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I had two official responses to my blog post about the Canadian Air and Space Museum. Lisa Hastings, who I assume works for Downsview Park  in some sort of PR capacity and who likely was alerted to my post by her bot, and local MP Mark Adler, to whom I sent a message, both made the point that Downsview Park’s charter requires it to be self-financing, and not to accept government funding.

Whether the museum was behind in its rent, as Ms. Hastings maintains, or whether the park was using this as an excuse to oust the museum, as argued in a response to my post by Scott Boyd, is immaterial. Given this mandate, if hockey rinks can pay more than the museum, hockey rinks should get the space. Mr. Adler starts from the same premise of self-financing, accepts that the museum must go, and assures me that he is doing his all to find some other place(s) to take the museum’s collection.

The development plan on Downsview Park’s website envisages a mixture of profitable recreation facilities (hockey, soccer, beach volleyball, paintball), some greenspace, and residential development around the edges. It’s a classic case of “you get what you pay for.”

In contrast, let’s think about some of North America’s great urban parks: Central Park, Stanley Park, Mount Royal Park, the Plains of Abraham, even Toronto’s High Park. Their attractiveness comes from several sources: an inspiring physical setting (though the parks designed by Frederick Law Olmsted involved some human effort to enhance nature), historical significance (in particular the Plains of Abraham), and the creation of vast open spaces for recreation.

While there may be some concessions in each of these parks that pay rent, none of these parks is in its entirety self-financing. They all represent lines in either the municipal or federal government’s budget. These cities have chosen to organize these parks as public goods for two reasons. First greenspace is at a premium in a city, and these cities value having greenspace accessible to all citizens and visitors. Second, a major park is part of a city’s charm, part of what makes it a desirable place to live or to visit.

Downsview Park does not have an inspiring natural setting. Its setting could be improved, as was the case with many of the parks Olmsted designed, but that would take funding Downsview Park does not and will never receive given the constraints of its charter. The park has one potential attraction, which is its historical significance as the location of Canada’s first and largest military and civilian aircraft factory. Preserving its historical significance would require preservation of the buildings, not just their façades. And it would require having people who are committed to their preservation, as the community associated with the Canadian Air and Space Museum is. But, to go in that direction would require a reversal of Downview Park’s decision and, unfortunately, the Harper Government does not appear willing to do that.

The Harper Government – to the extent that it thinks about cities – and the Ford administration both display a narrow counting-house mentality that privileges only those developments that can pay for themselves in the market. It is an approach that ignores our culture and our heritage. Ultimately, we as a society will be poorer, not wealthier, for it.

Building another hockey rink or preserving a unique aviation heritage site – which matters more to the Harper Government? In the federal government’s Downsview Park, the answer appears to be the additional hockey rink. Last September 20, Downsview Park gave a notice of eviction in six months to the Canadian Air and Space Museum. The historic 1929 de Havilland Aircraft of Canada building housing the museum is to be torn down to accommodate hockey rinks.

This decision flies in the face of the Harper Government’s ongoing initiative to build pride in our military heritage. While the government decided to restore the title “royal” to the navy and air force, it does not yet recognize that military heritage goes beyond titles to encompass the production of armaments. The Canadian Air and Space Museum is unique because it occupies the site of Canada’s most historically significant military (and civilian) aircraft production plant.

The public no longer remembers that during World War II Toronto was a veritable arsenal of democracy. Its major military production facilities included army materiel at the John Inglis factory near the Canadian National Exhibition, radar and optics at the top-secret Research Enterprises Ltd. facility in Leaside, and aircraft manufacturing in Downsview and Malton. Military production during World War II led to a major transformation of the Canadian economy to emphasize manufacturing. Unfortunately, there is no trace of the history of military production near the CNE or in Leaside, so the Downsview location alone remains – but, it appears, not for long.

The museum’s exhibits include the only full-size replica of the Avro Arrow (all the originals were destroyed by order of the Diefenbaker Government), a Silver Star jet trainer, a de Havilland Tiger Moth trainer, and a Lancaster bomber. The Lancaster was mounted on an outdoor plinth for several decades, and an army of volunteers is now painstakingly restoring its rusted body.

The Toronto museum’s collection is not as extensive as that of the federal government’s Canada Aviation and Space Museum in Ottawa, but it has a focus on production that the federal facility lacks. It is unfortunate that the Toronto museum’s title – Canadian Air and Space Museum – is confusingly close to the federal museum’s title. The Toronto museum could also emphasize the history of production, so as to differentiate its mission and perspective from that of the federal museum. Finally, the Toronto museum did not take advantage of the Economic Action Plan for additional funding. It should have an application ready in the event there is an EAP II.

In addition to its collections, the museum is the focal point of a community of aviation enthusiasts. This community includes the volunteers who staff the museum itself, the technically adept volunteers who are restoring the Lancaster bomber, two Russian pilots who run two modern flight simulators at the museum, and an 89-year old World War II Lancaster pilot who is at the museum most weekends selling copies of his memoirs.

The museum also has a strong focus on children’s activities, and is the site of many birthday parties at which the Russian pilots provide hands-on tutorials on the simulator as well as an introductory aviation course during March break and Air Cadets training. (Personal disclosure: one of our kids had a birthday party at the museum and took the aviation course, and greatly enjoyed both.) If the museum closes its doors, this community of interest will lose its focal point and likely disappear. Our city will have lost an aspect of the cultural – in the broadest sense – diversity that makes it such an exciting place.

Finally, this eviction is entirely unnecessary. Downsview Park has a great deal of unused land and hockey rinks could be built elsewhere without destroying the heritage building and the Air and Space Museum.

I urge my readers to visit the Museum’s website, www.casmuseum.org, sign its petition, and write their elected representatives. I hope we can educate them about the historical and cultural significance of the museum and reverse this short-sighted decision.

In Governing Fables, I outlined three American political fables: the cynical (Primary Colors), the pragmatic (The Candidate, City Hall), and the idealistic (Seven Days in May, The West Wing). The cynical fable – and I take the liberty to quote myself – includes candidates and their handlers who are “cynical power seekers, loyal to no ideology larger than self-interest.” In addition, “marital unfaithfulness/sexual license is a marker of moral failure.” Finally “the political system is a familiar witches brew of influence peddling, hypocrisy, special interest lobbying, self-seeking, and personal betrayal.” (all on page 135).

Through and through, The Ides of March expresses this view of politics. The two main characters, Ohio governor and Democratic presidential candidate Mike Morris (George Clooney) and his junior and eventual chief campaign manager Stephen Meyers (Ryan Gosling), epitomize this fable.

Morris is a left-liberal Democrat who spouts the appropriate ideology (for example, with an energy independence speech taken almost verbatim from Tom Friedman’s New York Times columns). But he violates what the movie refers to as the cardinal rule of politics – “don’t fuck an intern” – and then engages in a coverup of the biological consequences. In pursuit of the presidential nomination, he submits to blackmail by reversing himself to agree to a mediocre senator’s demand to be Secretary of State as the price of supporting his candidacy.

Meyers is no better. While working for Morris, whom he describes as “the real deal”, he nonetheless agrees to a meeting with the campaign manager of the other Democratic presidential candidate, in effect opening the door to a bigger, better deal. When fired for his disloyalty, Meyers immediately crosses the street and offers himself to the other candidate. When he’s not accepted, he contacts Morris, using his possession of evidence regarding Morris’s dalliance to blackmail Morris into appointing him as campaign manager.

For both Morris and Meyers idealism or political ideology are nothing more than a patina. Politics is ultimately about personal ambition. Meyers, in particular, sheds his professed idealism so quickly that I see it as only a cover masking ambition, and his essential character as opportunistic.  The Ides of March presents the loss of political innocence much less believably than The Candidate. In the latter,  candidate Jim McKay’s (Robert Redford) loss of innocence is gradual and grudging, the subject of continual struggle between him and his campaign staff.

The dalliance-with-intern lacks plausibility because it results in her pregnancy. Though Morris is a lapsed Catholic and the intern a practicing Catholic, either one of them would have heard of party hats or the morning-after pill. The intern gets an abortion and, then, fearing exposure, commits suicide. This sounds like something out of the Fifties. In addition, it portrays on the intern’s part a mental instability entirely at odds with her behavior to that point. While the cynical fable of American politics is a well-known and legitimate one, I would rather have seen a plot built on more plausible premises.

I’m not happy to see the return of the cynical fable, particularly to narratives about Democrats. The West Wing presented a much more idealistic fable that, at least for a time, was culturally influential. While the Obama Administration’s story to this point has been ambiguous, in particular because of Obama’s difficulties in moving forward an ambitious agenda in the face of determined ideological opposition, it has not been marked by the same sort of lapses of personal morality as the Clinton Administration. So, even if The Ides of March were intended as commentary on the Obama Administration, it misses the mark.

The Ides of March is an adaptation of the 2008 play Farragut North by Beau Willimon, who wrote it after a backroom career in the office of Senator Charles Schumer and the 2004 presidential campaign of Howard Dean. It’s unfortunate that the play was another retelling of an archetypal fable, rather than a reflection of what he observed.

The October 6 election gave the Liberals a surprising near-minority. We can find lots of reasons for it. First, Premier McGuinty projects himself as an experienced hand in troubled economic times. In addition, after eight years of governing, he still appears fresh and enthusiastic. That’s no small feat; long-time incumbent governments often defeat themselves because they and their leader appear worn-out and cynical: I certainly remember that Premier Ernie Eves projected fatigue in the 2003 campaign and especially the debate.

Conservative Tim Hudak’s message was critical, as it should have been. But the simplistic message — “Hudak lower taxes, more jobs/McGuinty higher taxes, fewer jobs” – was repeated to the point of overkill. Mike Harris, the last Ontario Conservative to defeat an incumbent, had a much more comprehensive platform in his “common sense revolution,” and more gravitas than Hudak. And watching Rob Ford’s conservatism-in-action in Toronto and hearing Stephen Harper’s wish for a “hat trick” didn’t help.

Andrea Horwath’s enthusiasm was undercut by the unreality of some of her promises – cut emergency waiting times in half, freeze gasoline prices – and her lack of priorities, as reflected in the number of different groups she was willing to “put first.”

For me, the campaign in microcosm was a candidate’s debate in my constituency of Don Valley West, between two heavyweights, former Education and current Transport Minister Kathleen Wynne and Conservative Andrea Mandel-Campbell, a high-profile business journalists. (The NDP and Green candidates, while well-meaning, and far less experienced and articulate).

In the debate, Mandel-Campbell was able to seize the issue of public debt and taxes, claiming that the Liberals had enormously expanded public debt and raised taxes during McGuinty’s eight years in office. She added, as an aside, that Ontarians have a higher per-capita public debt than Californian’s.

Wynne was never able to adequately respond to Mandel-Campbell’s position. While she made the point that Tim Hudak would not repudiate any of the decisions made by the Harris Government – in which he was a minister – she never explored the implications. She could have reminded the voters that when the Liberals came to office, they were hit with an unexpected $5 billion deficit the Conservatives had left. She could also have reminded the voters that the Liberals eliminated the Conservative deficit and essentially balanced the books for the remainder of their first term.

Turning to the second term, she could have reminded the audience that the deficit increased, not because the Liberals were willfully wasting public resources, but because they were responding to the global recession, and it meant major expenditures on keeping the auto industry functioning and participating in the Economic Action Plan. So Ontario was running a large deficit, just as the federal Conservatives were. She could have asked Mandel-Campbell whether she wouldn’t have bailed out GM or whether she wouldn’t have participated in the Economic Action Plan.

Wynne could have also mentioned that the California comparison was completely irrelevant because the State of California plays a much small role than the province of Ontario, so it isn’t a surprise that we have more per capita provincial public debt.

Looking to the next four years, Wynne could have made the case that if the Conservatives were so intent on making deficit and debt reduction as their number one policy priority, they would likely be making very drastic cuts in public spending that could well drive the economy into another recession. She could have compared their fiscal plan to that of the Tea Party in the US, or the one that external agencies are imposing on Greece, which she might have called “Hudak’s Grecian Formula.” She could have argued that we aren’t Greece and the McGuinty Government hasn’t governed as though we were. More broadly, she could have made the point that, while it’s important to eliminate deficits and pay down debt, it shouldn’t be done so quickly that it can push the economy into another recession and drastically drive up unemployment.

I came away from the debate thinking that Ms. Mandel-Campbell was promulgating Tea Party economics and Ms. Wynne didn’t call her on it. The Liberals shouldn’t let a Canadianized version of the Tea Party’s story prevail in the campaign. Perhaps if they had responded more aggressively, they would have won their majority. But looking to the new term that starts today, they must begin to tell their own story, one that balances a concern for the economy today with a concern for the fiscal balance sheet in the distant future.