I'd Tweak Warren's #9

Your next leader - and your team and your policy book - should be bursting with ideas, ideas, ideas. That is how you will defeat the Trudeau phenomenon: with smart ideas, not by making lame selfie jokes.

Ideas?  Absolutely.

From the leader, though?  From the backroom folk?  That's not really the conservative brand, is it? That brand is about avoiding the nanny state and giving agency to Canadians proper, isn't it?

Trudeau is a likeable leader, a strong presence, and - if the Tories frame him the right way - a bit of an autocrat.  

The way to counter this, carve out turf and actually do right by the country isn't to have a Britannica of ideas to sell the nation, but to develop a Wikiplatform where Canadians can express their own hopes and dreams, challenge each other's narratives, explore options and then map everything out to see where their are gaps to be addressed.

Happens to tie into one of the Harper government's narratives, too, and could help reframe some of Canada's concerns about that era.

Just sayin'...

The Digital War Room: Political Memory and Glass Houses

If you did it, we will find it.  Guaranteed.

  - Warren Kinsella

He's right, too - you can't stop the signal.

It's not just politics, either - online presence creeping is the new police check, except it's much more pervasive and much more judgemental, too.

In one of my earliest posts on this blog, I wrote the following:

When you aren't weighing the pros and cons of doing something you know is wrong, or of not thinking an action through, you're spending more time doing what you know to be right and making sure you've thought through the consequences. 

I didn't know as much about how the brain and behaviour works then as I do now, and while I still believe that consciousness leads to mindfulness leads to more responsible individuals and a more mature society, I'm less certain about how easy it'll be to get there.

The theory is that youth is a time for development, exploration, acculturation; you're going to do things in your younger years that, down the road, will be seen as questionable.  It's true for all of us. At the same time, there are things we do in our personal lives we wouldn't dream of doing in our professional lives (eg - almost every teacher I know is a potty-mouth when they get together outside of school).

At the end of the day, it isn't always clear what's right - and what's right can shift over time.  Should John A be vilified for what he got wrong, or commended for what he got right?  

How much of this should we be judged on in the present?  What bearing should youthful indiscretions or lessons learned have on our individual present?  How about when something or someone we have publicly supported (say, Mike Duffy or Jian Gomeshi) turns out to be a fraud or have unacceptable demons in their closet?  Should our ignorance in the past forever define who we are and how our judgement is judged?

As digital natives grow up, the entirety of their lives will be available for scrutiny in real time.  Those who are inclined to believe they have the right/need/entitlement/whatever to represent others will continue to be the kind of people who live large and have skeletons in their closet.  

What impact does this have on how we view potential representatives, and who is willing to put their name forward for public office?  Should some sort of regulation on War Room activity be enacted? Shoud individuals be more cautious over the entirety of their lives - is that even possible?  Should voters be less judgemental of skeletons in closets - and to what degree?

It's a conversation we need to start having now.

Robin Williams vs. Ezra Levant: Hope and Inspiration vs Fear and Anger

But if TV is what I say it is - and it is - then only one TV personality is "the biggest name."  

And that name is this: Ezra Levant.

Although Kinsella opens his article suggesting his pick for "biggest name in broadcasting" will shock, shock his audience, there really wasn't much surprise.

First, the reference to shock value is a gimmick, a thing to hook reader interest - essentially, the closest you can get to literary shouting without turning to the CAPS key.

Second, Kinsella is a die-hard loyalist to his tribe, whatever his tribe may be.  It's an admirable quality in an age where loyalty tends to be to oneself first, though there are all kinds of obvious problems with my-country-right-or-wrong partisanship.

Kinsella works for the Sun; Levant works for the Sun.

You know who Kinsella's going to pick from the moment he broaches the subject.

All that aside, though, Kinsella raises good points about the medium of television - it's visual, it's emotive and now more than ever, when we're watching TV while tweeting on our smartphones, it needs to be volume-heavy to tap into what remaining attention we have left.

TV takes this to extremes, but every medium is the same.  We don't listen to monotone speakers, any more than we enjoy lengthy monologues.  How many of us have read War and Peace?  How many read full news articles?

People have short attention spans (which isn't the same as short memories) and, as we are more hard-wired to be emotionally reactive than consciously active, we go for what moves us over what informs us, nine times out of ten.

This is why partisan politics leans increasingly towards street theatre - it has to compete for public attention and that seems to be the only way to shine a light in the public's face.

Which is why attack ads and emotionally negative material - defend, attack, troubles at shores, scandal, etc. are terms partisans lob back and forth at each other.  You have to stir the people to get them active and nothing engages quite like a threat.

This is part of Levant's shtick.  He's bitter, partisan, combative, belligerent, bellicose, bullying, resentful, so on and so forth.  You watch Levant and you get mad - either with him or at him.  Either way, more people are apt to pay attention to Levant than a more thoughtful, lower-key broadcaster (not news presenter).

As people are drawn to the negative, the assumption communicators, political, media, etc, tend to make is that fear and anger draw in viewers.  The positive message stuff isn't visceral; hope is cotton candy when what the people crave is a roller coaster.

Hence, the preponderance of negativity on live TV.

Are they right, though?  Does negativity win?  Is volume and emotion strictly a negative thing?

Recently, Robin Williams died.  The circumstances are well-known, as is the tragic context.  While there are those who are taking a Levant-like tone and criticizing Williams as weak, a poor role-model, selfish, etc, the vast majority of comments that have emerged are ones of gratitude for what he gave to people as a performer.

How many people can recount magical tales about that one time they met him, and for that brief moment he made them feel like the centre of his universe? How many stories have we heard about a spontaneous concert in a crowd, that performance or performances that enriched a life or helped form a world view?

Williams was not a mad ranter; his message was never bitter, never focused on blame, resentment or anger in general.  Williams was a Roman Candle, bringing light to the world - he was loud, energetic, frenetic, but in the opposite way that Levant was.  

Robin Williams lit a fire within the people.  Levant seems to want us to burn the world down.

How many stories will people share about Ezra Levant when he is gone?

For how long will Robin Williams' legacy of touching people with positive energy last?

There are no people like Robin Williams' in Canadian broadcasting; we tend not to be an exuberant people, unless, in increasing measure, it's in a negative sense.

If you were to put Robin Williams up against Ezra Levant in a debate or a contest, though, who do you think would win?

Warren Kinsella, Autism and the Art of Nudge

Let me explain.  This morning, I heard The First Ever Academic To Understand Political Ads™ on CBC Radio: Prof. Peter Graefe of McMaster said that political ads are for people who don't pay attention to politics.  They're a shortcut.  They're designed to be simple.  They're for the uninformed.

This, from the always-insightful Warren Kinsella - a guy who gets the irrational nature of politics if anyone does.  

Partisan politics isn't designed to appeal to logic, create debate or develop shared solutions - it's about winning, period.  By it's competitive nature, partisan politics is tribal.  The focus almost inevitably shifts from what one side can do (proactive) to preventing what the other side would take away (reactive).

The problem is, even the informed get swept up in this.  More person-hours and sweat get put into things like lawn signs when there's no real evidence that they have any impact.  The same can be said for any GOTV initiative.  Yet these are the sorts of activities that get picked apart by analysts as indicative of a winning campaign.

For the pols, it's about keeping up with the Joneses - you don't want to be the one guy who doesn't play the game; it just feels too much like falling behind.  What if it really does make a difference and you cause your side to fail by dropping the ball?  That's an uncomfortable feeling to have.

The salesmen are just as good at selling themselves - often, even better.

People, whatever their knowledge base, are simply not rational creatures.  In fact, the more informed they are, the better they tend to get at justifying their existing positions.  

Where this varies in politics is when a partisan, for whatever reason, switches teams.  A floor-crosser can confabulate changes to emotional positions in ways dug-in tribal partisans can't, rebranding old friends as untrustworthy foes - which is fascinating.  It's almost like a conversion process.

What does this have to do with autism?

A meta analysis of ten studies involving more than 1.2 million children reaffirms that vaccines don't cause autism.  If anything, immunisation was associated with decreased risk that children would develop autism, a possibility that's strongest with the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine.

Do you believe this?  If you already feel autism has no correlation to inoculations, the answer is probably yes.  If, however, you're suspicious of inoculations already, the answer is probably no - instead, you'll be questioning the research.

Climate change, the effectiveness of social intervention on crime reduction, even homophobia are all similar examples - if we feel something, or if our feelings can be poked and inflamed, the facts against our position (or lack of facts for it) don't matter.

9 times out of 10 we'll go with our gut, which really means we respond to the drives of neurochemistry over external information.  This makes sense, from an evolutionary perspective - our ability to react quickly to potential threats is a big part of why our species hasn't died out.

At the same time, though, we don't live on the African plain in small herds anymore - we're socialized, specialized, technology-dependent creatures that rely on knowledge to survive in our current context. We might not feel like taking out the trash, or following the rules of the road, but we know there are consequences if we don't.  

This is the perpetual problem of public policy - how do you design systems and processes that appeal to how people actually make choices rather than how we'd like to think we make choices?

In an age where some governments are starving the public (and themselves) of facts so as to not confuse their ideological leanings, this is a huge problem the public service is trying to grapple with.

Herein, to me, lies an interesting problem - what determines success in our current political culture is to appeal to the limbic brain of the public; troubles at shores, illegal coalitions, dangerous schemes, common sense, etc.  You can win this way, but you can't effectively govern this way.

The elements of society seeking more effective governance and policy have to find a different approach; inoculations carry some risk, but far less than not getting them.  More to the point, not inoculating your own children puts other children at risk.

Autism, on the other hand, isn't leprosy or a zombie curse - it's a variation on cognitive wiring in the same way skin tones are variations on pigment.  The right understanding allows for the right accommodations.

While not every autistic person (because autism is part of the person, not some kind of virus) will become a Jacob Barnett or Temple Grandin, how many world-changers are we losing out on due to our own emphasis on avoiding a potential negative instead of supporting a potential positive? 

How might we shift gears between the growing trend towards instinctively-appealing presentation in politics, marketing and beyond and the need to promote debate, critical thinking and emotional self-regulation?  

I suspect the confabulations of floor-crossers or team-leavers will offer some insight into how this might be accomplished, but I don't have the definitive answer.  Neither do you.  

Between us, though, I know we could come up with something amazing and effective.

Your neighbours are getting on board the Open Movement - can we count on you, too?

=o)

Political Gardening: The End of War, The Death of the Selfie

Politics is war without bloodshed, someone named Chairman Mao once said.  Journalists come down from the hills after the battle is over, someone named Murray Kempton once said, and shoot the wounded.  Politics, with its war rooms and whatnot, is replete with metaphors about war and killing.

Today, between bouts of rain, I was out in the garden, overturning soil and clearing out weeds.  While I was doing this my eldest son was playing a make-believe game about keeping an eye out for manufactured bad guys.  

As I dug and churned, I quizzed him about his strategy for dealing with these bad guys, what he knew about them; their objectives, strength, location, and so on.  Then we gamed out strategies to gain intel, disrupt their internal operations and build coalitions with third-party groups to help outflank our foe.

Play time gets pretty involved at the C-E household.

I told all of this jokingly to my wife, later, who rolled her eyes and tsked her disapproval.  "Can't a game just be a game", she asked?

It made me wonder - could a democracy ever just be a democracy, or is politics invariably a competitive sport?  Will it always draw and reward the bare-knuckle brawlers, sociopaths and narcissists?  Can good people not get drawn in to the petty, pseudo-war qualities of partisanship?

Politics has always been a game of dominance, borrowing tools from other sectors for success.  Politicians get media training, like a weak-tea actor's class; much of the pomp and circumstance around political campaigns and announcements borrows heavily from the entertainment sector.

On the war room side, well - the name tells you everything.  Listen to a political speech or even better, a rally speech to a loyal audience.  It's all about us vs them, with them being out to destroy everything we hold dear.  The strategies and tactics pull heavily from military thinking; spies, offensives, counter-attacks, messaging superiority, so on and so forth.

The Art of Politics has become the science of dehumanization.  After all, you couldn't do to someone you saw as like you what you do to an opponent in war.

The people, meanwhile, are apparently more forgiving than politicians or journalists.  They have a better understanding of human failings.  They are wired differently than the hacks or the flaks.  The people get weary of all the political bloodshed, and all the shooting of the wounded.  They forgive and forget.

It's a fascinating question, this - are partisans fundamentally different from each other, down the neurological hard-wiring?  Are political people made of a different fibre than everyone else?

Of course not.  People are people and, as we know, individuals are capable of some extreme behaviour both positive and negative under adverse conditions.

What makes politics so fascinating is that it serves as its own cause and effect.  It's the series of small choices that nudge the overarching tone in one narrative.  

Wars, after all, are borne out of choices made by individuals, but when new individuals are brought into an already tense environment and are taught by those who've caused the friction in the first place, what happens then?  

You might say that tribal warfare is inevitable and that competitive relationships always, always evolve into zero-sum games.

If you thought that, though, you'd be wrong.

History is replete with second chances, honour in the heat of battle and friendships forged on the battleground.  My personal favourite story is about how a German Airforce officer took a risk and pulled rank to free some Allied Airmen from Buchenwald.  These lucky ones may have been enemies of war, but they were colleagues in arms as well.

If anything, the history of humanity is away from small, simple tribes in perpetual competition to larger, more complex systems with greater latitude for specialization, collaboration and quality of life.

So I find it all too telling when political people muse about the differences they feel must exist between themselves and someone else.  I'm sure Rob Ford has had similar moments of self-pity as he's considered what he's done with his life.

As Ford (hopefully) begins his long, hard journey towards self-recovery, he's going to be learning a lesson that many who've positioned themselves as "different" and therefore, subjected to a different set of standards have learned.

Within each of us is the potential for both rage and serenity, great deeds and great horrors.  When we think competitively, strive to get ahead by all means, we try to make ourselves into something that we aren't.  

By so doing, we internally limit our choices.  Our underlying ethics, however, remain the same.

When we justify doing things we know to be unkind, it's a choice that has consequences - but always, a choice.

Ultimately, it's a choice to die alone, cut off from others both physically and emotionally.

When we wash ourselves clean of the manufactured identities we create for ourselves - especially in politics - we recognize what part of us has grappled with all along; that we aren't made of different stuff, aren't subject to different moral codes and have simply made a choice to dehumanize ourselves so that we may do the same to others.  

It was convenient at the time - and in politics, timing is everything.  

But a series of bitterly-fought victories that simply lead to the next battle isn't a life.  The world doesn't flow by the four-year cycle, the Legislative calendar or even the business calendar.  Births, deaths, losses, challenges and opportunities come at any moment, in unscheduled ways.  

Our lives are framed by the choices we make about what happens around us - not just to us, or what we do to others, but between us.  Life isn't meant to be convenient, but it is a journey of discovery.

Over these weeks, if he is like others who have walked this road, he will come - as the ancient oracle at Delphi instructs - to know himself, perhaps for the first time.

When we choose to live our lives this way - as an experience we engage in together rather than a battle to be won - we truly live.

Life isn't a game, but it can be a dream.

The rain has stopped - it's back to the garden for my boy and I.

Where Warren is Wrong

What's most interesting about the memo - and I've removed some of the disingenuous/self-serving crap therein, and the name of one of the authors - is this: 

Warren Kinsella is one of the best at what he does.  He has arguably been the most influential person in Canadian political operations over the turn of the Century.

While I've never worked with him directly (or even met him), I've had the pleasure of watching him do his thing from the mid-distance.  It's fitting that he's an accomplished artist (drawing and music) because when he performs his political craft, it's much like watching any master produce a little bit of magic.

By his own admission though, what Kinsella does isn't very nice.  By no means a Nick Kouvalis who will make things up to tarnish opponents, Kinsella is really good at narrowing the frame and ensuring only the legitimate negatives of his opponents come to light - and that in spectacular fashion.

His campaign against John Tory is evidence of this.  

It is absolutely true that John Tory is a wealthy elitist who has dithered, donated to Rob Ford and hired Nick Kouvalis (another guy I've never met, but whose approach to politics I find cynical and distasteful).  

Tory has made some unfortunate remarks suggesting women don't complain enough for money and should take up golf for networking purposes.  

They're accurate statements, mind you - indicative of a real problem in gender-biased corporate cultures that reward bluster and smoke-blowing over actual accomplishment.  That Tory is encouraging women to play the game instead of encouraging leaders to rethink the rules is telling of his approach, but not an indictment of his intent.

Because in addition to all these flaws, Tory is a genuine human being with right intent.  He gives a good deal of time and money to charity and really believes that the hyper-partisan nature of our system needs to change.  Yes, he donated to Rob Ford - but he's donated to others, as well.  This demonstrates, in my mind, a commitment to making it easier for people to get involved.  That's not a bad use of his wealth, is it?

These aren't points that fit into Kinsella's narrative though.  From a Socratic, War Room perspective, his job is to tear down - it's the other side who has to sell Tory's positives.

This is no slight against Kinsella himself - this is how the game gets played, and he plays it better than most - but I genuinely believe this approach is detrimental to our democratic system on the whole.

As partisans chronically portray their opponents as moustache-twirling caricatures, I'm finding that the successful ones are increasingly caricatures in reality as well as on paper.  Case in point: Rob Ford.

As Kinsella himself has wisely said many times, between a watered-down version of a brand and the real thing, people will go for the real thing time and again.  So, in a campaign between what are branded as caricature candidates and Rob Ford, is there a risk of a cynical public opting to go for the devil they know?

I don't have the answer to this.  I'm no polling guru and I certainly don't have the political experience or acumen of a Warren Kinsella.  What I do know, though, from time spent in community centres, on Twitter and from conversations across the city is that people are tired of politics-as-usual.  They are mad as hell, and are getting close to a point of saying they're not going to take it any more.

Canada is lucky to have a political scrapper like Kinsella on our team - someone unafraid to take on the big bullies on causes ranging from First Nation rights to racism.  We need his skill set on these fronts.

When it comes to political campaigning, though, I'm not sure this narrowly-framed demonization of opponents is the best approach any more.  It works in the short-term, yes - but at what long-term cost?  

I'm sure some seasoned political people will tell me I'm not "tough" (i.e. jaded) enough to do "what needs done."  But I don't want to be.

I guess I still believe that moving forward together means leaving no one behind.

Last point - Kinsella blurred out one of the memo's signatories, singling out a woman named Paris.  If she's who I think she is, I know this Paris as a passionate, community-oriented young lady with a good head for issues.  Much like John Tory, I have known her to carve out time and offer advice to people that have nothing to offer her in return.

She might suck at War Room activities - I know I would, too.  But we should collectively be encouraging young, committed women like her to engage in our political system rather than singling them out for negative publicity.  

If we make politics an unwelcoming environment for the cause-oriented activists, after all, we'll end up with nobody left but aggressive self-promoters like the Fords.

And that's a narrow frame that serves nobody's interests.

FULL DISCLOSURE - I am not currently backing or working (which, in politics, are two different things) for any mayoralty candidate.  I've seen plenty of criticism go back and forth, but have yet to be inspired by any of the names on the ballot.

Surprisingly, it's from within the Toronto bureaucracy that I currently see the best hope for structural reform.  It's good to see someone is open to change.

Does the CPC Owe Warren Kinsella Royalties?

The game plan, laid out in Conservative party documents obtained by the Star, spells out the objective in three words: "drive, disrupt, disunity."

The party says it wants a "Conservative voice" in all stories that come out of the Liberal convention"

Lots of chatter among the political classes about the leaks today.  Is this a resentful staffer slipping secret documents to the enemy MSM?  Is it an attempt by the CPC to smoke out resentful staffers?  An effort to deflate Liberal morale?  Are they simply fucking with Liberal heads?

The latter seems most likely.  There's something the Tory war roomers should know, though - when you fuck with people's heads, you risk catching something contagious.

There's a line about messing with opponents' heads in Warren Kinsella's manual for campaigners, The War Room.  If you haven't read it, you should.  It's pretty clear Dimtri Soudas has.

"So?" he said.  "Why do we need one of these war room things?"

"Because it can help us win," I said.  "If we have something like that, we can sort of become part of the news media."  - P. 23

"The way I looked at it, our job wasn't dirty tricks or smears or smears or that sort of thing; our job was to dominate the communications landscape, leaving no room for our opponents to breathe."  - P. 26

Personally, I find this funny in the ironic sort of way.  The Liberals innovate new approaches to stop the Conservatives which the Conservatives then copy literally word-for-word and then put more money and vindictiveness behind.

Except there's something the CPC War Room folk seem to have missed.

The MSM (MainStreamMedia) began relying heavily on fed info because their industry was at the start of it's decline.  As is the case with the collapse of any body, when the centre starts reducing resource distribution, the organs start to work harder, hastening system-wide collapse.

These days, even the media questions the media about the content of its stories.  The majority of people who get their news through anything other thank radio, the evening news or gossip are doing so online via social media, where non-journalists who are less harried rule the roost.

The CPC War Room gang may be high-fiving each other around the conniving brilliance of their adaptation of a Liberal Strategist's tactics, but they're doing so exactly when those tactics are coming to the end of their heyday and newer approaches are starting to dominate.

But that's what happens when you mine instead of getting creative, isn't it?

Even when cribbing from their opponents, the Harper Conservatives are one step behind.  That may make them winners in the short-term, but as Kinsella could probably tell them - it's not the strongest who survive, but those best able to evolve with the times.

But Team Harper are probably gonna have to wait for his next book to figure that one out.  

#TorontoIs - For or Against?

This is an amazing piece of work, sent by an acquaintance of a friend.  I don't know the author's name.  But if they're reading this, I say: do more stuff like this.  This is really, really powerful.

I have been told, repeatedly, that Warren Kinsella is really good at what he does.  It's unquestionably true; he's the man that brought the War Room to Canada.  It could be argued that he in large part shaped a whole generation of politicing in this country.

He's right, too - the video (you'll have to follow the link to his site to see it) is powerful.  It provides a fascinating contrast between some of the diverse landmarks that are so integral to Toronto's identity and the divisive, small-minded politics of Rob Ford.

The point of this video is to demonstrate to Toronto how the world sees this city - not as one of the most diverse places on earth, not as a centre of art, business and culture, but as the playground of Rob Ford, the crack-smoking Mayor.

The video is designed to incite strong, reactive emotions of discomfort, fear, even anger.  This is how the world sees us, it says; we need to do something to change that.

By and large this is how politics functions - we define ourselves as being different than our opponents and work hard to define our opponents as the devil incarnate.  

We have to fight against, the message goes, often with the tagline only Candidate White Hat can defeat/prevent Candidate Black Hat from bringing us down. 

We don't vote leaders in; we kick bums out.

But there's another way.

Instead of inciting kick-the-bums out re-activeness, we could have leaders that define themselves by their vision, authenticity and commitment to walking the walk.  Calgary has become cool in ways previously unimaginable in no small part due to its Mayor.  

Where Rob Ford talks about promises made and kept that are anything but, Naheed Nenshi is better known for what he does and how he communicates.  We don't need boastful statements; his deeds speak louder than worlds.

No less than Kinsella himself has wistfully wondered, "wouldn't it be nice to have a leader who things big, and does big things, once again?"

I think so.  I know lots of other people who feel the same way.

Being angry and resentful all the time is tiring.  Eventually, disaffection settles in and people come to accept that things won't be any better and that fighting is only going to make things worse.  It's why Canada is suffering through a winter of discontent, complete with hoarding behaviours typical of hibernating creatures.

It's true that Toronto's international reputation is largely being defined by Rob Ford, but it doesn't need to be.  If the people living here, or the people living across Canada were to see amazing, heroic deeds and hear inspirational stories of what we're really about, we may be shaken out of our misanthropic complacency and catalyzed into positive action.

A quote I'm sure Kinsella would be familiar with fits the bill: "People don't look to us, as leaders, for despair; they can despair on their own.  They look to us for inspiration."

That's the kind of leadership I could get behind.  Don't tell me what's wrong and who's to blame; tell me who's making a difference and give me a vision of how together, we can make our community a place to be proud of.  

Lead, for god's sake.

If you think it's powerful how people will fight when they collectively stand against, you'd be amazed by what they can do when they are united for.

The Truths We Cling To

 

Six: it was cruel and callous.  In the "Senate Liberal" caucus, there are many hard-working and decent people. 

 

Politics has famously been described as a blood sport where loathing is considered a purifying force and stepping on opponents' necks is just the way the game is played.

 

But there must be honour among thieves, as it were - a shared chivalric code which all players of at least the same team hold to (or failing that, a code of silence).  Without such common ground there can be no loyalty and, as a consequence, neither accomplishment nor sustainability.

 

The implication of Kinsella's statement is that those Senators of the Liberal persuasion have earned better treatment from their Party than to be laid off from Caucus (which is what this is - nobody has been fired, the Liberals' Senate Caucus has just been disbanded). 

 

This is one of those matters-of-opinion things; a colluding Senate team and a House team has always led to tricky games being played and, if Trudeau is sincere about working to foster a less partisan Parliament, this isn't so bad.  Whether a less-partisan Hill can work these days is a completely different question with other fun considerations to consider.

 

Even with the cruel and callous Trudeau Plan, Senators still have far more income, clout and opportunity than most Canadians do - we don't have assistants, fancy offices or comfortable taxpayer-funded salaries. 

 

We also have never had anything resembling inside access to the backroom planning that informs Leaders' decisions; most people honestly believe that's what things like policy conventions and door-knocking are for. 

Some of us even believe that there should never have been partisan camps within the Chamber of Sober Second Thought.  If Independent Senators will bitterly work against former caucus colleagues instead of embracing the ethical clarity a post-partisan reality provides them, then they're not thinking soberly, are they?

 

It's a matter of debate if these Senators have been treated in cruel and callous fashion.  Legitimate arguments can be made for both sides with people, as they tend to do, finding every possible argument in favour of their own position and against that of someone else's. 

 

From Kinsella's point of view, it was cruel and callous to "let go of" hard-working team members who had been hard working team members for a while.

I don't remember hearing him raise similar concerns during the Great Staff Cull of 2011.

 

In 2011, he came within one seat - one seat! - of another majority government.  ... Instead, McGuinty seemed energized by the result, and looking forward to what lay ahead.

 

What immediately laid ahead, as it was clear that a minority status would require a significant truncation of staff, was to figure out what to do about all those existing staff who'd in some cases been with the McGuinty Liberal Team since the first term.  Not all of them could be brought back.

 

This was understood; many staff remained uncertain but hopeful.  By and large there were concerns among the ranks, who often felt like functionaries for the team rather than part of the team, of a Wilkinsonian approach. 

 

Suggestions were made that an appropriate staff-transition strategy could serve as a counter-weight to dismissals - a strategy that recognized the work of staff, practiced a bit of what Liberals tend to preach and also maintain positive relations with a host of loyal folk who might end up working in influential capacities, as often happens with former political staffers.

 

Such was not to be.  All staff were let go of and told to wait by the phone for the call back to work.  Dutifully, many hopeful people waited.  And waited.  And eventually their severance wore out and they realized no call would come, was never going to come.  They'd been left at the alter of unemployment and were now on their own.

 

To me, that was cruel and callous treatment (and no, I was not on either side of the decision process).  More than that, it was cowardly.

 

That's just me, though.  There are many leaders and organizers who see The Leader as infallible, the inner circle as Alpha Dominant and staff as hired help, rewarded through wages and clout who should recognize they are dispensable from the outset.  Loyalty is meant to flow up, never down.

 

Are paid Senators who retain everything except the ego-stroke of being in backroom conversations and who are forced to offer their policy or partisan ideas like any other Member of a Party (assuming, of course, they all have paid LPC memberships) being treated cruelly and callously?  Was it wrong to tell them of the inner team's decision after the fact?

 

Was it cruel and callous to lay off staff, give them the impression they'd be getting a phone call and then never following up, period?

 

I have long since learned not to expect consistency in the thought processes of political people.  You can't get ahead in a survival-of-the-fittest game without rationalizing cognitive dissonance at least some of the time.

 

As Obi Wan Kenobi stated a long time ago, "the truths we depend greatly on our own point of view."  If political people tend to be even more slavish to points of view than, say, evidence or best practice, that says as much about us as it does about them.

 

Key to this equation, naturally, is how we view people in relation to our own standing.

 

To know the world, take yourself out of the equation. 

By putting their teams after their mission and themselves always last, true leaders do this all the time.  Which is why they don't need to demand loyalty; it just comes naturally.

Time Will Tell

Warren Kinsella disagrees with Trudeau's disbanding of the Senate side of the Liberal Caucus.  

Every point he makes in his disagreement is absolutely accurate, except one; former Liberal Senators aren't exactly being kicked to the curb, which in my mind (and I'm sure that of many Canadians) would imply a loss of employment, income and office (hence the curb).  Senators are Senators and these folk are still pulling in far more than the vast majority of us.

Beyond that, though, the Tory Senators would work to block legislation, allowing the Conservative Party (and the NDP) to portray Trudeau as a weak leader, etc.  Party loyalists probably do feel let down; they may not be on the street, but their clout and status have certainly been curbed.  Plus, there are countless logistical bugs that could cause problems down the road and that, guaranteed, Conservative operators are working out for future use.

If Trudeau wants to strengthen his political brand, ensure his agenda gets rammed through and entrench the Liberal Party, this was a poorly conceived play from the outset.

There is a chance, however, that those aren't Trudeau's goals.  I don't know him any more than  anyone else so can't claim an insider's perspective on his thought process, but he could feel his personal brand and the scope of his vision are enough to carry weight with Canadians beyond traditional politics.  

Delusional?  Maybe, but so is thinking that you should be Prime Minister.  Politics is all about delusions.  That and/or paranoia.

What's at issue, in my mind, is less whether Trudeau is playing skillfully within the traditional frame of the political game; the question is whether the people of Canada are so fed up with the failures of the system as it stands to attribute any partisan plays in favour of the status quo as transparently crass and contemptible.

In this sense, Trudeau's popularity may work against him - if he wins and everyone gets an oxytocin high, they may soften on their disdain for the political status quo and willingness to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

I remain convinced that the War Room politics that has dominated Canada for decades is drawing to a close, brought as it has been by Team Harper (and worse, Rob Ford) to a point beyond which it can't go much further and still mask itself as democratic.  

Of course, Team Trudeau has been schooled in politics-as-usual by folk like Kinsella himself; whether they've got the bandwidth to veer so far into new territory in a structurally sound way is anyone's guess.

If we're at that tipping point quite yet, though, who knows.  As the US Declaration of Independence so wisely observes, "mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed."  

It's basic behavioural economics of the burning platform; change is uncertain, better the devil you know than the one you don't, until it's too late.

Are we there yet?  We'll know soon enough.

Through A Crystal Ball Darkly: Are We Repeating History? (Part 2)

The Sochi games, like the ones in Berlin, will therefore go ahead.  The well-founded apprehensions of Jews have been supplanted by the well-founded apprehensions of gays.  But the broad strokes of it are pretty much the same, seems to me.

Economic difficulties.  Populations frustrated with government institutions that don't seem to reflect or care about their realities.  Those same governments playing the populist, vehemently nationalist "charity starts at home" card.  A diminished interest in rising tensions and violence against minorities abroad - partially because those tensions strike a chord with a watered-down version of the same tensions here at home.

You don't need to be a Hari Seldon to see where this path tends to lead; there still people alive today who've been down it before.

I disagree with Kinsella on the "we never learn" part, though - there are new dynamics at play that can and will alter the game board (though to what degree remains to be seen).

Western nations are much more diverse than they were before.  Social media has made real-time information transmission, especially visual, that much easier.  Citizen journalism is co-opting main-stream (sometimes government-controlled) narratives.  Individual norm-disrupters ranging from Kai Nagata to Edward Snowden have built precedents for citizens to buck trends in a way that wasn't as virulently recognized in the 1930s.

Then, there are nascent resistance groups like Occupy, Arab Spring, etc. that are global in scope.  Also - Anonymous, The Mule in the plan.

With communications clamp-downs, attack ads, hate propaganda and of course, enough firepower and fear-factor, all these potential mitigations could be quashed.

They won't, though, for the simple reason that a hate-and-protector based organizational model invariably consolidates power into the hands of a few, who inevitably make mistakes and miss key trends.

That's not the risk.

The real risk is an expansion of what we're seeing in Syria or Iraq on a broader scale - in other words, anarchy (briefly) and then a consolidation of neo-feudalism.

Despite the stringent, Big Brother-like security and surveillance Russia is putting in place to keep order in Sochi I'd be surprised if violent confrontations don't happen.  When has building a bigger mouse trap (or decapitating a few mice) ever worked in the past?

There are far more converging, troubling trends out there then our message-track leadership appears capable of distilling and planning against.  Fortunately, at the same time, there is an emergent collaborative process being catalyzed through the global Open Government movement.

It's far from clear what will happen next, whether 2014 will be the year of the burning platform or is there is enough wisdom out there to ensure we have a strong enough second foundation to pivot to.

What is safe to say is that we live in interesting times.

Naked Politics and a Shift In Strategy

Whether Michael Chong and his editorial board cheerleader squad approve or not, the fact is this: Most Canadians make important political choices based upon who the leader is.

Not policy, and certainly not backbench nobodies.  The leader.

And, of course, it's the role of the team to support their leader, full stop.  The role of the leader is to demonstrate they have the Confidence of the House, meaning the Leader's Party has the full confidence of the nation.

But it isn't backbench nobodies with their own mandates who shape the Leader's positions.

That'd be too risky, as the lower-tier Members have pet projects and off-topic issues they want addressed (also known as constituency concerns).  It's best the pros handle the logistical work, with Members being treated much like front-line campaign volunteers.

Keeping backbench nobodies from saying anything off-key, saying the right things in committee and filling seats when necessary is the jobs of the Whip, Senior PMO staff, so on and so forth.  They may trot out a regional member for local flavour at an even or announcement, but that's about it.  The key powers that enforce the autocratic leader's position are unelected, unaccountable to the public and they have no obligation to make themselves known.  They are the sausage makers in the backrooms.

So what happens to the nobodies, then?

"Rookie MPs are, for all intents and purposes, abandoned the day after they're elected."

Would it be at all surprising that, if leadership is an all-powerful position, people of ambition might want to overthrow the king and take the iron crown for themselves?  You have no power unless you're the boss and the current boss doesn't listen.  If the Party's doing well, then what better time is there to take the crown and preside over the existing realm?

Love 'em or hate 'em, the Chretien/Martin wars were a product of the leader-at-the-top format, as could be any tiffs that break out between James Moore, Jason Kenney and poor Stephen Harper.

It's feudal politics, it undermines and obfuscates the will of the people and diminishes our democracy.



Leaders don't listen, they dictate.

Members don't share, they message.

Constituents don't participate, they rally against.

So yes, Chong's Bill essentially wants to denude Party Leaders of their ability to be "leaders" - but in truth, how many of these "leaders" are actually bosses?  Where do their teams end, and Canadians begin?

Smart organizations are moving away from autocratic leaders and strict control of team members; they recognize that cognitive labour is motivated differently and that true leadership isn't about turning around to keep your pack in line, but charting a course forward and inspiring maximum participation from your team.

It's time for our elected representatives to stop being nobodies.  They aren't nobodies, they're our elected representatives in Parliament.  It's time we see an increase of power spread down the democratic pyramid, not increasingly consolidate at the top.

I have no reason to believe that Chong's approach is a direct attack at Harper.  In fact, the evidence points in the opposite direction - this is an attempt at structural change, which is critical for our institutions to survive.

Besides - it might be that the PM has already denuded himself.

Political Fanaticism: Is Fear and Loathing Democratic?

Here's my theme for the day - by embracing the emotional and tactical approach of their opponents, are progressives becoming as regressive as they claim their political foes to be?

Contempt of one's opponents is a mainstay of politics.  It's been particularly egregious of late, as both the political left and the political right have sought to dehumanize their opponents and heap all kinds of conspiracy theories on them.  

There's a definite logic to this approach; if you see yourself as morally superior, as all political entities tend to do, you can't do to others what you wouldn't have them do to you.  To do otherwise, unless you're a sociopath, leads to uncomfortable cognitive dissonance.  Nobody wants to be the villain.

If, on the other hand, you dehumanize and demonize your opponents, you free yourself to treat them as you will and consider yourself heroic for defeating them.

But we liberals, and Liberals, are catching up.  Whenever I set up a poltical war room, for instance, I tell the assembled youngsters their loathing of conservatives is a purifying force.  "Let it wash over you," I tell them.  "Step on their necks and don't lift your foot until the day after the election.  Hurt them."

This approach fits perfectly with what Richard Hofstadter describes as "the paranoid style of politics" which, from a cognitive point of view, is (consciously or unconsciously) designed to agitate and otherwise complacent populace into doing something.  The risks if they don't act, vote, donate or oppose, the End of Days will be upon us (or the socialists and separatists will ruin our country forever).

The problem with this approach is that it plays into the idea of an apocalyptic, zero-sum game where the enemy will be finally and utterly vanquished on Election Day.  When Harper set out to make Canada Conservative, he played with this end-state in mind; he could pillory or ignore any opponent that got in his way and ignore misdeeds within his own team because they didn't matter - history is written by the victors, etc.

But The Other doesn't go away.  Election Days come and go and political opponents have to work together for democracy to function.  When they've gotten their backs up and maintain a functionally fixed approach to utter obliteration of their foes, the working together thing becomes much harder to do.

If progress is about moving forward, it needs to be about planning ahead, too - and that means recognizing a world where The Other doesn't go away and things never end, but rather evolve.  If you can't beat 'em, you have to work with them, understand them and find common ground to build your shared garden on.

I love the garden metaphor, for obvious reasons.  If the plants run wild and compete over scarce resources, some eventually wither and dry out, creating the conditions for a cleansing brushfire, restarting the competitive cycle.  If, on the other hand, the garden is tended, the crops rotated and sustainable growth promoted, you get an interdependent but thriving ecosystem.

True progressives behave like gardeners, planning ahead and thinking systematically, seeing the forest and the trees.  Trolls try to stop any form of progress from happening - consciously or not, they are agitating for the brushfire.  Social conservatives, on the other hand, believe the garden is something we had and lost through social evolution.  They wish we could go back to a mythologized past where people were strong, independent and completely in control of both their individual fates and the world as a whole.

We can't go back to a past that never existed.  We can hasten the end of this cycle, instigating a new one, but that eventually puts us right back where we are now.

There's only one way to break the cycle, which means tacking neither left nor right and circling back, but moving forward into the unknown, undiscovered country of the future.  

In the long run, it's going to be alright; there's no need to be afraid. 

Wise Words From Warren

Here's a tip, Liberals and New Democrats: Canadians know that our leaders aren't perfect.  When you pretend they are, you turn voters off, in droves.

And, by the by, it's another reason why fewer and fewer Canadians vote because all the parties look pretty bad these days.

From top to bottom.

Warren Kinsella is widely recognized as one of the best at what he does.  He is, literally, the man who brought The War Room to Canadian politics.

When he tells us that politics-as-usual is burning our political platform - and when folk like Andrew Coyne agree - it's a message worth listening to.

"We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them", Albert Einstein advised us.

It's time we collectively took a chance and tried to do politics differently.

Love Your Enemy

To defeat an opponent, you need to understand him - not hate him.

 

 

Committing sociology isn't about thug-hugging; to say otherwise is simplistic.  Strength and simplicity can occasionally prevail, but they can never be sustained.  That's not winning - that's delaying defeat.

 

 

The only way to achieve victory is to destroy your opponent.  Killing is but one way to do this - ultimately, a resource-wasteful one.  They tend to fight back, doncha know.  The best way to foster sustainable, conservationist wins is through conversion.

 

 

It's been true since the days of Sun-Tzu; it isn't going to change for as long as we're human.