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A comment on my post about Eliot Spitzer asked about the role the media play in disseminating stories about the personal lives of its politicians, and suggested that the Canadian media are less likely to do so than the American media. I think the point is well-taken, and have some suggestions why this may be so.

In the US, the constitution mandates that the Senate provide “advice and consent” for presidential appointments of executive officials, ambassadors, and judges of the Supreme Court. Confirmation hearings have thus provided a forum for rigorous public scrutiny by senators of the professional and personal lives of nominees. Such hearings provide a rationale for the media to undertake its own investigations. Canada has no comparable forum.

On the Canadian side, Pierre Trudeau, hitherto the most successful politician of Canada’s second century – and someone who lived a colorful personal life – famously proclaimed that the state has no place in the bedrooms of the nation. This influenced public attitudes, and the nation’s media appear to have followed, and continue to follow, this dictum.

We have an interesting case in point right now. Noted blogger, and Globe and Mail columnist, Norman Spector, posted last Dec. 24, that Laureen Harper for the first time accompanied Prime Minister Harper in his Christmas eve interview to dispel rumors that they had separated. Within six hours, the Globe and Mail pulled the post, with the justification that “it fell short of [the paper’s] standards with respect to fairness, balance, and accuracy.” So far, the MSM have not returned to the topic.

Spector’s rationale for posting was that if the Prime Minister’s marriage was in trouble, it could affect his performance and lead to bizarre decisions and hence “the troubled marriage could impact all Canadians.”

The counter-argument is based on the value of privacy and the assumption of professionalism. In this view, politicians, like all other citizens, have a right to privacy about their personal lives. The assumption is that the Prime Minister is a professional, in the sense that, when acting as a public official, he is able to put aside all personal matters and focus solely on his public responsibilities. Like most Canadians, I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt, in that I assume they can keep their personal baggage from affecting their performance at work.

I think it isn’t a bad thing if this story stays in the blogosphere for now. Because it is in the blogosphere, the MSM are watching it carefully, and, if there are any further developments, they won’t be able to ignore it any longer. If Prime Minister Harper and his wife are attempting to work out strains in their marriage, they should be able to do so without the attention of the MSM. And, if there is absolutely no truth in the rumors, little harm has been done to Prime Minister Harper.

The protagonist in C.P. Snow’s novel Corridors of Power, a politician who is having an affair, quotes an old Anglican Church maxim, “You can get away with unorthodox behavior. Or you can get away with unorthodox doctrine. But you can’t get away with both of them at the same time.” That, in a nutshell, explains Eliot Spitzer’s political demise. Call it double hubris.

We all know about the unorthodox behavior. In his recent documentary, Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer, film-maker Alex Gibney elaborates on the unorthodox doctrine: aggressively prosecuting the financial sector while he was New York’s Attorney General, and aggressively trying to push reform on a Republican-controlled state senate and a corrupt legislature. Gibney suggests that the enemies Spitzer made in business helped spread the news about his use of prostitutes and, when the word was out, his political enemies pushed for his resignation.

I’m a big fan of Gibney’s documentary style. Lots of face-forward interviews of key players in the story, all of whom, including Spitzer and his favorite dates, were eager to talk. A sharp-edged, bright lights, big city aesthetic for depicting life among the New York elite. Quick transitions from scene to scene, accompanied by an ironic musical score.

But the documentary leaves unanswered one key question. Given the political risks he was already taking for his unorthodox doctrine, why did Spitzer indulge in the unorthodox behavior? Maybe he knows, and the answer would have been too personal or too wounding to share with the world. Or maybe he himself doesn’t know. So I will speculate.

For a rock star, sex comes with the territory. Groupies offer it, and no one condemns rock stars who accept it. Men in power – whether it is economic, political, or intellectual power – are, at least to a certain extent, like rock stars, and they get offers. Many, at one time or another, take advantage of them.

One of the best portrayals of this is the classic Robert Redford movie The Candidate. As the campaign of the senatorial candidate portrayed by Redford builds momentum, we see one excited young supporter ask him to sign her bra and another flash her panties with his button pinned to them. He has a solid and loving marriage, and easily dismisses these clumsy advances, but we see another, much more sophisticated woman hovering around his campaign, flashing him glances that indicate they are having an affair.

For a long time male politicians got away with recreational sex and even the occasional affair. Jack Kennedy took this to unparalleled heights. Technology that easily keeps records (like the saved text messages sent by Tiger Woods), coupled with reduced public acceptance of promiscuity have made this unorthodox behavior much riskier. Governor Clinton emulated President Kennedy and got away with it; President Clinton didn’t.

We can assume that Eliot Spitzer knew that free sex was not on, so instead he went for what his consorts referred to as “the girlfriend experience.” But the movie indicates he knew this, too, was very risky, so he took great efforts to cover his tracks, for example paying in cash.

What was the thrill Spitzer was looking for? The act of sex with someone other than his wife? Or the illicitness of the act? Or both? What led him to do it? Boredom with a smart and attractive wife? Frustration at work? Rebellion against aging? Powerful feelings of entitlement? Rage at the demanding love of ambitious parents? Again, Spitzer didn’t tell the world, and there’s no reason he should. But if he wants to come to terms with himself, he will have to share it with his analyst/therapist and his wife.

What does this all mean for the practice of politics? As long as public attitudes in the US, unlike those in at least some European countries, condemn rather than condone promiscuity in their politicians, then the set of job requirements for politicians becomes more exacting. If you’re married, have a sexually fulfilling marriage, or act as if you do.

I haven’t met any of the four candidates for Toronto City Council in Ward 25 (Don Valley West), so I’m judging mainly from the messages on their websites. Jaye Robinson stands out, particularly because of her work on public-private partnerships in Toronto’s Economic Development Department. She understands how municipal government can work creatively with the private sector. I was also impressed by MP Rob Oliphant’s recent endorsement of Jaye.

Tanya Hostler has run a low-key campaign, without signs or flyers – at least that I’ve noticed. That’s unfortunate, because she too has a background in municipal public administration and lots of good policy ideas.

The incumbent, Cliff Jenkins, as well as the fourth candidate, Joanne Dickins, are both believers in lower taxes and less government. That may play well with those well-off voters in Ward 25 who have no need of municipal government because, as much as possible, they purchase services privately (for example education and recreation). But other voters in the ward do. I, for one, make considerable use of public recreational facilities, and don’t want them to deteriorate. Unlike Robinson, Dickins and Jenkins have no conception of how government can be used creatively to improve the quality of life.

I did have one non-encounter with Cliff Jenkins. Some years ago, I had the city replace the water pipe to my house and, intending to replace the pipe leading from the property line to the house, I paid $100 for a new water meter. In any event, I changed my mind about replacing the second pipe. The city water department called me a few weeks later and threatened to fine me if I didn’t return the meter immediately and, to add insult to injury, refused to refund the $100. I wrote a blog post about it and sent Jenkins an email. He didn’t respond. I consider constituency service the first responsibility of a councilor. Jenkins failed on this score. I wouldn’t vote for him under any circumstances. But what’s better this time is that I have not only a reason to vote against Jenkins but good reasons to vote for Robinson.

I’ve been looking at the Government of Canada portal and Prime Minister Harper’s website as well as the White House portal. The differences between the US and Canadian sites are dramatic.

In a word, the essence of the Canadian sites is political messaging, and the message is all about Stephen Harper. Both the Canada portal and the PM’s site have three columns, and the eye is drawn to the top of the middle column – the widest column – which contains news stories almost always featuring the photogenic (or not) Prime Minister.

The Prime Minister’s site has the news of the day dominating the central column, priorities and utilities in the left column and video and audio in the right column. Today, there are 7 – count

Earlier this week I was at former Saskatchewan premier Allan Blakeney’s Toronto launch of his new book An Honourable Calling: Political Memoirs, published by the University of Toronto Press. Blakeney and I were co-authors of an earlier book Political Management in Canada (University of Toronto Press, 1998). Here are a few impressions from the evening.

Two of the guests were former Ontario Premier Bill Davis and Attorney-General Roy McMurtry. While Davis and McMurtry were and are Tories and Blakeney was and is a NDP’er, they were politicians during the same period, and were all deeply involved in the repatriation of the Canadian constitution in the early Eighties. This was clearly a significant life experience, and their mutual affection is far stronger than the differences in their political allegiances.

Rather than the traditional reading from his book, Blakeney and I continued the dialogue we initiated in Political Management in Canada. In Blakeney’s view, political campaigns should involve parties presenting their ideas in some detail, and providing opportunities for voters to meet the leader face-to-face and unscripted. We agreed that the American presidential primaries – particularly the early ones – live up to this ideal, but Blakeney decried the Canadian practice of leaders campaigning in a tightly-controlled cocoon, reciting a purposely vague message.

Looking back at Blakeney’s eleven years as premier (1971-1982), he was called upon to guide Saskatchewan’s transition from what the late sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset called “agrarian socialism” to a resource rich economy. In this, Blakeney’s challenge was to balance three priorities: prosperity for the province, efficiency in government, and equity for the entire society, in particular its large aboriginal population. I asked him to focus on current-day Saskatchewan, and one development of which he was particularly critical was the privatization of the Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan and of Cameco Corporation. Both were crown corporations started during the Blakeney Government, and Blakeney believes that they should have remained as Crown corporations, which would have searched within Saskatchewan rather than outside for their leadership, and would have been more likely to allocate their earnings to benefit all the people of Saskatchewan.

I urge you to read Blakeney’s book. It is in part a history of the policies and programs of one of Canada’s most effective and creative provincial governments. It is also a personal narrative about how someone from a Nova Scotia Tory background – and Blakeney reminded us that none of his ancestors ever voted for the CCF – came to join the political left, embracing democratic socialism as an ideal and a program. Blakeney also writes about his post-political career of the last two decades, encompassing academe and numerous public causes such as world federalism, aboriginal development, and political institution-building in South Africa. Blakeney is very experienced and very wise and there is much we can learn from him. I recognized that two decades ago when we taught public management together and recognize it just as much today.