The claims that negative ads excite political energy and hence are good for discourse — yes, some people claim to believe this — fall down when we observe that their effect is spiralling nonsense from the start. An attack ad is a deliberate appeal to unreason through fear, hatred, or suspicion, and suggests primarily that the attacking party has nothing rational to offer. If we let discursive idiocy of this order succeed, we really would be a sad lot; but the fact is, attack ads don’t even work reliably, which means a party that resorts to them is being stupid as well as rude. The motive of positional advantage is so compelling a goal, however, that the cycle goes on and on, until the incessant and short-sighted name-calling blankets a miasma of disgust over the entire public sphere.
And if you doubt that these incivility ratchets can disable forums of democratic debate more important than television — well, the Visitors’ Gallery is open. At least, it is sometimes.
uestion: what is the only thing worse than un-civil discourse? Answer: no discourse at all.The genius of parliamentary supremacy is its flexibility; unfortunately, that is also its central weakness. Stephen Harper’s prorogues of Parliament, especially the recent bogus, Colvin-inspired Olympics timeout, exhibit an all-too-familiar degree of cynicism about the institutions of democracy. Even Harper might have realized that he had crossed some kind of line when the generally conservative editors of The Economist denounced his “naked self-interest” in asserting that “Canadians care more about the luge than the legislature.”
Self-interest is not the issue; neither is it whether Canadians are always vigilant about watching Parliament. In a good system, we are not required to be; that’s why it’s called representative government. We trust elected politicians to maintain our interests, not just their own. The real issue is Harper’s breach of trust, and his implicit war on the very idea of political discourse. These bland clampdowns on debate are worse than any swapping of rowdy jibes inside the chamber, and underline this government’s status as the great spoilsport of modern Canadian politics. Begging off on technical grounds (the governor general said it was okay) or floating tactical comparisons to Jean Chrétien (I know you are, but what am I?) just confirm the case. In the first instance, the argument is factually valid, even while clearly in violation of the spirit of the law, not to mention the public interest. And on the second point — well, maybe nobody taught the young Stephen Harper the celebrated dictum that two wrongs don’t make a right.
The claims that nobody cares about this constitutional law stuff, meanwhile, were given the lie over and over. Ordinary citizens complained bitterly at the disappearance of the one piece of semi-transparent governance in our whole system. That, at least, is reassuring, in the way that terrorism-inspired acts of airline passenger heroism are reassuring. We should not have to resort to the threat of badness in order to highlight goodness, but better that than no goodness at all. La Rochefoucauld said hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue, and Harper’s hypocrisy cast a bright light on the dedication of many Canadians to the project of democratic discourse.
Such is the good news. The bad news is that some serious damage has already been done, and a larger danger raised than the possibility that Harper will continue in his dismantling of legitimacy, busting new moves in this provincial game of Goon King of the Hill. He will do that until Canadians stop him. No, the real danger is that the value of discourse may be permanently lowered in the Canadian polity. Even the protests are part of that devaluation, so long as they go ignored. Look, you can object all you want; you just can’t change anything.
The only possible philosophical justification for a parliamentary system, where legislative and executive functions are mixed, is that it remains open to challenge from within as it crafts and executes policy. The checks and balances have to be realized in the act of law-making. This openness should generate healthy debate at all levels — that is the point. Citizens are willing to tolerate a certain amount of rough talk to that end, so long as the rudeness does not generate a collective action problem in the form of parliamentary chaos. Pierre Trudeau’s “fuddle-duddle” episode of 1971, in which he allegedly mouthed the words “fuck off” to an Opposition MP and then told reporters it might have been something like “fuddle-duddle,” did not generate one, in part because it was not deployed for discursive advantage. It was just what an expletive should be: a slightly shocking intervention that snaps your eyes open, like a good joke. And it was only mouthed, not spoken.
Speaking of good jokes, where is the wit in parliamentary debate? Nobody expects the member from Whosit Centre to be Disraeli or Sheridan reborn, but how about a little leavening, at least? Wit, and maybe its natural counterpart, ideas. It is becoming harder and harder to remember that Michael Ignatieff was once hailed as the new Trudeau, the intellectual as leader. Having tied himself in knots trying to keep his scholarly credentials and American-identity flirtations at a distance, even as he failed miserably in the role of ordinary guy, he has become a man in desperate search of an identity. Partly this is just what we shall have to label the Hortons Constraint, or the Tim Block, of Canadian politics. If you want to get elected, you cannot be seen to prefer Starbucks’ coffee to Timmy’s brown brew, any more than you could openly avow atheism in that grand residence on Pennsylvania Avenue.
Instead of dealing with these challenges gracefully, by finding a populist payload for innovative political ideas, Ignatieff has preferred to disavow his former incarnation as a thinker. Typically, he has gone ever further, giving himself permission to dis intellectuals in general, from his new perspective as a real-world actor. But even that would be tolerable, if somewhat pathetic personally, were the basic ideas of rejuvenated liberalism or the just society still somehow in play. But they’re not. Ignatieff’s Liberals have been powerless during these recent abuses of Parliament, because his guiding role as chief articulator of policy is nowhere evident. The initial Liberal response to prorogation was...yes, attack ads targeting a scary Harper with “something to hide.”
To be fair, the responses grew in both thought and power as the popular outcry unfolded, getting back to the anti-democraticfoolishness of the move. But they did little to suggest that Ignatieff was his own man. His glossy new pragmatism on prorogation was both in the grand Liberal tradition of stealing platform planks from the New Democrats and of a pace with his habit of being both for and against just about everything, dislocating his shoulders trying to agree with everyone at once. Torture? Yes, but no. The Alberta oil sands? Yes, but no.
This sort of thing gives pragmatic politics a bad name, as in compromise and blowing with the wind rather than commitment to a process of debate and justification. Civility does not mean you never take a stand or disagree with someone else. That, after all, is what good politicians do. Civility means that you take those stands and argue those disagreements for the sake of the discourse itself, for its continued openness and vibrancy. So policy-making will not be a matter of brokering interests while shadowing the incumbency, opposition will not be a series of tired attacks, and governance as a whole will not consist merely of one damn punch after another. Good policy will emerge from good government. Duh.
