Preston Manning suggests shutting up

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, March 12, 2013 at 10:51 AM - 0 Comments

Chris Selley considers the portion of Preston Manning’s speech this past weekend that dealt with “intemperate and ill considered remarks” by fellow conservatives.

He mentioned (though not by name) Wildrose candidate and evangelical pastor Allan Hunsperger, whose “derogatory reference to homosexuals” was “dredged up during the recent [Alberta] provincial election,” and “a questionable comment by a prominent libertarian and a good friend of mine, which seemed to imply that the freedom of an individual to view child pornography had no serious consequences for others.” That would be Mr. Flanagan.

And he took some of the blame for this state of affairs. “In the early days of the Reform Party, we were so anxious to allow our members the freedom to express contrary views that we virtually let them do and say as they pleased,” he said. “But in later years I have come to see the wisdom of Edmund Burke’s observation that before we encourage people to do as they please, we ought first to inquire what it may please them to do.”

That’s the founder of the Reform Party and the principled conscience of the Canadian conservative movement telling people to shut their yaps on controversial subjects for the good of the tribe. First and foremost, it’s depressing.

It is at least cynical. Consider these two paragraphs from the prepared text.

For the sake of the movement and the maintenance of public trust, conservative organizations should be prepared to swiftly and publicly disassociate themselves from those individuals who cross the line.

This does not mean that we as individual conservatives on a personal level ostracize or disassociate ourselves from those who cross the line. Everyone makes honest mistakes, conservatives believe in second chances, and we need to rally around those who have been lured across the line by opponents rather than “piling on.”

So the line-crosser should be publicly scorned, even if also privately comforted. Perhaps it’s only odd to hear someone acknowledge that much out loud—perhaps this is only the political equivalent of breaking the fourth wall—but it does raise all sorts of interesting questions for further discussion.

Consider the case of Mr. Hunsperger. What was his “mistake”? Holding those views? Expressing them publicly? Expressing them publicly if he ever hoped to run for political office? Or, rather, was it the Wild Rose party’s “mistake”? Should it have barred him from running as a candidate given that he had expressed such views?

Is this anything more than a public relations exercise? Or does a party make a philosophical point when it condemns such “mistakes”? (More broadly, how should a modern conservative party reconcile its social conservative members and supporters with the increasing acceptance of gay rights? I actually think that should be the topic of a panel discussion at next year’s Manning conference.)

How generally should this idea of putting the team before the individual be applied? Could it be applied to Stephen Woodworth, Mark Warawa or Brad Trost? They certainly seem to contradict their party leader’s line on abortion, but they also speak to a sizeable constituency within the party. Does determining whether a line has been crossed and how the party should respond become a purely mathematical matter of determining how many votes are won or lost as a result? And at what point does this focus on the team limit the independence of the MP and contribute to the disempowerment of the legislature?

All of which perhaps sidesteps the fact that, as political advice for conservative parties who aspire to government, Mr. Manning’s advice is probably very sound.

Preston Manning on the state of the conservative movement

By Aaron Wherry - Saturday, March 9, 2013 at 1:36 PM - 0 Comments

I’ll have a longer piece about the Manning conference tomorrow, but for now, here is the prepared text of Preston Manning’s state of the conservative movement speech. Mr. Manning addresses environmental conservatism and the phenomenon of “intemperate and ill considered remarks” by conservatives (including a reference to Tom Flanagan).

When I first got into the management consulting business many years ago, my first client was a scrap metal dealer in Edmonton. He had his heart set on buying one of those big machines that crush old car bodies into bales for sale to a steel mill. I did all the analysis and came to the sad conclusion that he would go broke if he bought that machine – news my client did not want to hear. This raised the question that every political candidate and leader must also address: “Do you tell them what they want to hear, or do you tell them what they need to hear?”

Of course, the Canadian answer to such questions is, “Do both.”

Continue…

Tom Flanagan on child pornography, the backlash and the worst week of his life

By macleans.ca - Friday, March 8, 2013 at 5:00 AM - 0 Comments

Tom Flanagan is a long-time Conservative political strategist and University of Calgary political science professor. Last week, he created an uproar with comments he made at the University of Lethbridge about child pornography. In their wake, he was fired from his positions as a Wildrose party strategist and a CBC panellist and the university announced his retirement. He spoke with Maclean’s in Toronto.

Q: If anyone understands how incendiary the subject of child pornography can be, you do. You managed Stephen Harper’s 2004 election campaign when it issued the press release,“Paul Martin supports child pornography?” Did warning bells ring when it came up in a forum about the Indian Act?

A: Not really. I was in academic mode. I’d been invited to speak on a university campus. Everything is up for debate; any question can be posed. It never occurred to me someone was taping it.

Q: Your remark,“I do have some grave doubts about putting people in jail because of their taste in pictures,” echoed comments you made in 2009 at the University of Manitoba. But is reducing child porn to “taste in pictures”—like preferring Monet over Manet—accurate when referring to images depicting sexual violation?

A: It’s the kind of thing you say in the classroom to frame an issue for discussion. When I talk about social assistance, I say, “Why do we have social assistance? Why don’t we let the poor starve in the street?” Take that out of context: “Flanagan says, ‘Let people starve in the street.’ ” It’s rhetorical. Pornographic images are pictures. You start from there and say: why are these images so particularly bad?

Continue…

Tom Flanagan says he was trapped into child porn comments

By The Canadian Press - Monday, March 4, 2013 at 2:21 PM - 0 Comments

EDMONTON – A former high-level political strategist criticized for his comments on child pornography says he was led into a trap.

Tom Flanagan of the University of Calgary says in a guest newspaper column that the question that prompted his remarks last week came out of left field and had nothing to do with the forum where he was speaking.

He also says the event was being secretly recorded on a cellphone camera, the contents of which were uploaded to the Internet and led to Flanagan’s downfall.

Flanagan said at the forum in Lethbridge, Alta., that he questioned whether people viewing child pornography should be jailed for their quote — “taste in pictures.”

Flanagan made similar remarks three years earlier to the University of Manitoba’s student newspaper.

Flanagan was a one-time strategist for Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservatives and for Alberta’s Wildrose party, and was a political pundit on CBC-TV — all have since denounced him.

Academics defend Flanagan’s child porn views

By The Canadian Press - Saturday, March 2, 2013 at 12:15 AM - 0 Comments

CALGARY – Some academics are coming to the defence of former Stephen Harper strategist Tom Flanagan.

The retiring University of Calgary professor came under fire for controversial comments on child pornography during a public lecture in southern Alberta on Wednesday.

Flanagan told the crowd in Lethbridge he has “grave doubts about putting people in jail because of their taste in pictures” and “for doing something in which they do not harm another person.”

Barry Cooper, a fellow political science professor at the university, said Friday that Flanagan was making a reasoned argument in an academic setting and he doesn’t deserve to be so widely condemned for having an opinion.

Continue…

Tom Flanagan apologizes as MPs and CBC denounce his comments on child pornography

By The Canadian Press - Thursday, February 28, 2013 at 1:23 PM - 0 Comments

EDMONTON – Former Stephen Harper strategist Tom Flanagan has been widely and swiftly condemned for suggesting that people looking at child pornography shouldn’t be jailed.

Flanagan made the controversial remark during a lecture Wednesday night in southern Alberta. His words were recorded on a cellphone and quickly posted on YouTube.

It didn’t take long for people to start cutting ties.

By noon Thursday, the CBC dumped Flanagan as a panellist on its “Power and Politics” program. The University of Calgary, where he is a political science professor, issued a statement distancing itself from his views.

Continue…

Can’t stop, won’t stop

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, September 10, 2012 at 2:33 PM - 0 Comments

The Hill Times sizes up the permanent campaign.

Prof. Flanagan, a political pundit who teaches political science at the University of Calgary, said that House of Commons-funded activities can also be used for political purposes. For example, he said, “travel to targeted ridings and ethnic communities, mailouts with a response coupon for voter identification, public opinion research to find policies that will resonate with target demographic groups.” He added: “All parties do some these things some of the time, but the Conservatives are unique in the scale on which they operate and the degree to which everything is coordinated. They have produced a campaign equivalent of Colin Powell’s doctrine of ‘overwhelming force,’ applying all possible resources to the battleground ridings where the election will be won or lost.”  

Prof. Flanagan suggests the Canadian permanent campaign, “which was born of minority government with public money serving as the midwife,” will slow down in periods of majority government, but will continue because of the potent political weaponry of the pre-writ advertising, its usefulness for attracting new support, passing legislation, questioning the opposition’s policies, and undermining opposition leader’s images. “It is a political arms race in which competitors will have to adopt new generations of weaponry or fall irretrievably behind. As long as they can find the money to pay for it, parties will be forced to keep up in order to compete,” he said.

Joe Comartin suggests limits should be established on advertising between election campaigns. I’m not sure there will ever be an incentive for the governing party to limit itself. So far the Conservatives have mostly had the airwaves to themselves. Given the success they’ve had with previous ad campaigns, it’s difficult to imagine why they’d want to limit the use of such ads. Presumably the New Democrats and (eventually) the Liberals are going to do everything they can to join that fight over the next three years. And if ad campaigns help the New Democrats or Liberals defeat and surpass the Conservatives in 2015, why would either turn around and institute a limit?

The next three years are going to be instructive. The permanent campaign in Canadian politics is a fairly well-established idea, but we’ve not yet seen it really joined by more than one party (the Conservatives). And it’s not much of a fight unless more than one person is throwing punches. If the NDP (and eventually the Liberals) can match the Conservatives ad-for-ad then we shall really see what a permanent campaign looks like.

Ba-a-a-attle for the Alberta voter

By Colby Cosh - Wednesday, March 28, 2012 at 4:50 AM - 0 Comments

Photo from Wildrose.ca

To kick off the Alberta election, here’s Danielle Smith with some sheep, as featured on Wildrose.ca. This should not be taken as some sort of sly joke about voters, either on her part or on mine. It’s an excellent photo-op, and will be all over the news this morning; it is literally irresistible. In general, the early days of the campaign have me formidably impressed with the Wildrose tacticians. I imagine, if only because I’m used to pretty slapstick Alberta oppositions, that some snickering comic-book brain-thing in a jar is using servomotor arms to thrust and slam the levers of a great machine. But it’s probably nothing as romantic as all that; just Tom Flanagan dashing off a few memos.

Why is Danielle Smith messing about with mutton? Continue…

A muddled Senate

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, October 7, 2011 at 2:16 PM - 15 Comments

Jeff Jedras notes Stephane Dion’s continued dissection of the Harper government’s Senate reforms, including the exclusion of federal parties from the proposed process. Meanwhile, an informal poll of academics in Alberta and British Columbia finds overwhelming opposition.

Professors contacted in the two provinces agreed by more than a 3-1 margin with the proposition that the reforms, aimed at ensuring senators are elected and limited to nine-year terms, are against their provinces’ interests. The legislation, being debated this week in the House of Commons, “scares me, to be honest,” said University of Calgary political scientist Tom Flanagan, a former senior Harper adviser.

John Geddes considers the massive questions left unanswered.

Persichilli le non-Québécois

By Paul Wells - Friday, September 2, 2011 at 9:15 AM - 63 Comments

Rémi Carreiro/Flickr

Our confrères in Quebec are noting with great care and no particular delight the writings of Angelo Persichilli, veteran journalist in Italian and English, and newly-named communications director for Stephen Harper. In one column about 18 months ago Persichilli discerned the presence of “the over-representation of francophones in our bureaucracy,” and complained about the “annoying lament” from Quebec.

Persichilli, whose journalism I have not often lauded to the skies, is a gentle fellow and as soon as this became trouble he promised to be super-nice to the French types. The PMO clearly has no interest in being overtly antagonistic toward francophones. Persichilli (like John Williamson, one of several unilingual predecessors in the post) will apparently spend little time talking to Ottawa reporters in any language. That task will fall, on most days, to Andrew MacDougall, a well-liked and very bilingual PMO staffer. And yet my colleagues from Quebec worry.

They are right to worry. Persichilli’s appointment is significant, not for whom it snubs, but for what it represents: a significant reallocation of Conservative attention and energy toward another target, the great big ethnic stew pot of Persichilli’s Toronto stomping ground.  Continue…

Political correctness gone mad?

By Alex Derry - Wednesday, August 10, 2011 at 9:30 AM - 63 Comments

Photograph by Cole Garside

Canada, despite a reputation for being an inclusive society that celebrates diversity, will have to defend itself against UN concerns about racial discrimination—all over a term designed precisely to combat racial discrimination. Next year, for the second time in five years, a delegation from the Ministry of Canadian Heritage will appear before the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, to answer criticisms over Ottawa’s use of the term “visible minorities.” The committee deems it to be out of step with the “aims and objectives” of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. Canada’s use of the term “seemed to somehow indicate that whiteness was the standard, all others differing from that being visible,” says committee member Patrick Thornberry, a professor of international law at Keele University in Britain.

“That’s just crazy,” says Tom Flanagan, a political scientist at the University of Calgary and former adviser to Prime Minister Stephen Harper. “It’s the internal logic of professional bureaucrats gone amok.”

Canada was last brought before the 18-member UN committee in 2007. Comprised of diplomats and academics tasked with monitoring member states’ implementation of the convention, it found the term itself discriminatory. And it didn’t stop there, faulting Canada’s Anti-Terrorism Act and its potential for racial profiling of ethnic groups, as well as the country’s treatment of undocumented migrants and asylum-seekers, systemic discrimination of Aboriginal people, and a disproportionate force used by police on African Canadians. But the objection to “visible minorities” topped the list of concerns. While the committee (which doesn’t include a single Canadian member) was quick to rebuke Canada’s use of terminology, it refrained from recommending any alternatives—it asked that Ottawa “reflect further” on its use.

After the 2007 rebuke, Ottawa went to work consulting experts and holding workshops. The result was a 74-page report examining “visible minorities” through the years. It said the term is “specific to the administration of the Employment Equity Act,” designed to protect visible minorities, women, Aboriginal people and the disabled against workplace discrimination. While the EEA interprets “visible minorities” as “persons, other than Aboriginal peoples, who are non-Caucasian in race or non-white in colour,” it also specifies that only employees who wish to identify themselves to their employer need do so. Flanagan traces the roots of the term to “the identity politics of the 1970s and ’80s,” when neologisms like multiculturalism entered the bureaucratic lexicon.

The EEA itself emerged from the 1984 Abella commission establishing the principle that employers must use practices that increase minority representation. Nearly 5.5 million Canadians self-identify as part of a visible minority. “I don’t see the point of replacing it, it’s not a pejorative term,” says Flanagan. The government concluded no other category adequately addressed the labour market disadvantage faced by these groups. Further, it encourages proactive accommodation of diversity in the workplace. The report also said that Canada has “no plans of changing its standard usage,” a position it will defend when it appears before the Geneva-based commission again in early 2012.

“Some people consider affirmative action and quotas as racist,” says Jason Maghanoy, a Filipino-Canadian playwright in Toronto, “but sometimes you need to force diversity.” Maghanoy says it’s a matter of choice that he identifies himself as part of a visible minority when he applies for arts grants. “I always identify myself as Asian and I don’t feel discriminated against when I do.”

While many Canadians might dismiss the committee’s concern, it doesn’t mean the EEA couldn’t stand to be updated. Flanagan admits that while “visible minorities” doesn’t need to be replaced, “as a working term, there are some problems with it.” Michael Bach, national director of diversity, equity and inclusion at global accounting firm KPMG, supports the UN recommendation and says that while the legislation was a benchmark for progress in the workplace 25 years ago, he has never been a proponent of “visible minorities.” It’s archaic, he says, and reinforces the view that white is the norm. “We should be asking ourselves what is the right term,” says Bach. One proposed alternative is “racialized communities.” But this makes many people on both sides of the debate uncomfortable: it’s either an example of political correctness gone too far or it reinforces racial stereotypes. Ultimately, says Bach, the government should be involving minority communities in the process.

And real inequalities still exist today. “Decision-makers, those in positions of power,” says Maghanoy, “are still predominantly white men.”

Nycole Turmel disappoints Stephen Harper

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, August 4, 2011 at 9:10 AM - 8 Comments

The Prime Minister says he is profoundly saddened by Nycole Turmel’s associations with sovereignists.

“I think it’s very disappointing,” Harper said when asked about Turmel by reporters while handing out scholarships at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont. “I don’t know that I have a lot to say but I do think Canadians will find this disappointing. I think Canadians expect that any political party that wants to govern the country be unequivocally committed to this country. I think that’s the minimum Canadians expect.”

Mr. Harper’s own historical attitude toward Quebec politics might be said to be somewhat complicated. The NDP says, for instance, that there are two ministers in Mr. Harper’s cabinet who were previously associated with sovereignists. There is, as well, whatever he and Bloc Quebecois leader Gilles Duceppe discussed in 2004 and what he and Tom Flanagan wrote in 1997 about the role Quebec nationalists might play in bringing a conservative government back to power.

Two questions for Stephen Harper (III)

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, April 20, 2011 at 10:10 AM - 50 Comments

After interviewing Mr. Layton and Mr. Ignatieff, Peter Mansbridge will sit down with Mr. Harper on Thursday. Assuming that the parameters of our democracy might be a topic raised, here, again, are two questions for Mr. Harper.

1. Earlier in this campaign, you explained that when you referred to “options” in the your letter to the Governor General in September 2004, you hoped only that she would give you the opportunity to assure her that you were not intending to defeat the Liberal government. University of New Brunswick professor Don Desserud has quibbled with this understanding of convention, suggesting the only options for the Governor General would have been to call an election or ask the leader of the opposition, in this case you, if he had the opportunity to form a government. Do you believe the Governor General can compel the Prime Minister to work with the opposition parties or do you believe you were given poor advice in 2004?

2. In an essay penned with Tom Flanagan some years ago you spoke favourably of an “alliance” between regional parties and lamented for the “winner-take-all style of politics” in Canada. In 1997, during an interview with TVO, you said if the Liberal majority government of the day was ever reduced to a minority government, there would be an opportunity for one of the other parties “to form a coalition or working alliance with the others.” In 2004, during your news conference with Mr. Duceppe and Mr. Layton, you were asked if you were prepared to form government and said such a scenario was “extremely hypothetical.” You and your party now argue that only the party that wins the most seats can form government. Why and when did your views change on the functioning of our parliamentary system?

Two questions for Stephen Harper (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, April 4, 2011 at 8:46 AM - 55 Comments

In light of what we saw and heard during the first week of the 41st general election, those two questions for Mr. Harper need to be updated.

1. Last week, you explained that when you referred to “options” in the your letter to the Governor General in September 2004, you hoped only that she would give you the opportunity to assure her that you were not intending to defeat the Liberal government. University of New Brunswick professor Don Desserud has quibbled with this understanding of convention, suggesting the only options would have been to call an election or ask the leader of the opposition, in this case you, if he had the opportunity to form a government. Do you believe the Governor General can compel the Prime Minister to work with the opposition parties or do you believe you were given poor advice in 2004?

2. In an essay penned with Tom Flanagan some years ago you spoke favourably of an “alliance” between regional parties and lamented for the “winner-take-all style of politics” in Canada. In 1997, during an interview with TVO, you said if the Liberal majority government of the day was ever reduced to a minority government, there would be an opportunity for one of the other parties “to form a coalition or working alliance with the others.” In 2004, during your news conference with Mr. Duceppe and Mr. Layton, you were asked if you were prepared to form government and said such a scenario was “extremely hypothetical.” You and your party now argue that only the party that wins the most seats can form government. Why and when did your views change on the functioning of our parliamentary system?

What Stephen Harper was writing in 1997

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, March 31, 2011 at 9:00 AM - 25 Comments

Terry Milewski digs up an essay penned by Stephen Harper and Tom Flanagan around the same time the former was saying things like this. It sketches a potential Reform-Progressive Conservative “alliance”—as opposed to a merger—and then turns to the question of Quebec.

If Quebec stays in Confederation, the Bloc will either disintegrate or become an autonomist party, participating in federal politics as a representative of Quebec’s specific interests. Philosophically, it is logical for liberals to offer Quebec money and privileged treatment, while conservatives find it easier to offer autonomy and enhanced jurisdiction. On that basis, a strategic alliance of Quebec nationalists with conservatives outside Quebec might become possible, and it might be enough to sustain a government.

None of this will be easy or even likely. But experience shows that a monolithic conservative party is unworkable; so conservatives who are unhappy with a one-party-plus system featuring the Liberals as the perpetual governing party may have little choice but to construct an alliance, at least of the two anglophone sisters, and perhaps ultimately including a third sister. An alliance would face many difficulties, to be sure, but it would also have two great advantages. It would reflect the regional and cultural character of Canadian society, and it would give that character an institutional expression. Also, it would allow leaders of the regional parties to defend necessary compromises as precisely that — necessary compromises. In a single national party, compromises have to be defended as party policy, which tends to drive dissenters out of the fold.

Mr. Harper and Mr. Flanagan then concluded with an ode to political cooperation, including mention of the “coalition governments” that exist in Europe. Continue…

Stephen Harper and constitutional convention

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, March 29, 2011 at 9:48 AM - 54 Comments

Tom Flanagan, a former advisor to Mr. Harper, is asked for his opinion on the 2004 gambit.

Asked if Mr. Harper might have had a different motivation for sending the letter to Ms. Clarkson — one other than ensuring that she explored the option of Conservative-led minority if Martin’s government fell — Mr. Flanagan replied: “I can’t see what other point there would have been in writing the letter except to remind everybody that it was possible to change the government in that set of circumstances without an election.”

Meanwhile, John Geddes talks to Don Desserud, who finds Mr. Harper’s understanding of convention to be “odd.”

How about "Somewhat benign, but sort of an a-hole"?

By Colby Cosh - Thursday, December 31, 2009 at 8:16 PM - 89 Comments

Historian Michael Behiels commences his Citizen op-ed on the present constitutional emergency by describing the prime minister as “our not-so-benign dictator”. Kind of a remarkable rhetorical ploy, that. I’m from the tribe of Westerners who used to gripe about the Liberal “benign dictatorship”, but I realized how and silly overwrought this sort of language was on the day the B.D. Himself was ousted by his own caucus without so much as a “Thanks for the customized golf balls”. Ever since then, my Zen answer to every kerfuffle, foofaraw, and flibberty-floo about Parliament and its powers has been the same, no matter who was in power. Parliament has just as much power as its members care to take. No more, no less.

But little did I realize what a favour I was doing the dictator of old by consenting to describe him as “benign”, despite actual ethical misgivings about several of his policies! The Tom Flanagans of the world felt the need to throw that word “benign” in there as a pre-emptive apology for their own excessiveness. But now Behiels–unashamed! Unflinching!–has upped the ante: Stephen Harper’s not just a dictator, he’s one of those evil dictators. McLuhan would weep to behold such mastery of figure-ground effects.

On second thought

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, November 12, 2009 at 11:01 AM - 58 Comments

Tom Flanagan talks to the Winnipeg Free Press about Michael Ignatieff, attack ads, the coalition and political party funding.

During last winter’s constitutional crisis, Flanagan wrote in The Globe and Mail that “Gross violations of democratic principles would be involved in handing government to the coalition without getting approval from voters.” A week earlier, Harper, too, claimed the opposition could not take power without an election.

Flanagan now appears to have shifted his position and backed away from Harper’s. “I wouldn’t rule out parties coming together to form a coalition and whatever Mr. Harper may have said in the heat of the moment I don’t think should be interpreted as constitutional theory because he was in a fight for his life.”

Great moments in candour (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, September 9, 2009 at 3:59 PM - 59 Comments

The NDP dispatches Charlie Angus, the party’s truthiness critic apparently, to comment on Tom Flanagan’s honesty.

“That’s as cynical a statement as I’ve ever heard about how the Harper Conservatives will fight the next election. Their contempt for voters seems to have crossed a line to where power means more to them than truth. Canadians expect leadership from political leaders, not manipulation. Canadians deserve better than toxic campaigns based on misinformation. Canadians are calling for real solutions,” Angus pointed out. “I don’t know why anyone would trust them.”

Great moments in candour

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, September 9, 2009 at 11:45 AM - 46 Comments

Tom Flanagan considers the Conservatives’ intent to run against the specter of a Liberal-NDP-Bloc coalition.

“They can tie the two together and say … ‘He will force an election even when there is no reason for it and there is no policy distance between the two parties on any major issues. And he’s forced an election which will lead to him rebuilding the deal with the other two parties,’ ” said University of Calgary political scientist Tom Flanagan, a former Harper adviser. “It doesn’t have to be true. It just has to be plausible and it strikes me as plausible.”

The readable Harper

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, August 27, 2009 at 4:29 PM - 37 Comments

Interestingly enough, Stephen Harper’s Parliamentary bio does not list him as minivan-driving middle class hockey dad, but as an “author, economist, lecturer.” Unfortunately, the Prime Minister lacks the easily accessible paper trail of his primary rival. Though there are a few good reads to be found.

Continue…

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

By kadyomalley - Tuesday, July 14, 2009 at 1:22 PM - 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:

*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.

The Commons: General Canada

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, March 13, 2009 at 4:46 PM - 31 Comments

Rick Hillier started with a joke about something his late father had said. Then one about his wife and his propensity to talk. Then one about missing his flight. Then one about his Newfoundland heritage. Then about the stature of his audience. Then about George Stroumboulopoulos. Then about Alex Trebek and Wheel of Fortune.

The occasion was a dinner in a hotel ballroom in downtown Ottawa to mark the beginning of a weekend conference of “conservative-oriented” thinkers. General Hillier, formerly the top-ranking soldier in the Canadian military, was preceded to the stage by Preston Manning, former leader of the Reform party. Manning, with remarkably blond hair for a man of 66, was preceded to the stage by Monte Solberg, a former Conservative government minister who has left politics and now has a blog.

In front of the stage were approximately 20 tables with approximately 10 people seated at each. Each table had a brown tablecloth and a vase of red or white flowers. Men, each in a black or navy blue suit, outnumbered women by a factor of three to one. Waiters in black suits, white shirts and black bow ties served roasted butternut squash with green valley apple bisque to start and a main course of slowly roasted rib eye of western beef with fresh herb pan juices, roasted potatoes and seasonal fresh vegetables.

As guests—including half a dozen Conservative MPs and political science professor Tom Flanagan—nibbled at their dessert (a granny smith and caramel tart tatin with vanilla bean ice cream), General Hillier proceeded with his speech.

“Life is good, isn’t it?” he asked. “We live in the best country in the world … You need to stop and remind yourself of that.” Continue…

Middle-brow

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, February 5, 2009 at 8:26 PM - 41 Comments

From the Canadian Press assessment of Patrick Muttart’s departure.

Muttart also overhauled the party’s election ads. He pushed for extremely bland ads of Harper being asked questions by a fictional TV newscaster.

“The ads were artfully middle-brow,” Flanagan wrote in his book, Harper’s Team.

“Although many observers said they were hokey, they were well-conceived for the job they had to do — to communicate the essence of our policy to middle-aged or older, family-oriented, middle-income people without high levels of formal education.”