Broken Promises

Show me a person who has cast a vote for a politician based on the “promises” that politician made, and I will show you a drooling idiot.

Here is the thing about promises – even when they are made with best of intentions, the conditions under which they are made can suddenly change.

Let’s say you’re a kid and you are bugging your Dad, who you know wants to do what it takes to please you, to take you to the park the next day to play some baseball. Your Dad, who genuinely wants to play baseball with you, promises to take you to the park. Sure enough, when you wake up the next morning, it is raining cats and dogs and the whole neighborhood is getting blasted to hell by lightning strikes. Your Dad turns to you and says, sorry, it looks like baseball isn’t going to be happening today.

If you throw a fit and accuse your Dad of breaking his promise, you are a drooling idiot.

Only an omnipotent person can make promises with 100% certainty of keeping them, and even the most well-intending people can be manipulated by circumstance to make promises.

Dalton McGuinty is not omnipotent, and he admits it. He has not been able to honour some of the campaign promises he made in 2003.

The broken promise that we will be hearing about most in the upcoming election is the one about “no new taxes”. Apparently, Mr. McGuinty’s government has decided to slap a health premium on us. Without making his excuses for him, I can imagine how he might have decided to break the “no new tax” promise. He made the promise during a campaign in which the incumbent Conservative government was claiming to have balanced the budget that year. However, they were lying, and it started raining red ink in McGuinty’s neighborhood and that year, instead of a balanced budget, Ontario was blasted by a multi-billion dollar deficit.

Unfortunately for the new premier, he was forced to choose between the “no new tax” promise and one of his other promises, which was to boost funding for health care, which had suffered from massive cutbacks under the Conservative government.

He chose to raise the money he needed to pay for the health care services that Ontarians demand. He decided that the most important thing for us to have is quality health care, and due to a change in circumstances that he could not foresee, we got a new tax as part of the deal.

A different government might have decided to (and was probably planning to) privatize the health care system and not raise taxes. Depending on one’s personal values, one might prefer this to paying the premium.

McGuinty’s performance should not be judged on whether he broke a promise, but rather on whether he chose to break the right promise.

Every lunch room has a blow-hard who postures as though he knows something and utters platitudes such as: “You can’t trust a thing politicians say. They are all full of it. They say one thing and do another.” Said blow-hard gets to take credit for having a viewpoint while not investing any time thinking.

If I could say one thing to every blow-hard out there, drooling on his ham sandwich, planning not to vote, or, to vote based on “promises”, it would be this: vote for a person, not a promise.

The right person will represent a set of values that you can respect, and will make decisions accordingly.

Strategy and the Leadership Issue

It is clear that both parties are running on the Liberal record, with the Liberals standing proud in defense of it, while the Conservatives point out broken promises. The Conservatives will hammer on the leadership issue, while the Liberals present Dalton McGuinty as a human being, who, while not perfect, works hard in service of this Province.

The platforms are only important in that they give the media a handle to grab onto and spin the issues. We’ll soon see how that is going to play out.

When the Conservative Party talks about leadership, I wonder what they mean these days? Leadership in the Harris days was when the Premier did something to enrage a chunk of the population, and then didn’t back down from the ensuing fight. He was a strong leader.

Dalton McGuinty has been remarkably boring in his leadership style. He hasn’t led the provinces teachers to go on strike. He hasn’t led Ontarians into selling off vital assets to American interests. His leadership style when handling Caledonia, for better or worse, has been decidedly different than Harris’ style when handling Ipperwash.

Leadership in politics very often means charisma, and this is the weakness in McGuinty that the Conservatives have chosen to exploit. The Conservatives aren’t so much trying to sell Tory as a leader as they are trying to impugn McGuinty for not being Keith Richards, the coolest guy in any room that he is in. The Liberals seem to be fully in agreement that McGuinty doesn’t have rock star appeal, that is why in this campaign, they will make every effort to make him into Ned Flanders, your excellent next door neighbor.

Here’s my take. A leader does not go out of his way to create divisions and animosity in the electorate for the pupose of political exploitation. I give McGuinty credit for not doing that which Mike Harris is famous for. If John Tory will not denounce the politics of division as practiced by the former Conservative government, I am afraid he is not the kind of leader that I am looking for. I’m looking for thoughtful and responsive leadership that prefers to avoid conflict and crisis. McGuinty, even though he isn’t the kind of person you need at your party in order for it to go off right, is the best leader running in this election.

The Writ is about to drop …

The writ drops on Monday, and this election promises to be interesting for different reasons than past elections in Ontario have been. This time around, there is no polarizing character or hot-point issues for the parties to rally voters for or against. On the provincial level, it will be fun to watch the parties, and the media struggle to set the tone and frame the public discourse for this election.  

The real fun will be in our riding of Nipissing, where party lines will be blurred as two genuinely interesting and excellent characters vie for the seat. Bill Vrebosch carries the Conservative banner, while Monique Smith seeks to be returned to Queen’s Park for another term. Oh ya – as per usual there will also be an NDP candidate trying to crack double-digit support. I’m sure he is a heck of a nice guy, but he’ll probably get ignored a lot in this blog. At this time, it is unclear whether or not the Green Party will even run a candidate.

There was a time when I would be more likely to eat a bowl of thumbtacks for breakfast than to vote Conservative. Ever since Mulroney and Harris tore the ass out of this country and province respectively, I have had nothing but contempt for that party. In fact, I still do, but although I have nothing good to say about the party, this riding has a Conservative candidate the commands respect. The Singing Mayor of East Ferris, Bill Vrebosch is a man of the people, his integrity and ability are unquestioned, and has built up a reputation for being a pillar of the community over 30 years of public service. I could vote for this man.

I could vote for Bill Vrebosch, but I will probably vote for Monique Smith. I think she has a great record, and I am particularly impressed with the fact that she has maintained grace under pressure as the local media has done a hatchet job on her and the Liberals over the past four years.