Desperately Seeking Ideas

In Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985), Neil Postman documents how, because of the pervasiveness of television, politics has become show business. In his foreword, he cites Aldous Huxley’s fear “that the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance [and] . . . we would become a trivial culture.” In a media age when the cult of personality is ever-present, there is no possibility, Postman observed, of a fat man becoming president, of a man of ideas besting a salesman or sound-bite expert capable of delivering a knockout blow. Twenty years later, an updated version of Amusing Ourselves to Death might well include the public-opinion survey in a list of phenomena that reduce our understanding of current events.

As we prepare for an election, it is instructive to look at media coverage of past leaders’ debates in this context. Invariably, after one of these events, the news the next day is not about what actually transpired during the exchanges. Most day-after commentary focuses on two things: who “won,” and how each candidate scored points or prevented his or her opponent from scoring them. It is sport. Or it is politics-as-entertainment. One imagines fast-forwarding to Belinda Stronach, resplendent, sashaying across the podium as the new face of conservatism.

While providing scant information on actual policy initiatives, the day-after-a-debate reporting exhibits considerable certainty vis-à-vis the winners and losers for the simple reason that polling has already been done to substantiate the point of view being offered. Without supporting poll results, the commentary would be relegated to “opinion” and not considered fair comment within the normal standards of news reporting.

Canadians largely agree on the problems facing the country, and politicians who slavishly follow polls garner media attention when they dwell on these problems rather than risk offering solutions. This, combined with fixating on their opponent’s shortcomings, means that the tenor of political discourse is invariably negative. The media, which report on the same polling results, in turn analyze party platforms and policies not on their merits, but on the impact such policies are likely to have on the next set of polling results—or, ultimately, on the number of votes lost or gained.

The primary problem is that public-opinion surveys are not only driving the agenda, but are making themselves the news story. Were it not for the simple fact that electorates typically achieve consensus around problems (e.g., health care, the environment, relations with the US), but rarely around solutions, such surveys would be useful and newsworthy. But the contract that citizens have with their political representatives is a simple one: we know the problems; your job is to find creative and feasible solutions to them (and be judged accordingly). The breakdown that is occurring is due to poll-saturated politicians parroting problems—and problems only—back to an electorate that has already identified them.

On April 12, 2005, Conservative leader Stephen Harper told reporters, “One thing that’s become increasingly obvious in this parliament is that [Prime Minister Paul Martin] has no agenda for the country and Canadians will be, in my view, looking for one . . . . We’ll make sure we articulate that in a campaign.” That night, editors at the Toronto Sun agreed on the banner headline “No One Wants An Election” to lead the following day’s op-ed page. Two-thirds of the way down the Sun’s opinion piece, the following was written: “But what all three polls also show is that the public is massively against a June election. Depending on how the question is worded, opposition ranges from 54 percent to 87 percent.”

Depending on how the question is worded . . . .

My suspicion is that Harper is right about Canadians wanting a real agenda. Furthermore, were the various poll questions worded in the positive lights of participatory democracy and a chance for renewal, I believe Canadians would embrace this election like few others in recent memory. The cynicism so often discussed is perhaps more accurately described as the frustration of a highly intelligent electorate, one that realizes that the problems we face as a nation are new, complex, and multi-layered, and demand leadership, risk, and bold ideas.

Historically, the test of leadership was rarely restricted to a politician’s ability to gauge the public mood. Rather, it was the ability to create a consensus where none existed, and to generate collective political will out of incoherent and disparate views. Whether it was Gandhi organizing the salt marches to end imperial rule in India, Franklin D. Roosevelt leading Americans out of the Depression with the New Deal, or Churchill’s exhortations to continue the war effort as the Blitz devastated London, such actions provide the yardsticks for gauging leadership.

Canada is not without its own examples of leaders who paddled against the tide of public opinion. Robert Borden boldly took a colonial and submissive Canada into the First World War and gave the country its first real sense of nationhood. Lester Pearson shook the nation out of its insularity and turned Canada into one of the world’s great middle powers. Pierre Trudeau’s Just Society laid the seeds for the pluralistic, multicultural, and tolerant culture that now shapes the foundation of our national identity. Brian Mulroney’s free-trade initiative was extremely contentious, but is now largely accepted as part of the political landscape. Even Paul Martin’s efforts as finance minister to wrestle down the deficit and Jean Chrétien’s attempt to deflate separatist sentiment with his Clarity Bill represented leadership that produced grudging admiration, once the howls of outrage had subsided.