A string of announcements does not make a political vision
JEFFREY SIMPSON
Globe and Mail
March 17, 2009
This morning, Defence Minister Peter MacKay will make an "announcement" (in the words of a press release) in Shearwater, N.S.
This "announcement" follows one in New Brunswick yesterday, and several in Manitoba last week. More will come this week as the Harper government sprinkles defence spending across the country.
Defence spending is always like this. Ask any former minister, especially from the Defence portfolio, what discussions about defence are like around the cabinet table.
Ministers are seldom schooled in defence, foreign policy or technology. They worry less about what the military needs (the military always needs a lot) than where what the military needs will be procured.
Short-term success in Iraq means nothing for Afghanistan
And that's where the fun begins: how to spread money around the country for job-creation purposes and maximum political exposure, as in the announcements of the kind now being made.
Whenever a contract is given offshore, for usually very plausible reasons, you can count on opposition MPs getting into high dudgeon. Why isn't the work being done in Canada? How can the government neglect the (fill in the blank) workers of (fill in the blank)? That we might be a member of the NATO alliance, that other countries can do the work better and/or more cheaply, and that we have a defence procurement agreement with the Americans is seldom remembered.
A week of sprinkling defence spending announcements across Canada was not invented by Mr. MacKay and this Prime Minister's Office.
It's part of the politicking and pork-barrelling that accompany all defence spending, regardless of government.
But the string of defence "announcements" calls to mind a pattern with the Harper government that starts with the man at the top.
Last week, Stephen Harper gave a "speech" on the economy. His staff wanted reporters to know that he had written it himself. It was stylistically, therefore, a reflection of Mr. Harper: straightforward, a recapping of things already announced and a shot at the opposition. Substantively, it was somewhat more wide-ranging than his usual speeches that, when parsed, are really announcements.
A few days later, in Southwestern Ontario, we had the normal Harper fare: a prefabricated backdrop, a selected crowd, an "announcement" about labour training programs the government had already announced in the budget. This was the usual Harper pattern: an "announcement" of what has already been outlined, or a repetition of known government policy.
Mr. Harper is, by his own admission, an anti-visionary politician. He doesn't like what former U.S. president George H. W. Bush called the "vision thing."
Visions get people all riled up. They set expectations that cannot be met. They demand the speaker reach into his own soul, and try to tap into those of his listeners. Visions can raise existential questions, always the most dangerous variety. They require public passion, again something potentially dangerous. They can lead to spontaneity, something Mr. Harper has trouble handling.
Great speeches speak to vision, and superior politicians use such speeches to summon fellow citizens to greater efforts, conceiving their society in certain ways, urging them in certain directions.
Today, in Washington, Americans have a leader who gives speeches in this sense of the word. Of course, Barack Obama talks about what his government is proposing, but he tries to point the way forward for his country. In other words, his speeches are more than announcements.
Nobody ever left a Stephen Harper speech, except perhaps for his most fervent partisans, ready to rethink anything and to adjust to new challenges, or feeling really good about their country. A check list of government policies, yes. An announcement, or rehashing of a previous one, yes. A pretty backdrop for the television cameras, yes. But inspiration, excitement, commitment, passion, sorry.
It's all so pre-fabricated, utilitarian, devoid of passion.
It's the politics of control that permeates Ottawa and makes fearful everyone who is supposed to give out information but is afraid to do so.
There's no point complaining about this way of communicating, because it comes right from the top. It's the way the Prime Minister wants things, and no one deviates from script. It's flat and uninspiring, one announcement after another. It hasn't worked yet in building a bond between the leader and the voters. But he's comfortable with this style, because it reflects him, and so it won't change.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090316.wcosimp17/BNStory/specialComment/home
