Political Derangement Syndrome

I spent several decades involved in politics of one form or another and bring from that time a few ideas. One of them is something I call "political derangement syndrome". By that I mean the tendency of people to lose all perspective and common sense while pursuing political goals. I thought maybe a quick discussion of how this manifests itself might offer a useful perspective on the up-coming national election.

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You wouldn't know this from the way professional journalists tend to cover politics, but most of whether or not someone gets elected to office just boils down to luck. This manifests itself in a lot of different ways.

Doug Ford senior. Image
from the CBC, used under the
Fair Use copyright provision.

One aspect of this simply comes down to who your parents are. If you come from a political family, you will have a big "leg up" over people who don't. If you have any doubt, consider how well Doug Ford would have done if his father hadn't been having big political barbecues (ie: "Ford Fests") since Doug Ford Sr. was elected as a Conservative MPP 1995? Or if his brother hadn't been elected mayor? Or he hadn't inherited a lot of money?

Need I remind anyone that Justin Trudeau wouldn't be a Prime Minister if his father hadn't been one too?

Even if you don't come from a political dynasty, it is tremendously important to have parents who encourage you in "how to get along" with other people and the financial independence that is necessary to be willing to spend long periods of time working as a volunteer for political campaigns and organizations. That's where you get the expertise and connections necessary to be able to build the team you need to accomplish anything as a politician.

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Another aspect of "luck" boils down to being at the "right place in the right time". I have nothing but respect for Mike Schreiner, who I believe has done an excellent job as Guelph's new Green MPP. But he has benefited tremendously by a number of fortunate events.

First, he came to Guelph after decades of work by other people who built up the local Green Party riding association into one of---if not the very best---in the entire country. If he hadn't had that foundation to build upon, it's doubtful if he could ever have gotten elected.

Ray Ferraro, Ontario PC
candidate for Guelph, 2018.
From his Twitter account.
Fair Use provision.

Secondly, he benefited from a very strange election campaign where the conventional wisdom was that the Liberals were going to get trounced no matter what they did. At the same time the incumbent, Liz Sandals (again, a politician I hold in great respect), was retiring from office. Moreover, there was a "buzz" around that the Conservatives were going to win a majority. But for some not-entirely-clear reason, Doug Ford appointed Ray Ferraro as the candidate instead of going through a local nomination meeting.  I suspect that this move created some ill-will among traditional Conservative supporters.

In addition, Ferraro seemed to not really have his heart in the election. He had a tendency to complain about the mess inside the Conservative party, even though it probably cost him votes.

Ferraro was asked if he had any regrets about Christine Elliott losing the PC leadership, after he praised a candidate retreat she led in London a few weeks ago. “Yes,” he said. “As a matter of fact, when they came to me to run I thought they were crazy, it looked like a comedy of errors,” Ferraro added describing the leadership convention.

Ferraro did his part blaming “Mr. Brown and his lieutenant” for changing PC bylaws, “parachuting” candidates into ridings, and misplacing funding, but the party has owned up to those mistakes. Having said that, “I was embarrassed to say the least,” Ferraro added.

As quoted by Adam Donaldson in Guelph Politico 

(I heard much the same thing from Ferraro when he was at a local political breakfast meeting. Indeed, the guy next to me leaned over and asked "did I hear what I thought I just heard????")

The NDP and Liberals also elected nominated candidates who---although both very good people---simply didn't have the political experience that Schreiner did. He'd already run in Guelph a couple times, was the leader of his party, and, had been very involved with local issues for years. Indeed, several people told me that compared to all the other candidates they considered him "the incumbent".

This isn't to say that people didn't work hard or smart on Schreiner's campaign, just to suggest while hard work and preparation are necessary, they are far from sufficient to achieve success. It also helps to be lucky.  

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It takes a lot of work to write this blog---even these more "opinion oriented" pieces. I know that my readers pay a lot of money for their Internet service, computers, cell phones, and, data plans. (Personally, I pay a lot less than most because I use second-hand equipment, split the cost of my ISP with my neighbour, and, have a bare-bones cell phone plan. But that's for another post.) But people need to also get into the habit for paying for content if they want to get any local news. So why don't you sign up for a buck-a-month through Patreon or PayPal? You will get a "warm glow" from "doing the right thing" and encourage some young person to follow in my footsteps when I get too old and decrepit to do this anymore. 

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If you understand this point it takes some of the pressure off a campaign manager to be "perfect". Indeed, the wise campaigner understands when the odds are against her and uses this fact to build for the long haul. For example, they will use the campaign to "cross train" people so they can expand the local talent pool. Some positions such as campaign manager, sign boss, Chief Financial Officer, etc, require a significant skill set and it helps a Constituency Association a tremendous amount if you have several people who are experienced and confident in each of these positions. This means that even if no one who is experienced is willing to do the job again, they can "hold the hand" of the poor schmo who ends up getting stuck with it.

It also helps build the local political organization if you can use the campaign to build your fundraising base by bringing in new donors. As well, it helps to run candidates even if they don't win because they can gain valuable experience in things like giving speeches and door-knocking. Campaigns for a provincial or federal seat often raise the visibility of "up and comers" which then allows them to win a seat on Council later on. And, of course, people with a term or two on Council then turn out to be excellent future federal or provincial candidates.

The "derangement syndrome" arises when people start putting pressure on volunteers and supporters to give their last drop of blood in a campaign where the candidate has very little hope of winning. At that point you aren't training people in how it's done, instead you are burning them out so they won't volunteer to help ever again. And if you hit up donors too many times or ask too much from them, they will just refuse to give anything at all the next time around. 

I've tried to explain this problem to people in political campaigns and unfortunately the sufferers of derangement syndrome just get angry. They have invested the campaign with some sort of ultimate existential importance and see any attempt to present a more nuanced, long-term approach as being "defeatist" and "counter-productive".  This reminds me of the character "Boxer" in Orwell's  Animal Farm. He was a "true believer" in the revolution who always tried his idealistic best to achieve the impossible demands put upon him by his pig overlords. Unfortunately it was beyond his abilities and he ended up dying young---a worn-out shell of his former self.

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Political derangement syndrome also affects Premiers and Prime Ministers.

Former NDP Albertan Premier
Rachel Notley. Photo by
DaveCournoyer c/o the Wiki Commons.

I think that you can see it at work with the example of Rachel Notley in Alberta. She won a surprise majority government in by "coming down the middle" of a classic vote split between the Wild Rose Party and the Conservatives. The Tories got 9 seats with 28% of the vote. The Wild Rose got 21 seats with 24%. And the NDP got 54 seats with 41%. (If ever there was an example of why we need proportional representation in this country, that election was it.)

I think anyone who knew even a little about the politics of Alberta realized that this was a total fluke and that the Conservative vote would coalesce around one party before the next election. A rational response would be to pass a bunch of progressive legislation and hope that some of it would survive the next government. Instead, Notley's government tried to build support among traditional Conservative voters by moving heaven and earth to support the tar sands.

Of course, the 2019 election resulted in the NDP getting 33% of the vote that translated into 24 seats. The Conservatives had merged with the Wild Rose, and they got 55% and 63 seats. But in the interim the rest of the country had witnessed the spectacle of a New Democrat government moving heaven-and-earth to build an oil pipeline in order to export tar sands oil to Asia. What did this say about the depth of commitment by the NDP to believing that the climate emergency is an unprecedented threat to human civilization? It certainly looked to me like the standard NDP maneuver of talking a "good game" about the environment but always trading it away for pocket-book issues when "push came to shove". 

Is it any wonder that there have been mass defections from the NDP to the Green Party? Or that the popular vote between the NDP and Greens is effectively tied?

Of course, much the same thing can be said about Justin Trudeau and the Liberal party. No matter how much tap dancing they do, it is just fundamentally ridiculous to try to argue that building a pipeline to sell dirty oil is somehow compatible with moving off of a carbon economy.

Hey guys, I bought a pipeline
for you. Why won't you love
me? Photo by JCH_3020.
Image c/o Wiki Commons.

What's really ridiculous about this is the fact that there is absolutely nothing that Trudeau and the Liberals can do to convince the pro-tar sands people to ever vote for him. All he can really hope for is that the forest fires, floods, hurricanes, etc, will eventually change the minds of enough voters that he will be able to start winning elections in Alberta. Indeed, the latest EKOS poll shows that the federal Liberals are at 16%, whereas the national numbers are 37%.  Obviously the rational thing to do is write-off Alberta instead of continuing to burn through support in the rest of the country by trying get votes in a province that will never, ever support the Liberals no matter what they do.

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Please note that I am not saying that voters should now damn both the NDP and Liberals to Hell because they aren't "pure". Another type of political derangement syndrome is the idea that any politician who makes some sort of compromise is beyond all redemption. All political parties are "tents" that hold a lot of different types of people. And they all have to repeatedly "hold their noses" and support policies that they do not agree with if they want to accomplish anything at all. The big mistakes happen not when people make compromises, but rather when they compromise too much. Knowing where to tell the difference---just like in the rest of life---comes from wisdom. And that, as we all know, is in pretty short supply. 

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Furthermore, I say onto you the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!