Categories: Capital Read, Inside the Queensway

Battle of the Globe and Mail political strategists: Bruce Anderson defends dignity, civility, schoolgirls

by kadyomalley on Tuesday, July 14, 2009 1:22pm - 40 Comments

Take that, Tom Flanagan — the high road, that is:

As a citizen who cares about politics and public life, I hope more political leaders will ignore advice to take the low road, and perhaps not even bother trying to do the political calculus. I’m well aware that proving that the high road leads to more votes is difficult. It’s far easier to show how destroying an opponent works.

Mr. Obama’s victory is an example of how dignity can be rewarded, but it also raises the question of whether turning dignity into a winning political formula requires exceptional communications talents. Stylistically, attack is less demanding.

At the risk of sounding all schoolgirlish, shouldn’t dignity and courtesy be embraced for their inherent rewards, as a better way to live a life? For those in politics, respect should be earned by doing things of real public virtue, and to me that isn’t a test of who has better knife skills.

UPDATE: Commenter Hanging Out demonstrates the awesome perspective-in-putting power of Wordle:
Wordle: Flanagan article
Wordle: Anderson schoolgirl rebuttal

*IMPORTANT UPDATE: Yikes! As Commenter A Reader points out, ITQ mistakenly identified Bruce Anderson as a Conservative strategist, which he isn’t — that would be Brother Rick. Apologies to all and sundry Andersons and readers alike.

Tags: , , ,
Bookmark and Share
  • Hanging Out

    C'mon, Kady. We need a serious analysis here:

    Manly Flanagan article:
    http://www.wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/998383/Flanaga…

    Anderson schoolgirlish reply:
    http://www.wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/998388/Anderso…

    • http://intensedebate.com/people/KadyITQ KadyITQ

      I am ashamed to admit that I never even thought of that. Post updated!

      • http://intensedebate.com/people/avr avr

        awesome perspective-in-putting power

        Awesome meta-propagandizing power, I think you mean. Unless Hanging Out truly chose the first random result for each, and didn't – perish the thought! – hit refresh a couple of times to get an ugly novelty font with clashing primary hues for Flanagan's piece, and a nice clean display gothic in gentle grey and maroon tones for the rebuttal.

        • Anon

          What did Anderson write? "Stylistically, attack is less demanding."

          You can repeat that a million times, but the wingnuts will never hear it.

      • http://intensedebate.com/people/futurepm matthew

        Every speech/event you report on from now on should require an accompanying Wordle!

  • DianeG

    Dignifiy and courtesy are in short supply among school girls, as well as the rest of the population. Taking the high road would be a good idea, but I fear Mr. Harper would fail to find it satisfactory.

  • http://intensedebate.com/people/DallanInvictus Dallan Invictus

    The problem this illustrates, that keeps coming up in our politics (and can probably be adapted to other contexts) is that elections often reward qualities that are counterproductive to the work of actually governing. My question is, is it simply the public's nature that tends to reward the better knife fighter with power, or is it an artifact of the electoral system?

    (also, I think that Obama wasn't and isn't exactly a knife-fighting naif, just more subtle about it, with more competent proxies that let him float above the fray, and able to not make it the whole of his pitch.)

  • Mulletaur

    "… and perhaps not even bother trying to do the political calculus."

    Yup, that's how you get to implement your program for government – you lose elections. Really. Does he really take us all for such ninnies ?

    "Mr. Obama’s victory is an example of how dignity can be rewarded …"

    Mr Obama's victory is an example of how an overwhelming desire for change is rewarded, and even then, it wasn't rewarded that well given the electoral college votes.

    "For those in politics, respect should be earned by doing things of real public virtue …"

    You get to do things of 'real public virtue' by winning elections and implementing your program. Until then, you get to whinge, whine and complain, and not much else.

    And what exactly are 'things of real public virtue' ? For Conservatives, this means following a socially and/or fiscally conservative agenda. For the NDP, this means following a socialist agenda. For the Bloc, this means following a separatist agenda. For the Liberals, this simply means good governance.

    • Sigh

      So you would argue that the end justifies the means?

      • Mulletaur

        Yes, but only when the means are proportionate to the ends sought, and when the rules are followed.

        • Sigh

          I suspect that opinions on proportionality would vary widely.

          • Mulletaur

            That doesn't mean we shouldn't argue about it. We could all learn that way.

  • Livebloggin Junkie
  • A reader

    I thought Bruce Anderson was a Liberal. Aren't you getting him mixed up with Rick Anderson?

    • http://intensedebate.com/people/KadyITQ KadyITQ

      Yikes — you're absolutely right, and I've corrected the post with an explanation.

      • A reader

        Well, I wasn't 100% sure on that, but I was pretty sure. Black cats, white cats … it's so hard to tell them apart anyways! ;-)

    • Chicken Eater

      Actually Kady, he was the official Tory pollster in the 1997 election. (that would be the Progressive Conservative Party) Nanos took the job over in the 2000 campaign for Joe Clark.

  • Dan Gardner

    Link, dammit!

    • http://intensedebate.com/people/KadyITQ KadyITQ

      Since BigCityLib is apparently too shy to link to his site, I'll do it for him: Enjoy! (I haven't watched it yet, but I hope it includes Ken Boessenkool's heartrending rebuttal.

      • http://intensedebate.com/people/theotherhand theotherhand

        Thanks, Kady. You can also link right to the video by clicking on bigcitylib's username (I just discovered).

      • http://intensedebate.com/people/KadyITQ KadyITQ

        Aw, I didn't want to hijack his hits.

        • http://intensedebate.com/people/DallanInvictus Dallan Invictus

          Fair point, removed. We'll just stick with you stealing his tease mantle.

  • John W.

    The high road today, Tim Powers in the Globe. Look it up yourself.

  • hosertohoosier

    I think you can make the case for dignity, but the article cited makes a poor one. For one thing it points to Obama as a great paragon of dignity. Firstly, Obama ran many negative ads and spent more than McCain on negative advertising. Secondly, much of his rhetoric involved attacking Bush and tying McCain to Bush (sometimes fairly, other times not so). Thirdly, being a frontrunner he never had to gamble on extremely negative attacks. Fourthly, the media coverage of the McCain campaign was fairly negative (while that of Obama wasn't), so Obama didn't have to attack as much.

    Partisanship and aggression is the result of particular circumstances not the cause of them.

    • http://intensedebate.com/people/Ed_Sweeney Ed_Sweeney

      "I think you can make the case for dignity…"

      I think you SHOULD make the case for dignity, every chance you get. I think both Obama AND McCain should be congratulated on what was an uncharacteristically clean, yet hard-fought, campaign.

      And really, does the Maclean's spell checker not yet recognize the words Obama and Macleans??? What's up with that?

      • http://intensedebate.com/people/Crit_Reasoning Crit_Reasoning

        Huh? What spell checker?

      • hosertohoosier

        Sleazebags can't be good, effective leaders? In Canada, our sleaziest Prime Ministers would include John A. Macdonald (Pacific Rail Scandal), Louis St. Laurent (Alberta pipeline scandal), Brian Mulroney and Jean Chretien. Most would consider John A. one of the best; St. Laurent and Chretien both engineered two of the most prosperous periods in Canadian history, and while Mulroney's legacy is mixed, it includes being vindicated on free trade and the GST; playing a big part in bringing down apartheid South Africa; being Canada's greenest Prime Minister (acid rain treaty); and preventing the abortion debate from taking the proportions it has down south.

        Of 20th century US presidents, Warren Harding (teapot dome scandal), Bill Clinton, Richard Nixon, and LBJ (rigged elections, lied in gulf of Tonkin resolution) are the standard-bearers of sleaze. Clinton brought in peace, prosperity, and the infrastructure for the US to continue to lead in IT. Nixon launched the first wave of environmental laws, got the US out of Vietnam, ended the draft, normalized relations with China (a trade relationship now worth billions), used the China card to get detente with the Soviets, ended the Gold Standard, massively reformed welfare and would have brought in universal healthcare were it not for Watergate. LBJ reigned over the most prosperous period in US history; his war on poverty narrowed the gap between both rich and poor and black and white more quickly than at any other time in US history; and brought in the most important civil rights reforms of any president (his foreign policy was a disaster, however). Of the four, only Warren Harding was a fairly lousy president, and even then, at least the economy did well.

        History is unfair to the low-down and dishonest – preferring incompetent goodie two-shoes like George Washington or Abe Lincoln (Washington was a lousy general with few accomplishments as president, Lincoln nearly lost a war against a backwards agrarian state, and his appointment of Johnson as VP and lack of postwar planning ensured that reconstruction would be a nightmare).

        • http://www.intensedebate.com/people/Ed_Sweeney Ed_Sweeney

          Great post, thanks. I enjoyed it. It provides a bit of substance for this recurring theme. None of it makes a compelling case against dignity. The case for dignity is that we live in an environment where popular media is almost totally consumed with the extravagant or spectacular, and well-formed politics is neither. That results in political coverage being oriented toward the most ridiculous aspects of politics. That, in turn, results in a public conception of politics that is improperly skewed. One way to remedy that situation, because the media is not getting any better, is to reward the practice.

          Machiavelli had a lot of strong arguments, but so did Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau and Marx, among others. And it is very simple to label someone a 'sleazebag' in politics, that doesn't make them one.

  • http://intensedebate.com/people/OntarioTown OntarioTown

    Interesting timing Kady – considering your other post today on the rape issue – Barrie and the really low road.

  • http://intensedebate.com/people/WDM WDM

    As I noted yesterday, the problem is asking either side to blink. The sad part is just how disconnected they are from the electorate. In regards to the Obama comparison, it is a fair one to a point. I think using positive messaging can work, but in the US the rhetoric and partisanship was a symptom and in Canada it's the disease. While we can all debate the various policies of recent governments, I don't think what we face now – from an issue perspective – can't really compare to the slew of things Americans were facing last year. President Bush was probably the most unpopular President in American history – war in Iraq, an economy in tatters, the fallout from Katrina, torture and more.

  • http://intensedebate.com/people/M_to_the_T M_to_the_T

    That Coyne video should get it's own blog heading/post here McC's….

  • http://gmail.com jessica

    its absolutely rite… i agree with this.. thanks for sharing information with us..

  • Harvey

    First, I think this small selection from Bruce's piece is somewhat unfair to his argument in total.

    But nevertheless, as a pollster and an Earnslciffe founder, I think its beyond foolish to think that politics will embrace dignity and courtesy as its operating philosophy.

    For heaven's sake, Rep's and Dem's — including Obama — have been accusing each other of the worst crimes for over a hundred years in order to win votes. There was no golden age of civility. And virture, in Obama's case, did not defeat wickedness in the last election. Obama was simply better at keeping the attacks out of the main stream press.

  • http://bigcitylib.blogspot.com bigcitylib

    Obama hit back, though, at least through surrogates.

    OT, but check out Coyne at the Manning Center on youtube. Its incendiary.

  • http://intensedebate.com/people/KadyITQ KadyITQ

    I watched it live, and it was, indeed, amazing.

  • knick

    When Coyne is done with you, you're *well* done.

  • john g

    Nice. He should send that clip to Hollywood if they ever want to remake Scent of a Woman. Hoo-ah!

  • Calgary Junkie

    I can just picture Bruce Anderson, coaching the Reds, in a football game against Tom Flanagan, coaching the Blues. The Blues move the ball up and down the field, passing and rushing, racking up TD after TD.

    Meanwhile, Anderson only allows the Reds to pass. No rushing allowed for his guys. It's just not dignified, playing smash mouth football and all that. As a result, his team gets stopped on just about every drive, eking out a couple of field goals.

    So in the end, the Blues win, for the umpteenth time. Flanagan gets carried off the field in triumph, by his players. The media buy Anderson a sassparilla at the bar, as they listen to him pontificate on how the game of football SHOULD be played, in the parallel universe they all wish they lived in.

  • http://intensedebate.com/people/WDM WDM

    You can picture all that? That's kind of weird man.

  • http://intensedebate.com/people/PhilCP PhilCP

    But who will think about the fans? And I'm talking about the potential fans, those who currently don't bother to buy season tickets because they don't approve of the way the game is played.

    Sports really isn't a great analogy. In the world of sports people can choose other forms of entertainment if they don't enjoy football because of its smashmouth nature. But politics affects everyone, and as such it should do a better job of engaging everyone.

Previous

Next

From Macleans