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Canadian humbuggery
03 December 2005
[indent]An election looms in this grumpy northern paradise. It wasn't a surprise, but it is certainly unnecessary, and an egregious, unwelcome waste of our tax dollars - money better spent on something useful, something not connected intimately with politicians' egos.
While I don't quite share my fellow blogger's cynicism, I do share his frustration. I normally enjoy the business of elections, and take pride in keeping apace with both the issues and the platforms. This election, I see little to become interested in, much less excited about. The election wasn't called for any reason, or in response to anything more than personal animosity between party leaders.
This got me thinking about Canada's political history and the leaders we've had in the past. Ours is a very different political history from our American neighbours, in great part due to the differences between our political systems. Canadians do not elect their leaders directly, and positions of power are appointed from within the elected government, not anointed onto un-elected cronies. While I hesitate to say that our system is categorically better than the Americans', this is one area where it wins, hands-down.
Of course, we still retain the Canadian Senate, worst patronage sink hole in the Western democracies, and the greatest embarrassment to Canada's reputation as a supposedly "free" society. So we can't crow with any sense of superiority over any other nation. As long as we retain an appointed Senate, we are little better than any tinpot dictatorship.
But, adding to the scoreboard in Canada's favour is that we have a broad spectrum of political choices. It's not merely that we have more parties - four represented in Parliament and another half-dozen which make themselves known in elections with the happy enthusiasm of a snowball entering the gates of Hell - its that we have a broader spectrum of political perspectives represented in our elected mob. We have an entire rainbow of political viewpoints sharing the trough; politicians who have been elected from the right a-whisker-away-from-George-Bush to the left whisker-away-from-Karl-Marx. After years of watching American politics, I have determined that the US has one political flavour: the far right, represented by the Republicans, with a subtle shade of almost-not-so-conservative represented by the Democrats.
Canadian politics, sometimes obscure and petty to the outsider, is actually rather fascinating stuff. We have our fair share of wild and wacky characters, and our political history is often a roller-coaster ride. Canadians for all their subdued patriotism, their innate politeness, and their mild socialist tendencies, are actually very emotional about their politics and politicians.
Mostly we make fun of them in varying degrees from low sniggers to outright guffaws. Can you imagine another nation where the most-watched national TV shows are weekly political satires? Can you imagine another nation where the top leaders of the entire country will join their critics on the TV stage to be the public brunt of their humour? Can you imagine George Bush on Saturday Night Live as a participant in a skit that makes fun of him? Well, Canada's Prime Ministers and opposition leaders have joined the cast of the Royal Canadian Air Farce to be the butt of jokes and lampoons many times in the past.
And for their ability to laugh at themselves and share the joke even when they're the target of it, I love our Canadian politicians. That takes real courage and spunk - the same qualities our soldiers showed in World Wars I and II, just this time with laughter.
In 1999, Canadian poet and essayist George Bowering wrote a wonderfully irreverent book on Canada's Prime Ministers, called Egotists and Autocrats. Bowering's analysis is entertaining, laced with sharp barbs from his critical wit.
Bowering's study, however, is far from up to date. His work ends with former PM, Jean Chretien, whose tenure as leader was not to end until 2003, and his ten-year reign has since been marred by the exposure of corruptness and crony-ism through the Gomery Inquiry. The cement of Chretien's place in our history has yet to set, but I tend to agree with Bowering's incomplete analysis, who titled his chapter on Chretien's unfinished rule as "Automatic Pilot."
The same year as Bowering released his book, Will Ferguson (author of Why I Hate Canadians, How to be a Canadian and Canadian History for Dummies) released Bastards and Boneheads: Canada's Glorious Leaders Past & Present.
Where Bowering is acerbic and sometimes dry in his wit, Fergusson is downright rude. His is the sharper stick, if you're reading in bed to wake your mate up laughing.
He's a bit like the Canadian version of P. J. O'Rourke but without the accompanying conservative trans-fat that sometimes clogs the arteries of O'Rourke's works. In fact, I can't discern through this book if Ferguson has any political axe to grind. He ridicules both Liberals and Conservatives with equal venom. Of course, since the NDP have yet to win ruling status, and the Bloc Quebecois cannot do so, we never get to see Ferguson undressing these two parties.
Both Bowering and Ferguson write with passion, and in most cases end up with the same (or very similar) conclusions about the historical weight our leaders place in the scales. Along the way, you'll get a fun and informative lesson in Canadian history; a lesson that we all need (given that only three provinces require Canadian history to be taught in schools, a sorry comment on how lackadaisical our once-vanted Canadian educational system has become). Canadians need to know more about our history, and not simply depend on the US TV shows to educate us.
What, I wonder, would either writer think of the today's crop of politicians? Where would they rank Paul Martin, Stephen Harper or Jack Layton? (I dismiss the Bloc's Giles Duceppe as a mere regionalist, unimportant in the national scheme, although had he joined a national party he has the talent that would certainly have given him a significant role).
As the election crawls towards us with all the excitment of a glacier pushing boulders, I turn to these authors and try to put today's politics into their perspective. Bastards and Boneheads, Egotists and Autocrats, eh? I Think perhaps we need a somewhat wider, but equally iconoclastic set of terms to define our current crop of politicians. Ah, I feel another blog entry fermenting....[/indent]
While I don't quite share my fellow blogger's cynicism, I do share his frustration. I normally enjoy the business of elections, and take pride in keeping apace with both the issues and the platforms. This election, I see little to become interested in, much less excited about. The election wasn't called for any reason, or in response to anything more than personal animosity between party leaders.
This got me thinking about Canada's political history and the leaders we've had in the past. Ours is a very different political history from our American neighbours, in great part due to the differences between our political systems. Canadians do not elect their leaders directly, and positions of power are appointed from within the elected government, not anointed onto un-elected cronies. While I hesitate to say that our system is categorically better than the Americans', this is one area where it wins, hands-down.
Of course, we still retain the Canadian Senate, worst patronage sink hole in the Western democracies, and the greatest embarrassment to Canada's reputation as a supposedly "free" society. So we can't crow with any sense of superiority over any other nation. As long as we retain an appointed Senate, we are little better than any tinpot dictatorship.
But, adding to the scoreboard in Canada's favour is that we have a broad spectrum of political choices. It's not merely that we have more parties - four represented in Parliament and another half-dozen which make themselves known in elections with the happy enthusiasm of a snowball entering the gates of Hell - its that we have a broader spectrum of political perspectives represented in our elected mob. We have an entire rainbow of political viewpoints sharing the trough; politicians who have been elected from the right a-whisker-away-from-George-Bush to the left whisker-away-from-Karl-Marx. After years of watching American politics, I have determined that the US has one political flavour: the far right, represented by the Republicans, with a subtle shade of almost-not-so-conservative represented by the Democrats.
Canadian politics, sometimes obscure and petty to the outsider, is actually rather fascinating stuff. We have our fair share of wild and wacky characters, and our political history is often a roller-coaster ride. Canadians for all their subdued patriotism, their innate politeness, and their mild socialist tendencies, are actually very emotional about their politics and politicians.
Mostly we make fun of them in varying degrees from low sniggers to outright guffaws. Can you imagine another nation where the most-watched national TV shows are weekly political satires? Can you imagine another nation where the top leaders of the entire country will join their critics on the TV stage to be the public brunt of their humour? Can you imagine George Bush on Saturday Night Live as a participant in a skit that makes fun of him? Well, Canada's Prime Ministers and opposition leaders have joined the cast of the Royal Canadian Air Farce to be the butt of jokes and lampoons many times in the past.
And for their ability to laugh at themselves and share the joke even when they're the target of it, I love our Canadian politicians. That takes real courage and spunk - the same qualities our soldiers showed in World Wars I and II, just this time with laughter.
In 1999, Canadian poet and essayist George Bowering wrote a wonderfully irreverent book on Canada's Prime Ministers, called Egotists and Autocrats. Bowering's analysis is entertaining, laced with sharp barbs from his critical wit.
Bowering's study, however, is far from up to date. His work ends with former PM, Jean Chretien, whose tenure as leader was not to end until 2003, and his ten-year reign has since been marred by the exposure of corruptness and crony-ism through the Gomery Inquiry. The cement of Chretien's place in our history has yet to set, but I tend to agree with Bowering's incomplete analysis, who titled his chapter on Chretien's unfinished rule as "Automatic Pilot."
The same year as Bowering released his book, Will Ferguson (author of Why I Hate Canadians, How to be a Canadian and Canadian History for Dummies) released Bastards and Boneheads: Canada's Glorious Leaders Past & Present.
Where Bowering is acerbic and sometimes dry in his wit, Fergusson is downright rude. His is the sharper stick, if you're reading in bed to wake your mate up laughing.
He's a bit like the Canadian version of P. J. O'Rourke but without the accompanying conservative trans-fat that sometimes clogs the arteries of O'Rourke's works. In fact, I can't discern through this book if Ferguson has any political axe to grind. He ridicules both Liberals and Conservatives with equal venom. Of course, since the NDP have yet to win ruling status, and the Bloc Quebecois cannot do so, we never get to see Ferguson undressing these two parties.
Both Bowering and Ferguson write with passion, and in most cases end up with the same (or very similar) conclusions about the historical weight our leaders place in the scales. Along the way, you'll get a fun and informative lesson in Canadian history; a lesson that we all need (given that only three provinces require Canadian history to be taught in schools, a sorry comment on how lackadaisical our once-vanted Canadian educational system has become). Canadians need to know more about our history, and not simply depend on the US TV shows to educate us.
What, I wonder, would either writer think of the today's crop of politicians? Where would they rank Paul Martin, Stephen Harper or Jack Layton? (I dismiss the Bloc's Giles Duceppe as a mere regionalist, unimportant in the national scheme, although had he joined a national party he has the talent that would certainly have given him a significant role).
As the election crawls towards us with all the excitment of a glacier pushing boulders, I turn to these authors and try to put today's politics into their perspective. Bastards and Boneheads, Egotists and Autocrats, eh? I Think perhaps we need a somewhat wider, but equally iconoclastic set of terms to define our current crop of politicians. Ah, I feel another blog entry fermenting....[/indent]
