I’ve been nursing a theory ever since Stephen Harper and the federal Conservative Party went for the politics of division in the 2015 election campaign. By this, I mean they started to play on xenophobic fears to draw a line between “old stock Canadians”1 and “other”. It was perhaps a foregone conclusion that when they brought in an Australian political strategist late in the campaign, that we were going to see dog-whistle politics.2 The whistle he was using was the same one that came from the Trump campaign as he sought the Republican nomination.
I like to think that’s the moment that Harper truly lost the election. He was in trouble before that, but for many Canadians, his apparent promotion of fearing immigration sealed it. We didn’t and don’t want to be that kind of country. Later on, when it was time to choose a new leader for the Conservative Party, Kellie Leitch picked up the theme and talked about a “Canadian Values Test” for prospective immigrants. For the most part, Canada reacted badly — though she didn’t seem to take much notice, failing to realize that “Canadian Values” are the collective common values of the people who are Canadians, and not the people who agree with a list on paper. As the people who are Canadians change, so do their values — this doesn’t need to be due to immigration; it’s also due to generational factors as each successive generation values different things than its predecessors. But I digress. The point is she was describing something that people didn’t want, and fortunately, something the Conservative Party ultimately rejected.
Of course, Justin Trudeau’s Liberals sailed to a convincing victory on his rhetoric of what he believed Canadians wanted, how we saw ourselves, and on that basis, what direction he wanted to go. It was largely aspirational, and markedly different from the Harper campaign in that respect. Perhaps some older Canadians even hoped to hear his father Pierre Trudeau’s vision of a Just Society in some of Justin’s rhetoric.3
South of the border, Mr. Trump clinched his party’s nomination without actually espousing the party’s historical ideals, and railroaded ahead into the White House. The whole time, he campaigned on making America great again without ever actually describing what that meant, though it apparently involved a wall to keep out those pesky Mexicans. That, and Hilary Clinton’s emails seemed to comprise the major thrust of his campaign. What was missing was any sense of a clear vision for America. It was by and large a fear-driven negative campaign with no positives to draw upon.
I’m currently looking at a civic campaign where the incumbent is talking about the kind of city he wants to see in the future, while the challengers are for the most part talking about what they think the incumbent is doing wrong. Perhaps it’s the nature of the incumbent/challenger campaign posture, but I tend to think it’s more than that.
So here’s the theory, the litmus test I’ve been thinking about. If a politician cannot, or is not articulating a vision for his city / state / province / region / country, he’s a poor bet to lead it no matter how many disparaging things he finds to say about his competitor. My theory is to strongly discount any politician who’s not talking about his vision for the region he wants to represent. A politician should be inspirational, and make you want to follow an appealing vision. Think Barack Obama as your model. Like Martin Luther King before him, Obama knew how to inspire people. People need to follow vision, and political leaders need to have one.
No vision? Hard pass.
Footnotes
- Wikipedia: Old Stock Canadians
- Wikipedia: Dog-whistle politics
- Whether it was there or not, it’s hard to imagine anyone — even his son — ever articulating it as well as Pierre Trudeau.