Allan Gregg on Attack Ads

I have written about Allan Gregg on this blog before; probably his most noteworthy recent contribution to political discourse came in his speech to Carleton University’s School of Public Affairs, in which he denounced the Orwellian bent of the Harper regime in its promotion of ignorance in place information and knowledge.

Gregg offers his thoughts on attacks ads in this morning's Star. In contrast to the blood sport that it has become under the Harper regime, Gregg defines politics this way:

For good or ill, politics is the process by which we organize civil, democratic society. It is used to allocate a nation’s scarce resources. Through it, we confer a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. Because of it, we are able to represent the wishes of the majority and at the same time protect the rights of the minority. And at bottom, politics creates a state that has the potential to do immense good or infinite harm and, as such, we all have a vested interest that the best and brightest and only those who are motivated by the public good are encouraged to enter public life.

By this definition, the Harper government has abjectly failed the public whose interests and well-being they were charged with protecting and promoting. Gregg readily admits that attack ads do work because they play to people's innate cynicism about politicians. And as I have asserted before, I believe that the additional purpose behind Harper's 'politics of denunciation' is the discouragement of people from voting, thereby allowing the 'true believers' (whoever those benighted souls may be) to have disproportionate influence at the polls.

I consider Gregg as one who knows of what he speaks. The 'brains' behind the 1993 campaign ad ridiculing Jean Chretien's facial deformity, he must have at some point experienced a Damascene conversion, no doubt facilitated by the Harper regime's relentless practice of politics that bespeaks a depraved indifference to the health of our democracy, of which attack ads are only a small part. Gregg now seems to be spending much of his time trying to atone for those past mistakes, and today's Star article seems very much a part of that process of penance.

So I will leave the final word with the former pollster:

... those who believe that this (the public good) is “what politics are really about” have a responsibility to draw attention to its virtues and not just its shortcomings.

Incoming Editorial Cartoon

Oh, I do so savor The Toronto Star.

Is Nothing Sacred?

Apparently not to Stephen Harper, who used the tragedy of the Boston Marathon bombings to try to attack Justin Trudeau.

Apparently the Prime Minister discourages any rational consideration of crime in favour of his well-known modus operandi, knee-jerk reactions and demagoguery.

Watch the following and decide for yourself:

For Your Further Consideration

Pondering The Dark Arts

For those as weary of political attack ads as I am, The Star's Carol Goar has an interesting column in today's edition. Entitled Debating ‘dark arts’ of political campaigning, Goar relates her experience of moderating a panel over the weekend comprised of

... Jaime Watt, the primary architect of former Ontario premier Mike Harris’s two election campaigns in the ’90s; David Herle, co-chair of former prime minister Paul Martin’s two election campaigns a decade later; and Chima Nkendirim, the strategist behind Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi’s victory in 2010.

While each had his own definition of his role during a political campaign, Herle and Watts defended the use of what they called 'negative ads'. While averring their distaste for attacks on a person's personal life, and agreed that mocking physical appearances/disabilities, they both feel it is fair game to question a candidates motives and fitness for office, which, to me, despite their rationalizations, is tantamount to endorsing character assassination, probably in many ways much worse than mocking of physical attributes. Nkendirim was the only one who felt his prime duty is to defend his candidate vigorously.

Rather disingenuously, Herle professed to being deeply troubled by low voter turnout:

“When 40 per cent of the population isn’t voting, the results are wildly unrepresentative of the people,” he acknowledged. “But we don’t know what the driver of that is.” He suggested it might be the reduced relevance of government in an age of globalization and market economics.

I suspect a bit of willful ignorance on Mr. Herle's part. As political observers far more astute than I have observed, there is little doubt that political attack ads, by the very fact that they lower political discourse to the level of schoolyard taunts, are a disincentive to voter participation.

And as I have suggested before, that is precisely the outcome desired by those who have proven to be such adept masters of these dark arts, the Harper Conservatives.

Harper Hate-Mongering

The latest attack ad, this one against newly-appointed Liberal Party leader Justin Trudeau, serves as a timely reminder of the Harper government's seemingly endless capacity for hateful and divisive propaganda. In this, I make an all-too obvious observation. But I have, for some time, wondered about the audience for those ads, and searching my blog archive, I don't think I have commented upon this aspect previously.

No matter which Conservative attack ad one chooses, and there have been many, it seems that a standard template for the imagery and the narration predominates, both always out of context and derisive in tone. Designed to inspire fear, resentment and mockery towards their targets, they reveal something very significant about their collective architect, the Harper regime: a morally bankrupt and debased view of the electorate.

I have often wondered whether the target audience, the general electorate, has ever stopped to think about the implications of having a government that regards them as little more than Pavlovian dogs, deficient in intellect, general awareness, and sensibility, poised to respond to the latest offering from their 'master'. Consider the ad against Justin Trudeau, which I posted yesterday. There is a kind of carnival music playing in the background, suggestive of frivolity and lightness, the image they are trying to instill of Trudeau in the viewer's mind. The Liberal leader is shown doing a kind of striptease and behaving in an exaggerated, almost effeminate way. Cue the contempt.

The other ad released yesterday listed Trudeau's experience as a camp counsellor, rafting instructor and drama teacher for two years, the later delivered with particular derision (the message: a real leader has contempt for the arts). While its message is blunt and obvious, that very bluntness makes the intended audience manipulation more than obvious, something that Canadian citizens should be offended, outraged, and disturbed by, inasmuch as it is a bald admission that power is the regime's only raison d'etre.

And yet we are told that attack ads are very effective. I can only hope that more and more people begin to exercise their innate critical faculties and see these ads for what they really are: a blatant expression of contempt for the voters of Canada.

Pernicious Effects of Harper Politics on the Young

This, I assume, requires no further comment: