I wanted to talk to the leader of a political party to add some insight about what that job entails. Unfortunately, I understand that the major federal party leaders are far too busy to submit to the sort of long interviews that I like to do---even if they'd want to give a local news blogger a chance. The Green Party of Canada might have been an exception, but I didn't reach out to Annamie Paul because she is new to her job and, frankly, she's been suffering so much grief lately that I thought her experience wouldn't be terribly representative. So I decided to not even bother trying to find a Federal party leader to talk with. Luckily, the Ontario Green Party leader is in Guelph and he was willing to fill that void.
As Lloyd Longfield mentioned in the last interview, Schreiner doesn't have a caucus to manage in Queen's Park. But he does have the experience of leading a party with members all across the province, so I think he will be able to offer some real insight into how a leader does his job.
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| Mike Schreiner looking all "Leader-like". Image provided by his staff. |
I raised the issue of building strong local Associations because one thing I've noticed over the years is that our modern media focuses almost exclusively on leaders while totally ignoring the organizations that sustain them. This is appallingly dangerous to democratic society. That's because an organizing strategy has evolved in response to this bias.
What happens is someone manages to do successful stunts that draw the attention of the public. This used to happen through getting reporters to write something in a newspaper or broadcast on tv. Now, it happens through social media where "social influencers" develop followings who will send them money so the individual can then hire staff to create an organization to do their work. These staff members often have very little loyalty to a particular party and consider themselves hired guns that will work for whomever has money to pay them. They create the membership databases and the fundraising campaigns needed to sell memberships in a leadership contest. They also create the advertising campaigns that build support for their influencer leadership candidate.
I first saw this sort of thing happen when Elizabeth May took over the Green Party of Canada. For those of you who don't know, she never had anything at all to do with the Green Party until she decided to become it's leader. She was famous primarily because she came from a well-connected US family, had been involved in some high-profile environmental campaigns in the Atlantic provinces, worked as an advisor to the Brian Mulroney Conservatives, and, ended up head of the Sierra Club of Canada. She also has an absolute genius for milking her connections. (I have never met anyone who is such a shameless name dropper. I talked to her a couple times and she never missed an opportunity to let me know that she was friends with the Kennedys, Mikhail Gorbachev, and probably the Queen and Pope too.)
Because of her background, she was "famous for being famous" and was able to get lots more media attention than the other Candidates for the GPC leadership who's only reason for support was that they had worked years to build the GPC and actually knew something about it's ideals, structure, and, problems. The result was a huge influx of new members who didn't know anything about the GPC either, but who were eager to vote for her to become it's leader. (I suspect that the problems that Annamie Paul is suffering now is because the GPC has built itself around May, and that makes it very hard for someone without a similarly famous "brand" to take over.)
I don't want readers to see the above as a dig against Elizabeth May and the Greens. This process of bringing in a famous outsider instead of promoting someone from within is happening all over Canada and the US---with predictable results. Would Doug Ford have been elected head of the Ontario Conservatives if he hadn't been a brother of Rob Ford? Would Donald Trump have been President of the United States if he was just a failed Real Estate developer from New York instead of a self-promoting reality tv star?
The results of this rule by "social influencer" looks a bit like democracy, but in actual fact it really is just a new form of consumerism. The reason for this is because the local riding associations have progressively had their powers stripped from them and given to hired mercenaries that use media (both legacy and social) to build "flash mobs" that can be called up to make people party leaders.
What is the result of bringing in outsiders who have no history or learned expertise with the party? Well, I've mentioned three examples above. From what I could see, May was a pretty good MP but didn't do much to build the grass roots of the party. IMHO Rob Ford has been a disaster for the province in that he is basically an incompetent boob. He does have the one saving grace of being willing to back-down and do the right thing---invariably too late and only after being dragged kicking and screaming, but at least he will often eventually listen to reason. Donald Trump? Well, his example hardly needs comment.
Mike Schreiner doesn't fit into this camp. He worked long and hard in the party, and, the community, before he got elected to his current position.
The issue of media appearances is tremendously important. As I mentioned above, fame is now the currency of politics. If the voting public doesn't know anything about you, they won't give you money, knock on doors, or, put their "X" next to your name. That's why I often say that humility is a vice in politics.
This is especially important if you are starting out and don't have a long tradition or huge organization to lean upon. That's why it is so important that Mike Schreiner can get the "ear" of the media as often as he does. And I think he has been doing a very good job of this since before he got elected as Guelph's MPP. In fact, I've often been struck how much press he gets. It sometimes seems in the Toronto Star, for example, that he is the real leader of the opposition. That's because time and time again Andrea Horwath and Steven Del Duca seem somewhat invisible. To a certain extent, though, they don't have to have the same visibility as Schreiner, because their parties both have stronger and more well-established local presences.
Mike's got to put a lot of energy into Guelph because he doesn't have the caucus and government money that comes from that to keep up his presence if he focuses solely on the province. The important take-away-from this part of the conversation is that he has to see this as a balancing act: put too much into the party and he could lose his seat, put too much into the riding and he won't be helping others potentially win seats elsewhere.
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This is an important part of the conversation, because Schreiner identifies the way in which the constitutional structure of the Ontario Green Party limits his direct involvement in party management. First of all, in accordance with the way non-profits are routinely organized, the governing council of the Party (including him) only hires the Chief Executive Officer and allows her to manage all the other employees. This creates a "firewall" between the administrative and political parts of party governance.
Secondly, the party specifically allows local riding associations to retain the right to nominate a candidate to run in the election. This is tremendously important because it is the foundation for truly democratic governance. Contrary to what you will often hear people say, voters do not select the Prime Minister. Instead, they vote for a local MP, who then goes to Parliament where he and all the others in turn theoretically vote on who becomes the Prime Minister.
People don't see this because in all the other parties---except the Greens---the central party machinery has progressively stripped away the power of local riding associations to control who does or doesn't get to run for the party during an election. As a result, the individual party MPs have given up and forgotten that they ultimately get to decide who is or isn't going to be the Prime Minister. Instead, they just vote as they are expected to do so by the party whip.
(The decision to elect the party leader by direct vote by the rank-and-file membership instead of through delegates at a party convention is also, IMHO, a catastrophic weakening of democracy because it strips away that power too from the Riding Association. People who are active in ridings know a lot more about the individuals running for leader, which makes them much less prone to fall for a "media influencer" or celebrity than an actual politician. Doug Ford and Donald Trump could never have become leaders of their parties if the Conservatives and Republicans still used the old delegate/convention system to select their leaders. Unfortunately, the Greens also use this direct-election system---although I understand that the provincial Liberals still use a delegate/convention system.)
On the whole I suspect that Schreiner is correct. He does have a lot less power than most of the public probably think he does. And, yes the other party's leaders may have a lot more power than him in some ways, but I would still argue that they have less than many people think.
The thing about large organizations of people is that no matter how hierarchical they are on paper, there are still in some sense somewhat democratic. Most people probably don't know this, but even the leaders of NAZI Germany were tremendously concerned about public opinion. Years ago I read about how the Gestapo routinely read people's mail---often looking for evidence of rebellion, for sure---but also to keep track of people's opinions just to see which policies were popular and which were not. This information was sent up the chain of command to Joseph Goebbels who was very interested in it---to the point where he tracked the sorts of jokes people were telling each other. As I recall, there were actually times where the authorities decided that opinion was so opposed to various proposals---euthanizing the disabled, for example---that a policy was reversed, at least temporarily.
A similar example comes from ancient history. Between 27 BCE and 385 CE, a unit of the Roman Military---the Praetorian Guard---managed the personal protection and gathered intelligence for the Emperors. They also became notorious for murdering Ceasars that were unpopular with the Guard and replacing them with more willing puppets. We used to see much the same thing around what used to be called the "third world" as dictators used special military units to support them. And if peerless leader didn't reward the soldiers with enough perks, he ran the risk of being replaced in a coup d'etat. So no matter how much of an authoritarian you are, you still have to placate some sort power base to stay in office.
You can see evidence of this in what is happening in the USA right now. Donald Trump has no official status in the Republican party, but most elected members spend a lot of time showing public allegiance to him. That's because Trump doesn't seem to have lost much of his influence over his rabid followers. And they have learned that they can control who does or doesn't get the party nominations needed to get onto the ballot. (Americans have a screwball system where nominations come from votes by the general public instead being restricted to only party members---like in Canada. And voter turnout for these nomination races is generally very low. This means that a motivated minority of people, ie: the MAGA crew, can easily control the outcomes.)
What all of the above shows is that no matter how the system is "rigged" to give a leader power, there is always some sort of constituency that they have to answer to. Generally this is limited and the power generally doesn't boil down to complete control or even power to get things done---but instead it does involve to the ability to stop some things from happening. The German public couldn't end the Holocaust, but they could save some of their disabled children from being killed. The Praetorian Guard couldn't save the Empire from the barbarian hordes, but they could remove an Emperor who didn't give them enough money in bribes. And Trump can't guarantee that the Republicans can win the next election, but he can ensure that a specific candidate won't get the nomination needed to run in it.
The other party leaders do have a significant amount of power over the MPs in their party. They can refuse to sign their nomination papers, they can kick them out of the caucus, and, they can deny them the perks that come from a position in cabinet. But they cannot totally ignore significant slices of the voting public in order to push a policy just because it's the right thing to do. I suspect that's why Trudeau had the federal government spent $4.5 billion buying the Trans Mountain pipeline. It's not because he doesn't believe in the Climate Emergency or that this pipeline will pay for itself (if it could, then private investors would have bought it), it's because he can't totally alienate Alberta's voters and the provincial leadership without them sabotaging anything else he wants to do.
Think about what Trudeau did with this. He managed to blunt the argument that Ottawa doesn't care about the oil industry. Jason Kenney also threw away between $7.5 and $1 billion on the Keystone XL pipeline that was almost immediately cancelled by the American president. I suspect the calculus among Albertans will slowly grow that the federal Liberals tried their best, but it's time to wake up to reality and accept that the Climate Emergency is real and the province will have to diversify its economy. But if Trudeau hadn't made this sacrificial offering at the altar of Albertan stupidity, voters there would have continued to blame everything from the crucifixion of Christ to the eventual heat death of the universe on the Liberals. It's too bad that this money was wasted. It could have been better spent on something like national pharmacare or subsidies to wean people off fossil fuels. But that's the problem we have in a democracy---dumb people's votes are just as important as those cast by smart ones.
Similarly, Erin O'Toole can't come out in favour of vaccine mandates and dances around whether or not he'd ban M-14s (used in the Moncton shootings) or Ruger Mini-14s (the École Polytechnique massacre)
because if he didn't he'd alienate an important fraction of the people he
needs to vote for him if he wants to have a chance of becoming PM. I could say much the same about the NDP and unionized workers who support fossil fuels and the Greens about various forms of medical quackery. No matter who you are, if you want to get enough votes to have real power, you need to stitch together a coalition. That's why the saying goes that "politics makes strange bed fellows".
I've asked about burnout because I want to give readers a feel for how hard our elected officials work. It's like Lloyd Longfield said in the last post on the subject: being in politics is a vocation, not a job. You really have to accept that it isn't a job, it's your total life. I know that lots of people who retire from politics say that they do it to have more time for their family when the real reason is that they think that they can't win another election. But the excuse is grabbed at because it really does make sense. And lots of people do retire because they decide that they have lost touch with their families or why they wanted to run in the first place. That's part of why I get so upset when I hear people say things like "they're just in it for the money" or "all politicians are crooks". We ask a great deal of these people, and the easy way in which people accuse them of being a bunch of venal slackers tends to make me a little angry.
I've mentioned in the past a couple times that I am very interested in spiritual wisdom. I've studied Christianity, Buddhism, Sufism, Daoism, and, ancient Western philosophy in some detail and one thing they all seem to agree upon is total indifference to politics. I've thought long and hard on this, and come to the conclusion that this is extremely wrong-headed.
As I see it, all of these traditions grew up in cultural contexts that were extremely authoritarian and where any idea of democracy and rule by ordinary people was so out of the question that it wasn't even a pipe dream---it simply didn't ever come up. Even in the one society where the issue was real---Periclean Athens---Plato has Socrates argue that democracy is a terrible system because it hands the state over to the uneducated mob. (History tells us that they did destroy the state by rushing into a terrible war that they ended up losing.)
My response to all of this is to say that all systems of government fail eventually, and in terms of longevity, modern representative democracy has had a very good run. Moreover, I think that there is still a great deal of life in the concept. Right now it is going through a bit of a "rough spot", but I think that that is to be expected.
People forget that we have gone through some tremendously consequential changes in the body politic over the last few decades. Women and racial minorities have much more influence now than over the last two millennia. Moreover, we are learning more about human influence on the ecosystem than people could have dreamed about in the past. At the same time, ancient systems of belief are in the process of being re-examined---and often discarded for being found wanting. It's hardly surprising that entrenched interests are profoundly upset at this turnaround and it is motivating them to fight tooth and nail against these changes.
The result is a period of extreme partisanship as groups of people who want more change fight against others that want to turn back the clock. I'm not one of those people who believe that progress is inevitable. But I do think that often things seem bleakest before real progress starts being made. I see the present as being a situation where people's definition of "common sense" is changing. And in those rare times when this happens, people's discussions get more heated and sometimes tempers flair to the point of violence. But eventually the dust will settle and after that a whole new version of "conventional wisdom" will emerge from the mess. At that point, people will pick up the broken bits, tidy things up, and, society will get on with the business of building a new world.
It's not much fun living in these times, but it wasn't during the Great Depression or World War two either. (Or the sack of Rome, the Viking invasions, etc, for that matter.)
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That's enough for this week. Again, be nice to each other, wear a mask---and get your shot if you haven't already.
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Interesting digression into embracing British imperial-style Parliamentary democracy. Does the term 'dictatorship of the bourgeoisie' ring a bell?
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