Her political regrets were over lives lost in military conflict (the soldiers killed in the Falklands War) or political conflict (IRA assassinations, in particular her supporter Airey Neave). At a personal level, while she made clear to Denis when accepting his marriage proposal, that she would not be a typical housewife, the movie still suggests some regret that her political career so dominated her family life.

Nonetheless, for both the historical figure and the protagonist of the movie, Edith Piaf’s “je ne regrette rien” would be the personal anthem of choice.

The Iron Lady thus invites comparison with two overtly political films about aging, Errol Morris’s documentary on Robert McNamara, The Fog of War, and the superb Merchant-Ivory adaptation of Kuzuo Ishiguro’s Booker prize winning The Remains of the Day. In both, the protagonists express deep regret. In McNamara’s case, despite his successes as a senior executive modernizing Ford Motors and as Secretary of Defense controlling the hyper-aggression of the generals, his name remains eternally linked to the futility of the Viet Nam War. In The Remains of the Day, the fictional protagonists all have their regrets, Lord Darlington over his embrace of appeasement, and the butler Stevens over his inability to escape the personal and psychic imprisonment of domestic service.

Movies about regret have an intellectual and emotional appeal. Characters can in their minds replay the past and imagine what would have happened had they made different decisions. We in the audience all have regrets about some of the choices we made, and watching characters in movies express regret and show the sadness that comes from regret provides identification with and validation of our own emotions as well as a measure of schadenfreude.

A triumphal movie about an elderly person who expresses no regret would be unlikely to facilitate much connection between protagonist and audience. Imagine Errol Morris trying to make a movie based on an extended interview with Margaret Thatcher. Despite Morris’s interlocutorial skill at both expressing sympathy for and challenging his interviewees, Margaret Thatcher would be far less interesting than Robert McNamara. Morris might show headlines and photos alluding to her controversial ministry, just as he did for McNamara, but he would not elicit the moments of dismay, regret, self-doubt, and sadness that he elicited from McNamara. Likely, all he would have received was a shrill scolding.

The creators of the Iron Lady have necessarily taken a different tack in their attempt to humanize and ironize Margaret Thatcher. They have seized upon the fact that she now suffers from Alzheimer’s disease. Thus, the movie depicts her as both physically frail and intellectually confused, suffering from the failure of her short-term memory as well as hallucinating through the entire movie about the presence of her deceased husband Denis. The interesting mental mechanism that is evoked is how a person suffering from Alzheimer’s can still channel into her memories, mainly of her triumphs and occasionally of her regrets. The one late life victory Thatcher achieves – only with considerable prodding from her daughter and her handlers – is to divest herself of Denis’ clothing and personal effects and finally to convince herself that he is dead.

At its core, The Iron Lady is a movie about Alzheimer’s disease rather than a movie about politics. The political recollections are too fleeting to deal adequately with her controversial ministry. The movie attempts to depict the mechanisms of a mind remembering, of a mind failing to remember, and of a mind hallucinating to replace the present with the past. It also tries to show what of her character remains and what is lost.

Meryl Streep has received accolades for her portrayal of Thatcher. It has two aspects: the mimicry of the voice, facial expressions, and bearing of the public figure we all remember, and the creation of a victim of Alzheimer’s who happens to live within the body of the former prime minister. Portrayal of people with disabilities requires believably demonstrating the disability while still communicating the person’s essential humanity. When done well, and two instances that come to mind are Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man and Colin Firth in The King’s Speech, the audience will be riveted.

The critic’s consensus is that Meryl Streep has succeeded at doing this here. But the film critics are more knowledgeable about politics than they are about psychology. It would be valuable to hear what gerontologists and psychologists think about The Iron Lady. Do Phyllida Lloyd’s directing, Abi Morgan’s screenplay, and Meryl Streep’s acting ring true? Have they created a clinically realistic version of Alzheimer’s? With the aging of the boomers, the question is an important one. It matters less what the movie says about the actual Margaret Thatcher’s politics than about the character “Margaret Thatcher’s” dementia. If much of what we all think we know comes from the movies, has this movie taught the right lessons?

The leadership of the federal Liberals is McGuinty’s for the asking. While leading the third party in opposition is always a hard grind, after this overview, the conclusion might be that it is preferable to governing Ontario now.

The province is running a substantial deficit in an economy that is not rebounding as quickly as anticipated a few months ago, and the debt ratings agencies are watching carefully, with the possibility of a downgrade looming. In addition, the generosity of the federal government, for example in constantly increasing transfers for health care, can no longer be taken for granted. It has its own fiscal concerns.

The province has little, if any room, for tax increases as a way to achieving fiscal balance. Economically, higher taxes decrease growth. Politically, higher taxes would confirm the “taxman” image the Conservatives, with at least some success, stuck on McGuinty. The alternative – spending cuts – militates against two key components of McGuinty’s style and substance of government.

First, he has taken pride in improvements in the quality of public service, for example decreases in hospital waiting times, reduction in class sizes, and better student performance in province-wide tests. All of these have required increases in spending. Second, after the public sector turmoil of both the Rae and Harris governments, McGuinty has brought a measure of stability and cordiality to the public sector, achieved through generosity in labour settlements, within both the OPS and the broader public sector. In addition, the McGuinty government has directed considerable spending towards key priorities, such as green energy. Spending cuts will make it very difficult to extend all these components of an activist agenda into the next mandate.

The McGuinty government may face two microeconomic challenges, the worsening situation at RIM and a possible collapse of the high-rise condo market in Toronto. RIM’s troubles may be the result of better strategizing and implementation by its competitors. Or they may be the consequence of co-CEO’s who, instead of sticking to their kitting, were attempting in one case to emulate Albert Einstein and in the other Larry Tannenbaum. A turnaround seems increasingly unlikely, so the best-case scenario would be takeover by a competitor and the worst-case bankruptcy. RIM has spawned an agglomeration of technological and entrepreneurial expertise in the Waterloo-area, and losing it would be very damaging to the Ontario economy. Just as the McGuinty Government intervened to prop up the auto industry in 2008, it can be expected to intervene to ensure a transition that maintains Waterloo’s technological and intellectual capital.

If Toronto’s high-rise condo market collapses, one implication will be major layoffs in the construction industry. The collapse of Toronto’s housing market in the early Nineties is a precedent, as the slack was taken up by the construction of Highway 407. The debt rating agencies were cooperative, agreeing not to add spending on the highway to the Rae government’s debt because of the prospect of cost recovery through tolling. The expansion of the Toronto subway system may play a similar role now, though the financial model and the likely reaction of the rating agencies would be different this time.

Politically, while McGuinty no longer has a majority, the Liberals have the advantage of straddling the political centre, making it hard for the Conservatives and NDP to find common cause and bring down the government. Furthermore, McGuinty has an advantage over the Conservatives in that leader Tim Hudak still chooses to wear the mantle of Mike Harris’s common sense revolution. McGuinty’s response would be that, if austerity is inevitable, it would be better to have it delivered by a leader who will do his best to mitigate the damage than by a leader who relishes it.

Ultimately McGuinty’s challenge will be to find some way to both recast himself and maintain continuity with a self-definition that has worked.

This will be my last post of the calendar year. I wish my readers a relaxing holiday season and healthy and happy new year.

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.

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.

Horwath used her stories to attempt to refute Premier McGuinty’s assertion that the quality of health care (as measured by indicators such as waiting times) had improved during the last eight years. So when McGuinty presented data, Horwath adamantly shook her head, claiming that her cases told a different story. It appeared that the two leaders had different versions of reality.

Of course, it is always possible to have individual stories of service delivery problems or failures in an institution that, overall, is improving performance. The stories can reflect mistakes made by service providers or areas that remain problems (so, for example, cancer care could be improving faster than emergency services because spending on the former is increasing faster than the latter). While stories are no substitute for empirical policy analysis for a government in power, their intrinsic drama may be more persuasive in an election campaign than the recitation of statistical indicators.

How is an incumbent to respond in a debate to the opposition’s horror stories? One approach would be to ignore the stories and continue citing statistics. Another would be to admit that there are occasional problems, but that overall service is improving. Yet another might be to recognize that stories of problems always evoke public attention, while stories of successful treatment receive less attention. The incumbent could then argue that for every horror stories there are hundreds of stories of service being delivered successfully.

Both incumbent and opposition are appealing to the electorate to determine whether their own experience matches their claims. Still, the opposition has an advantage here, because, even if people have received good care in the past, the horror stories suggest that they might not in the future.

In Hudak’s case, the stories served both to introduce himself to the electorate and as a touchstone of his policies. His opposition to the Liberals’ proposed tax credit for new immigrants seems rooted in his family experience of getting ahead in Canada without such benefits. McGuinty accused Hudak of exhibiting a thread of xenophobia in his policy positions. Another way McGuinty might have put the point is that Hudak hasn’t transcended his own narrow experience, while he as premier has been required to think more broadly about the province and its role in the international economy.

So stories were a key component of the Ontario leader’s debate. Which of the stories we heard will resonate with the voters? Which will lead voters to identify with a candidate’s values or upbringing? Which will describe a fear, even a nightmare, that the voters share? Now that the debate has raised public attention to what has so far been a lackluster campaign, it will be fascinating to see which of the stories we heard in the debate continue to be retold during the final week of the campaign.

But what does Harper mean by conservative values? In this post, I will try to outline those values, based on what I’ve observed of the actions of the Harper government in Ottawa, the Ford administration in Toronto, the platform of the Ontario conservatives, and the discourse of the conservative commentariat, for example Sun News, and Globe and Mail columnists Neil Reynolds and (occasionally) Preston Manning.

1.Privileging families with children. One can argue that a high birthrate will help offset the demographic challenge of the retirement of the baby boomers. The financial supports provided by the federal Conservatives (Universal Child Care Benefit, Canada Child Tax Benefit, Child fitness tax credit) are not sufficient to affect people’s decisions about whether or not to have children, but they are carefully crafted to win the support of families with children. These payments or tax expenditures prevent an overall reduction in tax rates for those who don’t choose to start families.

2.Ignoring Gays. While conservatives do not propose to reverse the gains that gays have achieved, they will not extend them. Mayor Ford’s snub of Pride Week is indicative of the conservative attitude towards gays: not benign neglect, simply neglect. Ironically, Conservatives are quite willing to embrace ethnic diversity, but sexual diversity is another matter.

3.Choosing Jobs over the Environment. Resource extraction is often polluting, and Conservatives always choose jobs in resource extraction (recent examples tar sands oil and asbestos) over environmental protection. Similarly, Mayor Ford’s edict that the war on the auto is over (see my post of June 3) chooses a life-style that increases urban pollution over alternatives favoring public transit (for example road pricing).

4.Glorifying the Military. Symbolically, the federal government takes every opportunity to glorify the military, for example providing a military presence at citizenship ceremonies. Going beyond symbolism, the government will opt for major hardware expenditures (the F-35) over less expensive alternatives.

5.Suppressing Strikes. Conservatives will declare all public sector workers essential services (for example transit workers in Toronto) and legislate a quick end to many private sector strikes (Air Canada). The irony regarding the latter is that Conservative governments have privatized some public services so as to increase competition.

6.Jettisoning high-brow culture. Conservative governments love mainstream culture that the market will support and will increasingly reduce public funding for alternative or high-brow culture, particularly if that culture is critical of the government or conservative values. The attack on Michael Ignatieff’s intellectualism and cosmopolitanism can be interpreted as an attack on high-brow culture.

7.Favouring “useful” research. In the area of research, conservatives prefer research in the sciences or business to research in the social sciences and humanities, particularly because the latter two tend to be critical of government policy (for example, criminologists showing that crime rates are not increasing and hence questioning the “get tough on crime” policy).

I’ve sketched what I see as some of the essential conservative values. I’m sure there are others I haven’t touched on. Parliamentary page Brigitte DePape’s protest “Stop Harper” was eloquent but missed the point. It’s not just Harper but an entire movement. Conservatives are working hard in their commentary, in decisions regarding societal symbols, and in budgetary decisions to enshrine a particular set of values. They’re fighting a culture war and, it appears, winning. The question is what those who embrace a different set of values will do to articulate and preserve theirs.

How should the Liberals respond? Despite eight years as Premier, McGuinty’s image has never been so clear and unmistakable that he cannot be rebranded. If he doesn’t respond, he will suffer the same fate as Michael Ignatieff, who chose not to respond. Because the election has not been called, the Conservatives’ spending is not subject to legislated limits, and it is not clear to me that the Liberals can match them.

The initial Liberal ad is an “Ontarians are working together” ad, narrated by the premier. It is the political high road. The question is whether the high road will work when your main opponent is building his campaign around negative advertising aimed directly at your leader. In addition, with the recent victories of the federal Conservatives – with such a strong showing in Ontario – as well as the election of Rob Ford as mayor of Toronto, the Ontario Conservatives seem to have the zeitgeist in their favour.

In a blog about the federal election (“If he says you’re fat, you say he’s bald” – March 12, 2011), I argued that one approach to negative campaigning is to find a different topic than the one your opponent is raising, and attack him on that. It seems Tim Hudak is open to at least two principal lines of attack: lack of experience and right-wing ideologue. The Liberals contemplated the latter approach in 2007, but didn’t need to use it because John Tory was open to attack for his championing of public support for religious schools. They could bring it back this time, and more credibly than last time, because Tim Hudak is a CSR (common sense revolutionary) Conservative, rather than a centrist like John Tory. Emphasize Hudak’s links to Harris. Dig up Hudak’s record. Run ads showing Hudak’s face morphing into Harris’s.

Even though it is not what the “you say he’s bald” maxim would dictate, McGuinty could defend his record. He could argue that the Government of Ontario has spent money on important public purposes, such as improving health care and education and protecting the province from the effects of the recession, and that Ontario’s levels of taxation are similar to other comparable jurisdictions. He could remind Ontarians that, as Oliver Wendell Holmes famously said, taxes are the price we pay for civilization. And he could make the point that Hudak is unwilling to pay that price and would therefore wreck civility, if not civilization in the province. Portray him as Ontario’s own Tea Party boy.

I’m old enough to remember the Beatles’ song “Taxman,” which came out in 1966 on their album Revolver. The song referred to Britain’s then confiscatory (95 %) marginal rates of taxation for high income earners and taunted both Labour and Conservative party leaders, Mr. Wilson and Mr. Heath, respectively. Mr. McGuinty is a far less aggressive taxman than either Mr. Wilson or Mr. Heath, and he must make that point. The Liberals will undoubtedly do some polling to assess the effect of the taxman onslaught, but my gut tells me that it is having an impact. If McGuinty wants a third term, a prompt and vigorous response is a necessity.

With anticipation and willingness to revise the sweeping conclusion of the previous paragraph, I came to Terry Fallis’s 2008 first novel “The Best Laid Plans.” Fallis, a former political insider for the Ontario and federal Liberals, and now a public relations practitioner, initially self-published the novel, which indicates publishers didn’t see much of a market in political narrative. Winning the Leacock Medal for Humor in 2008 led McClelland and Stewart to change its mind and publish it.

I begin with a brief plot summary. Protagonist and narrator Daniel Addison, a speechwriter in the office of the Liberal leader of the Opposition decides to leave politics for academe after he discovers his politically-connected girlfriend servicing the Liberal House leader after hours in his ornate Centre Block office. With an election just called, Addison agrees – as a last service to the party leader – to find a Liberal candidate for the rural eastern Ontario riding of Cumberland-Prescott. Such a candidacy will be hopeless, as the riding was traditionally Conservative and represented by the popular Conservative Minister of Finance Eric Cameron. Ultimately Addison found a candidate in Angus McLintock, a University of Ottawa engineering professor nearing retirement, on the promise that he need do no campaigning (reminiscent of the US comedian Pat Paulsen’s credo: if nominating, I will not run, if elected I will not serve). Cameron’s campaign collapses when – how life imitates art ! – he is discovered in full bondage gear engaged in an intense S-and-M session with his frighteningly-efficient middle-aged EA.

Narrowly elected in an election that returns a Conservative minority to power, McLintock quickly establishes himself as a political maverick who, in a thorough reversal of public choice thinking, puts the national interest ahead of the interest of his constituents, and their interest ahead of his self-interest. This creates consternation for both his own Liberals and the governing Conservatives. The tale culminates in a debate on the Conservatives’ budget which proposes deep tax cuts, but no spending increases, in the face of a deep recession. The Conservatives hold the budget vote in the aftermath of a fierce winter storm that has immobilized Ottawa, but through heroic efforts –piloting a home-made hovercraft up the Ottawa River – McLintock makes it back to the House to cast the decisive vote that defeats the budget and forces the government to face the electorate.

As a reader, I found the novel’s fast-moving plot and satire of the conceit and foible of Canadian politicians very entertaining, and I zipped through it quickly, a considerable portion during a short flight from Ottawa to Toronto. Bravo, Mr. Fallis. You certainly deserved the Leacock Medal.

Looking at it from the analytical perspective used and narratives discussed in Governing Fables, it could sit comfortably within the chapter on American political narratives. The political assistant as focalizing narrator is a well-known technique, used in Primary Colors and All the King’s Men. The rare honest politician who attempts to serve the national interest over party ideology, constituency interest or personal self-interest brings to mind both Senator Bulworth in Bulworth and, at his best, President Bartlet in The West Wing.

While The Best Laid Plans is a satire, it clearly fits the heroic fable I presented in Governing Fables. Addison returns to political life on much better terms than the ignominy with which he left at the outset of the novel. McLintock is elevated from a curmudgeonly professor awaiting retirement to a political figure of national significance. As I’ll discuss below, McLintock’s devotion to the national interest ends up benefiting his constituency, the nation is spared a misguided federal budget, and (from McLintock’s point of view and I assume Fallis’s) the novel ends with the hope of political renewal in the coming election.

What makes this novel gentle satire – indeed reminiscent of Leacock – is that it treats politics as a form of Liberal wish-fulfillment. Two examples suffice to make the point. McLintock opposes subsidies to an outdated shoe factory in his riding and pressures the Ontario Environment Ministry to shut down an American-owned aggregates plant that has been polluting the Ottawa River. Forcing both factories out of business will result in the loss of scarce manufacturing jobs. This excruciating political dilemma is, however, solved by a classic deus ex machina — a young engineering colleague at Ottawa U. with an idea for a high-tech business that will set up shop in Cumberland-Prescott and hire and retrain all the laid-off shoe and cement workers.

In the novel, the Conservative tax-cutting budget, while extremely popular with the voters, is unanimously opposed by economists throughout the country, including the C.D. Howe Institute, Conference Board, and Fraser Institute. We know from recent policy debates that in Canada, just as in the US, there is a strong constituency, with many economists as members, for smaller governments, and the use of tax cuts as a lever to achieve that goal, regardless of the macroeconomic context.

These plot choices make The Best Laid Plans a satire, rather than a confrontation with tough political reality, such as the movie The Candidate or many episodes of The West Wing. Nonetheless, the book was an enjoyable read and it has made an important contribution to developing a body of thoughtful Canadian political narratives.

Road tolling has three important virtues. By increasing the cost of road trips it drives out those on which travelers put a low value, with the consequence that higher-value trips move faster. Second, it raises funds that can be used to improve the public transit system. Third, it reduces total automobile emissions, thereby improving the urban environment.

A few days ago, former North York councilor Gordon Chong, who was chosen by Mayor Ford to investigate how to pay for the expansion of the Sheppard subway line, raised the possibility of road tolls. That was immediately dismissed by Mayor Ford, who said, “It’s nonsense. I don’t support road tolls and there’s no road tolls going in.” (quoted in Elizabeth Church, “Rob Ford calls toll road idea ‘nonsense’, Globe and Mail, May 30, 2011). End of subject.

Undoubtedly, Ford sees road tolls as part of the “war on the car.” The first step in Ford’s counter-attack was abolishing the city’s $ 60 auto registration fee. Closing down the bike lanes on Jarvis appears likely. The Mayor killed the Transit City plan because it included ground-level LRT lines that would conflict with cars, and favours much more expensive underground subway lines that don’t conflict with cars. Of course, the greater cost per kilometer means that fewer kilometers of public transit can be built.

But if the Mayor wants to make Toronto a car-friendly city, there are several more ambitious things he could do. Why not finish the Spadina expressway, linking it up to the Gardiner Expressway as had originally been planned. Let’s make downtown more friendly to cars by creating more parking spaces. Let’s turn some of our parks into car-parks, starting with Queen’s Park. Let’s offer the University of Toronto, which owns Queen’s Park, royalties for converting the green portion into a vast parking lot. Allan Gardens is another possibility; after all, it’s used mainly by street people and winos. Parking fees are too high and parking enforcement officers too aggressive, so let’s lower fees and direct the officers to permit a grace period, liberally defined. Also, there are too few service stations downtown, so let’s legislate against the conversion of any existing ones and have the city assemble land for a few new ones. Finally, let’s look to places like Los Angeles, Dallas, and Atlanta, as models of car-friendly cities.

So the only question is how far the Mayor will take his war in favor of the car. The farther he takes it, the more we will see slower car travel in the downtown core, deterioration of public transit because funding goes to the road system, and more pollution of the urban environment due to increasing auto emissions.

There is an old political adage, “if your opponent says you’re fat, you say he’s bald.” There is no question that Rob Ford is fat. I’m not interested in what sits on top of his skull, but rather what is inside. The more I watch, the more I see a person who is dogmatically committed to his preferred solutions, and not even willing to think about alternatives. Successful politicians are both thoughtful and willing to jettison their own dogmas when the facts dictate moving in a different direction. Begin, Nixon, and Harper are all examples from the political right.

The University of Toronto a few years ago ran a billion dollar development campaign with the slogan “great minds for a great university.” Observing Mayor Ford’s discussion of road tolls, the phrase that comes to mind is “a stupid mayor for a stupid city.”

Starting in the debates and continuing since, Layton has managed to project himself as engaged, self-confident, and regaining his health, despite the demands of a national campaign. Jack Layton’s personal story has come to reinforce, perhaps even to dominate the NDP’s policy narrative. In terms of our four-quadrant narratological analysis, the NDP campaign is staking out the upper-left quadrant, combining policies that it claims will benefit the country – more spending on popular programs like training doctors and nurses and improving public pensions – with Jack Layton’s story of personal renewal. Notice that his story isn’t about renewal by achieving an ambition but rather a much more elemental struggle of renewal against illness.

The latest NDP commercial – “you do have a choice” – blends the two narratives of policy and personal renewal very skillfully. It shifts from policy – “I will fund more doctors and nurses and strengthen your pension” – to personality: “you know I’m a fighter. And I won’t stop until the job is done.” Layton presents himself as a fighter, both for policies and for his own health. The ad runs 30 seconds, and Layton, in 12 different clips, is present the entire time. Layton has now become the NDP’s best asset, and the party is shrewdly putting him front and centre for the remainder of the campaign. I want to make clear that Layton isn’t eliciting sympathy or pity because he is ill, but rather that he is eliciting admiration because he is, or at least appears to be, overcoming his illness.

I titled this post “Teflon Jack’s Narrative,” because for the remainder of the campaign Layton will be Teflon. The Liberals and Conservatives will continue to attack his policies. But because his main adversary is his health, it would be unseemly to attack him personally. In contrast, the Conservatives’ constant attacks on Ignatieff have done considerable damage to his image, and the attacks on Harper at least some damage to his. Layton, personally, will be above the fray.

Layton’s powerful personal narrative is strengthening the NDP in the polls, and it may be very difficult for the Liberals (or Bloc in Quebec), by focusing on policy alone, to drive the NDP vote down to its historic level. While I’m not a pollster, it seems to me that the NDP is taking votes from the Liberals, Bloc, and Greens, rather than the Conservatives, in the Atlantic provinces, Quebec and Ontario.  In the west, however, the NDP may be taking votes from the Conservatives. Say that the Conservatives maintain their vote share at 35 percent, but the NDP gains a bigger share of the 65 percent who oppose the Conservatives. The ultimate beneficiary would be the Conservatives. With a deeply split left and centre-left, a majority government of the right might be a possibility.

If a Conservative majority is the outcome, on May 3 the Liberals, NDP, Greens, and at least some Bloc supporters, rather than denying Harper’s coalition accusations, might start to think about some sort of coalition, alliance, or even merger that would allow the majority of the population to regain power.