Canadian Cincinnatus

The real lesson from the Federal election

You can’t have a conservative government that is dependent on Quebec. Oh, you can have a large-C Conservative government that has a strong base of support in Quebec - Mulroney proved that. But you can’t have an ideological conservative/libertarian federal government with deep roots in Quebec.

Simple arithmetic tells us that the loss of seats in Quebec is what cost Harper his majority, at a time when he was expecting major gains there. What caused the collapse in votes? – a promise to crack down on young offenders and cut arts funding. In the pantheon of conservative ideas, these are about as innocuous as you can get. If that’s all it takes to create a stampede in Quebec away from conservatism, then no meaningful small-c conservative government is possible with Quebec as part of your base.

It may be countered that Canada’s electoral math does not allow a majority government without Quebec, but I disagree. Its just harder. You have to scrounge up every potentially winnable seat you can. Take Tuesday’s result. 143 seats – only 12 more seats to go to reach majority status. And that is with an ongoing public feud with Newfoundland that effectively shut the Conservatives out of Newfoundland. If you count all the close races that the Conservatives almost won outside Quebec, 12 potential Conservative seats can be found. Take for instance Rahim Jaffer’s loss to the NDP in Alberta. Tell me the Conservatives can’t regain that Alberta riding. And tell me Ralph Goodale’s riding in Saskatchewan isn’t ripe for the taking as soon as he retires.

A real conservative government is only possible in Canada when the majority of its support comes from two places - the West, and Ontario (outside of the Liberal fortress of Metro Toronto). It may be politically incorrect to say this, but that’s the way it is. It is just unfortunate that real small-government conservatism doesn’t attract Quebecers.

Let me know if you disagree. I would love to be proven wrong on this score.

Perhaps a charismatic small-government conservative like Andre Arthur is a data point for the opposing argument.

The Conservatives broke the first rule of campaigning

Run a positive campaign first, then go negative at the end. This rule was followed in 2006 and it worked like a charm.

Unfortunately, politicians are afraid to go positive because it requires exposing yourself to controversy. This left Harper wide open to charges of indifference to the economy. As I have stated previously, pooh-poohing economic difficulties was a big mistake.

They should have presented a bold free-market economic recovery package and used that as a raison d’etre to argue for a majority. This would have motivated the troops and expanded their base. Then in the final weeks of the campaign –-go negative and attack Dion’s leadership. The purpose of the negative phase is to corral in the people who aren’t really interested in policy.

One reason you do things in this order is because at the point you switch from the positive to negative phase, you have effectively branded you public image with your policies so that none of the puffin poop in the negative phase will stick. The voters will still connect you to your positive image.

Another reason is because different types of voters have a different memories. The policy-wonk type and the enthusiastic partisan have long memories. The barbecue-and-ball-game Joe six-packs have short memories.

When I attended campaign school, this was part of Campaigning 101. If this is common knowledge, then why is the rule disregarded so often?

The problem is - and it sounds paradoxical to say this - because going negative is less controversial than going positive. This is because the positive phase of the campaign works only if it is sufficiently controversial. It is not enough to mouth motherhood-issue platitudes. Nobody cares about that (if you don’t believe me, just check out the reaction John Tory’s election platform elicited in the last Ontario provincial election – nobody cared). For people to take notice you have to say something that takes guts. But when you do that you are, of necessity, opening yourself up to attack. And politicians are understandably afraid to do that. But you must disregard your survival instincts because it is only through controversial policies that you differentiate yourself from your opponents, dominate the news cycle (garnering free publicity), have a chance to connect with the voters (assuming the voters like your proposals) and keep the negative news you don’t want to get out (petty scandals, minor slips-of-the-tongue, etc) off the front page.

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143 seats – not a bad show for a terribly run campaign

The Conservative campaign was awful. This election (and the election south of the border) is so frustrating because the right has become so timid. The economy is traditionally the right’s strong suit – but only if they play it. Canada has to radically improve Canada’s business climate if it wants to rescue Ontario’s ailing manufacturing sector. A carbon tax certainly won’t do that. South of the border, nobody is mentioning the disastrous effect that Obama’s planned tax increases will have on business. His plan to ramp up capital gains taxes and income taxes at the top end will turn a potential recession into a full-blown depression. But McCain won’t say this.

Back in Canada, we did this good only because Stephane Dion’s leadership is so weak. We may not be so lucky with the next Liberal leader.

This frustrates me because, with Dion, a window of opportunity existed to win a majority government. If we were really good, we might have been able to knock the Libs to third place status. With Dion’s removal all but certain, this window is now firmly shut. The next time around, we won’t be able to sleepwalk our way to a credible election result. We will have to fight for every seat. To get a majority then, we will have to start taking some real chances.

Oh well, that’s what happens when you don’t seize opportunities.

Harper’s “don’t worry” economic message is bad politics

As I have said before in these pages, while I do think that the economy isn’t nearly as bad as many people currently think – irrational panic is currently governing the markets, downplaying economic woes - as the Conservatives are now doing - is not the way to win.

I understand their strategy. The Conservatives are trying to reassure the voters that they are guiding the economy with a steady hand in uncertain times. They think that they are demonstrating leadership, but this is not what the voter sees. Many voter thinks Harper is soft-soaping today’s economic turmoil in order to look better to the electorate, and therefore think Harper is demonstrating a lack of leadership. This is why the poll numbers are sliding.

What people want is economic leadership. What is that? A leader is somebody who sees a problem, demonstrates that he understands what it is and offers a solution, proactively. In other words, a leader is on top of things. A real leader also isn’t afraid to implement his solutions in the face of concentrated opposition. That is bold leadership and, time and again, it can be seen that people respond to bold leadership strongly. This is why Mike Harris, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were elected (and never defeated at the polls).

It is also a mistake to offer an uncontroversial, innocuous ‘solution’. This will not fool anybody. People will immediately see - correctly - that the problem continues to be soft peddled. Don’t believe me? - see John Tory’s election platform of the last provincial election.

What the Conservatives need to do is to offer a bold package, say, high-end income tax cuts, cuts to capital gains taxes, an elimination of taxes on reinvested profits and comprehensive deregulation. The opposition will, of course, balk at this right-wing ‘trickle down’ strategy but that is how you differentiate yourself from them. This is the flag around which you rally the troops. This is where you make the case for a majority government, arguing that Ontario’s manufacturing sector is in deep peril and that the only way the necessary reforms to save it can be implemented is if the Conservatives get a majority government, otherwise the Liberals and NDP will obstruct economic recovery with their deluded socialist schemes. You appeal simultaneously to both hope and fear, the two governing emotions in politics. That’s a powerful message!

Winston Churchill once said that “safety first is the road to ruin in war”. I think this applies equally to politics as well.

Fortunately for the Conservatives, most people see that Dion’s carbon tax and Layton’s socialism would be a complete disaster for the economy. Quite often, it is not a question of who wins the election but who loses it. If you don’t believe me just ask Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty, a man whose career has been built on other people losing elections for him.

Nature abhors a political vacuum

As of last count, a total of 8 candidates in this current federal election have either resigned or have been forced to resign, and yesterday Stephen Harper’s speechwriter resigned when it was found that he plagiarized a couple of lines from a speech he wrote for him in 2003. With the exception of Lesley Hughes, the Manitoba Liberal who has propagated the notion on several occasions that 9/11 was the result of a conspiracy between George W Bush and Israel, none of the other resignations were over anything particularly consequential – the controversial statements or actions themselves not that particularly controversial, or said a long time ago at a heated moment.

The reason for the dubious record of this election is clear: in the absence of a clear policy debate, the political air has to be filled with something. If the people in the business of politics aren’t talking about matters of substance, then they must, by default, talk about something else. If you look at elections where serious issues hung in the balance - Mike Harris’ 1995 Common Sense revolution and the 1988 Federal election that was fought over the Free Trade deal - remarkably little personal stuff came up considering how bitterly contested those elections were. That’s because real issues were at stake. The 1995 Ontario election was nothing less than a referendum on capitalism vs. socialism. Perhaps the 1988 Federal election is even more instructive. In Mulroney’s first term, a whole string of petty scandals plus Brian Mulroney’s generally arrogant demeanour had made the Conservatives an unpopular brand. And if Mulroney had played it safe in 1988, there is no doubt he would have been sunk by all the inconsequential baggage he had accumulated. However the Liberal dominated Senate handed Mulroney an unintended gift, they would not pass the Free Trade agreement unless an election was fought over it. This saved Mulroney. By turning the election into a referendum on a serious matter, all the minor stuff was forgotten. And in the vigorous debate that followed, conservative principles triumphed.

The current Federal election we are in is completely opposite in type from these past elections. While one party (the Liberals) have introduced one serious issue (the carbon tax), this policy has proven to be widely unpopular and the leading Conservatives have fought one of the most cautious campaigns in history. This shouldn’t be misinterpreted as a criticism of Stephen Harper – as of this writing he certainly seems to know what he is doing, and I do wish him the best of luck in his quest for a majority. I am merely observing, and commenting, that when weighty matters recede into the background, nit-picky issues come to the fore.