us policy wonks forget how natural this way of thinking is because we are surrounded by other weirdoes who are as obsessed with the minutiae of public policy as we are.

How do the ‘moderates’ assess leadership ability? A great resume – being a former CEO, governor or military leader helps. The trouble is however, unless this service was publicly demonstrated (i.e. Steve Jobs, Rudy Giuliani, Dwight Eisenhower), it’s all abstract. What is more real and vivid? How the candidate handles himself in the campaign: Does he allow himself to be taken off message? Does he cope well with scandals? Does he apologize when he doesn’t have to? Does he get flustered by distractions? Does he make excuses and whine when things go wrong? Or is he calm and cool during the debate? Does he have a clear message? Does he inspire?

The answers to these questions tells us why Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Pierre Trudeau, Jean Chrétien, Mike Harris and Rob Ford got the uncommitted vote even though they were more extreme than the people who elected them. This is also why John Turner, Paul Martin, Ernie Eves and John Tory failed even though they were arguably closer to the voters policy-wise.

The people want to follow a leader. They want to be convinced. They don’t want the leader to come to them. A leader who comes to them isn’t a real leader and will be despised. This is an important point. Non-leaders will not simply be poorly regarded; they will be actively hated - even if they are nice guys. In contrast, a real leader will be always be highly regarded even if he is a bastard.

Rob Ford impressed the non-political voter in Toronto because he had a strong, clear message and stuck to it no matter what the Toronto Star threw at him. Conversely, moderate John Tory was completely shut out of Toronto in the last provincial election because his mishandling of the faith-based school funding issue proved he didn’t have the right stuff. The fact that the funding of faith-based schools was a comparatively unimportant issue was beside the point. By the time Tory dumped that policy, the voter’s real concern was Tory’s leadership skills. When he changed his mind, he merely confirmed their negative impression of him. The great counterintuitive truth is that the uncommitted voter cares less about what you believe in than in how you champion it. 

Incidentally, this was the secret behind David Miller’s first mayoral campaign in Toronto. His vigorous and resolute championship of the island bridge issue – an issue that affected only a small percentage of Torontonians – impressed the voters.

This is why the Red Tory strategy of moving to the middle is usually such a disaster. The endless compromising alienates the core-issue voters and the lack of resolution proves to the independents that the Red Tory has no balls. The Red Tory loses both ways.

George Smitherman finds out the hard way that the rainbow coalition isn’t what its cracked up to be.

The trouble for liberals is that, all too often, they believe their own propaganda.

Take the case of failed Toronto mayoral candidate George Smitherman. George Smitherman is openly gay. Toronto is chock full of recent immigrants, many from the third world. Multicultural theory predicts that these immigrants should be natural allies of George Smitherman because they have a common enemy – the racist, sexist, homophobic white patriarchy. The trouble for George is that recent immigrants, overall, disapprove of homosexuality more than any other group in Canada. Especially the Tamil, Muslim, Sikh and Caribbean communities. 

This fact was illustrated in a late breaking campaign story when an ad aired on Tamil radio advising listeners to vote for Ford because “his wife is a woman”. There created a controversy about who created those ads but the fact remains, many immigrant communities openly sided with right-wing Rob Ford.

Of course, liberation theory is right to say that Rob Ford looks like a card-carrying member of the white ruling class to many immigrants. But unfortunately so does Smitherman. The only difference between the two is that Ford has a conventional family, which immigrant families can relate to, and Smitherman does not. What do they have in common with an effete, urban, white, gay man living in an expensive Downtown Toronto condo? And besides, many of them are small business owners as well as religious (at least the ones most likely to vote in municipal elections). 

So next time around George, put down that that textbook on deconstructionism and try and look at the world through the eyes of the people you want voting for you. You might be personally offended by what you see but, hey, we live in a democracy. Remember George that in a democracy the voter is always right so you might as well at least be aware of what the voters are thinking.

 

The professional disciplined campaign of a loudmouthed yahoo

I have got to hand it to the new mayor of Toronto, Rob Ford. He ran exactly the right type of campaign that a conservative should run.

The first thing he did right was to stay on message all the time. Campaign school 101 teaches us that the most important thing in an election campaign is to pick a good, clear message and then stick with it right to the end. In this, Ford was relentless. From opening day to his victory speech, he focussed like a laser beam on “stopping the gravy train” and “respecting the taxpayers”. The Toronto establishment threw everything at him but the kitchen sink and he stayed on message.

Which brings me to the second thing he did right: he never apologized for anything. And this is important because it is common mistake made by Red Tories. George Slitherman dredged up politically incorrect quotes, the media tried to make an issue of the fact that he used his influence as a councillor to support a non-profit football team. He shrugged it off. They accused him of slander because he called (now former) Councillor Sandra Bussin’s untendered 20-year contract to the Tuggs restaurant corrupt. When Tuggs threatened to sue Ford for $6 million, Ford said bring it on. Unlike former provincial conservative leader John Tory who twisted and back-pedalled his way through the faith-based funding controversy, Ford never wavered – controversy be damned.

Result: Rob Ford looks like an alpha male leader and John Tory looks like a bumbling wuss. Who do you think voters find more appealing?

Most of all, what Rob Ford’s decisive win on Monday night demonstrated was how a conservative can win deep in Liberal country without compromising an inch on principles. So when all the Red Tories out there persist in their bogus claim that you have to ‘moderate’ your principles to appeal to ‘moderate’ voters, you can say bollocks to that. Ford was his own man and he won. In stark contrast, provincial Red Tories Ernie Eves and John Tory ‘moderated’ like it was no tomorrow and both got shellacked in TO.

Red Tory David Crombie endorses Liberal George Smitherman for Mayor of Toronto

David Crombie was the ‘reform’ Mayor of Toronto from 1972 to 1978 and a Progressive Conservative MP from 1978 to 1988. He was also a cabinet minister under Mulroney in various ministries. In federal politics he was known as a Red Tory. On Friday he endorsed Liberal George Smitherman for Mayor of Toronto.

Never mind that Crombie is (or was) a conservative and George Smitherman still is a Liberal; never mind that as Ontario’s health minister, George Smitherman lost around $1 billion in the E-Health scandal; never mind that George Smitherman awarded $10 million in sole source contracts to the Courtyard Group; never mind that after 2 terms of David Miller as Mayor, Toronto is a fiscal train wreck and Rob Ford is the most fiscally conservative mayoral candidate. David Crombie endorsed Smitherman anyway.

Red Tories like to believe they are morally superior to principled conservatives (whether social conservatives or libertarians) because they are not as ‘extreme’ as the latter, invoking Aristotle’s Rule of the Golden Mean – the golden mean being the calmly reasoned approach straddling two opposing emotional extremes. However, what’s so extreme about balancing Toronto’s budget? and what’s not extreme about spending $1 billion in Ontario taxpayer’s money and getting nothing for it?

It is clear that George Smitherman is a liberal golden boy with the reverse Midas touch, in the tradition of David Miller and Alan Rock. The eHealth scandal suggests Smitherman would simply keep wasting the City of Toronto’s money on useless stuff-white-people-like vanity projects. 

No, the real reason people like David Crombie endorse people like George Smitherman and are frightened of people like Rob Ford is ruling class solidarity. David Crombie belongs to the respectable ruling class, George Smitherman belongs to the respectable ruling class, David Miller belongs to the respectable ruling class, Rob Ford most assuredly does not. Effectiveness, ‘moderation’ and ‘extremeness’ have nothing to do with it. Incidentally, it is precisely this same reason why the respectable ruling class (of both US parties) hates Sarah Palin and Christine O’Donnell.

Down with our respectable ruling class bumblers! Up with Rob Ford!

 

 

John Tory for Mayor of Toronto...oh nooooo!!!

The new came out yesterday that the hapless former leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario is once again considering a run for Toronto’s mayor. He had considered it in January of this year, then publicly declaring that he wasn’t running. Now, he is running. Or he may be running. True to form, he is undecided on his change of mind.

What is it with our silver-spoon Hamlet? At this point, I do not care how many more times he humiliates himself electorally. The real problem is that every time he vacillates, he jeopardizes the whole conservative movement.

He blew the last provincial election with his chaotic handling of the faith-based funding issue. He started out well ahead in the polls, but by the time he was finished, Dalton McGuinty had been handed another electoral triumph. Then he gave Dalton McGuinty a free pass for a year while he chose to hang on to the party leadership by his fingernails (even though he lost his seat). Then he proceeded to get shellacked in a by-election in a safe conservative riding after persuading a loyal conservative to resign ‘for the good of the cause’. All that resulted from his pathetic bid to get back into Queen’s Park was one less conservative MPP.

The only reason Rob Ford is running for mayor in Toronto is because John Tory isn’t, or wasn’t. Ford knows he can’t win when the conservative vote is divided. As it was, he had to wait a fair bit of time before he formally declared his candidacy because Tory couldn’t make up his mind the last time. Now Tory’s mind is unmade up again, throwing major sand in the wheels of the Ford campaign, which had been making strides until now. 

If George Smitherman becomes the next mayor, he will have had help along the way from John Tory.

Maybe Rocco Rossi is Toronto’s great right hope

At least according to this article by the Toronto Star, Rossi is saying all the right anti-Miller things. Perhaps he is the right man to be the next mayor of Toronto and clean up the mess created by David Miller. Somebody to keep an eye on anyway.

But at least, the bumbling, indecisive John Tory has left, clearing the deck for a good center-right mayoral candidate.