Beyond The Commons

Aaron Wherry covers all the goings-on in and around Parliament Hill. Follow Aaron on Twitter: @aaronwherry

Categories: Beyond The Commons, Capital Read

The liberal dilemma

by Aaron Wherry on Friday, August 5, 2011 11:45am - 9 Comments

Stanley Greenberg outlines the trouble for Democrats in the United States.

This distrust of government and politicians is unfolding as a full-blown crisis of legitimacy sidelines Democrats and liberalism. Just a quarter of the country is optimistic about our system of government — the lowest since polls by ABC and others began asking this question in 1974. But a crisis of government legitimacy is a crisis of liberalism. It doesn’t hurt Republicans. If government is seen as useless, what is the point of electing Democrats who aim to use government to advance some public end?

… it has been the conservatives, the Tea Party members and the anti-immigrant groups who understand the anger with government, and rush in to exploit it. Perhaps now, with the debacle in Washington, liberals will become instinctively angry with this illegitimate government and build their politics from there.

Consider, in this vein, the rhetoric Jack Layton used in the last election. A few excerpts from the speech he gave on the last night of the election.

Do you think it’s time to fix Ottawa? Is it time for leadership you can trust? … Canadians are turning away from the same old scandals and from the tired old debates. Everywhere I’ve been, Canadians are turning towards a better choice, towards leadership they can trust … Because, my friends, for too long, Ottawa has put families at the end of the line. We’ve seen leaders promise to clean up scandals, but just replace them with scandals of their very own. We’ve seen leaders who would rather divide Canadians than bring them together. And for too long, your leaders have said one thing and then they’ve turned around and done another…

Now, it’s time for Ottawa to live up to the Canadian spirit. We can do better. It doesn’t have to be this way … But, my friends, in these last few days, bringing change to Ottawa isn’t up to me. It’s up to you. It starts with a vote—your vote.

Tags: Barack Obama, democrats, Jack Layton, liberalism, liberals, NDP, Ottawa, Stanley Greenberg, washington

More by Aaron Wherry

TonyAdams

My missus’ iPad stock potfolio app does not show info anymore, just a photo of Grim Reaper appears now – the Liberal dilemma is that we have run out of other people’s money.

Left wing constantly want to increase government and services it provides but we can’t afford to pay for our generosity to ourselves. Economic situation of western world will improve when we stop with middle classes picking each other’s pockets, which is how our economy functions at moment.

Thatcher ~ They [socialists] always run out of other people’s money. It’s quite a characteristic of them.

Canadian Press – Aug 2011 ~ Concerns over the U.S. economy and Europe’s debt problems pushed the Toronto stock market sharply lower while demand worries continued to pressure oil and metal prices …..

Tweet ~ think of it as “reducing our fiscal footprint” — this will make the polar bears richer.

Anonymous

Hint: Democracy is socialist.

The problem isn’t that we can’t afford to pay for it, the problem is that those who control how the resources are distributed are those with the bulk of the resources that we’d need to afford it.

Anonymous

Yup, the only real difference is between leftwing and rightwing socialism.

Tony’s a rightwing socialist.

Anonymous

I don’t see this as a ‘liberal’ problem. No one in their right mind thinks society can function without a govt….so what they’re quibbling about is the role and size of govt.

And at that point people separate into those that live in the past and figure a town council is sufficient…like the old TV show Northern Exposure….and the people who live in the present…and realize that’s no longer adequate in a world far removed from the old west.
http://twitter.com/PeteTongLaw Peter

George Bush and Barack Obama made similar campaign speeches.
Anonymous

Jack had his hands behind his back, fingers crossed when he gave that speech. Iggy’s “rise up”, Jack’s “fix Ottawa” – Canadians voted in Harper with a majority – live with it.

Anonymous

Most Canadians didn’t vote for Harper….live with it.

Anonymous

This is an astute post. There are two ways to read it, I suppose.

The first is a suggestion that Jack Layton’s rhetoric may be self-defeating in the long run as denigrating government–or “Ottawa”–will lead to an erosion of support for parties that adovocate proactive, forward-leaning government policy.

I think this is a better way to read it:

There’s a deep and widespread dissatisfaction with the performance of our leaders’ over the last thirty or forty years. It’s getting harder to get ahead–no one knows why, but they know it’s happening to everyone they know. While the Republicans have tapped into this discontent by laying the blame on government and Democrats, Jack Layton has cleverly leveraged the NDP’s outsider status to lay the blame instead on the well-connected, corporate executive, hired-gun lobbyist, Red Team/Blue Team, Ottawa insider, damned polticians.

While the Democrats could never do this as a party, Barack Obama was very effective at doing this as a candidated during the campaign. I think that’s why so many progressive have been so disappointed that, once elected, Obama semed to so quickly become such a “Washington politician”. This in turn was no doubt in part a product of Obama’s read on what happened to Bill Clinton who was initially seen as reveling in his outsider status and as a threat to the non-partisan, cross-partisan Washington establishment.
Anonymous

The question isn’t (or shouldn’t be) government or not — it should be effective government or dysfunctional government. For good, functional government the people and thus their representatives have to actually pay attention to the details and how to achieve the results we want efficiently. This involves some investment in time and brain cells to ensure our taxes are not wasted.

To advocate no government participation in our lives is to wish to return to the 19th century — a bit unrealistic.