BULLY POLITICS

Backroom ball-breakers, advertising spin and the demise of democracy
By Brian Torsney

When my parents came to Canada more than 50 years ago it was with their sights fixed on endless opportunity and their backs turned to economic hopelessness in Ireland and growing political turmoil in Northern Ireland. To new Canadians, the Liberal party appeared to be the most tolerant and inclusive, so it may not be surprising that my father, an Irish-Catholic architect who was apparently turned down at firms simply for being a “Mick,” embraced it almost religiously. Growing up, parties at our house were attended by judges and politicians, Cardinals and priests, and conversations bubbled over with debates on the major issues of the day. It was the glory time of Pearson and Trudeau, a time when liberalism meant Canada occupied a place on the world stage that was Western and neutral; where we wore blue helmets and got between enemies rather than joining one side or another.

My parents encouraged me to question everything, even the existence of God. And I did. I participated in the democratic process like my life depended on it, becoming a regular and practical voter, deciding with my conscience rather than party allegiance. I was the marketing advisor on mayoralty and regional chair campaigns (Reg Whynott and Terry Cooke) and on my sister Paddy’s successful campaigns to secure a seat as Burlington’s Liberal Member of Parliament for close to 13 years. She went on to help manage Stephane Dion’s leadership campaign and later act as his deputy secretary. (More recently, I’ve been part of the National Liberal Party’s Red Leaf Group, which advises the national party on advertising, though they aren’t listening to much of what I say.) Through it all, I learned to question and take a stance I believed in. I didn’t allow myself to be bullied by politicians at any level.

What does bullying have to do with politics? Far too much, sadly. Bully politics is a for-me-or-against-me posture, led by one who prefers to crush their enemies rather than allow them a voice. It’s an abuse of a position to secure and maintain power. It’s a contrived, manipulative political agenda, where voters become spectators and those who try to speak up and become engaged are quickly quieted by political handlers. And to see examples of political bullying we don’t have to look too far: We’ve had our share of bully leaders, as have our neighbours to the south.

A well-used tool of political bullying is the fanatical control of all communication, a management style embraced by Prime Minister Stephen Harper. It begins looking like true and real leadership, but quickly morphs uncontrollably. With back-up bullies secured from Mike Harris’ notorious legacy in Ontario, the PM shuts down political discussion through demonizing his opponents and grinding press access to a halt. The latter is an effective tool. Publicly traded media companies are often more concerned about shareholder value than shady politics, slashing investigative reporting in favour of stories that don’t really matter – like a Tom Cruise rant or a Tinseltown infidelity.

Over the years I’ve come to believe that the world may have been simpler back in the Trudeau and Pearson days of my youth. In those times, the ubiquitous communication we have today was pleasantly absent: Internet, spy cameras, satellites and cell phones that don’t allow ruthless dictators a place to hide, but that paradoxically let political and corporate forces manipulate public opinion, reducing public interest to easily digestible 10-second clips. The public was engaged in the hot topics, and they seemed to hold their candidates and leaders accountable – at least more so than we do today.

Participation in our democracy, however, shouldn’t work this way. It needs to rely on engagement by its citizens. But according to sound bite news stories, a new and very dangerous “reality” is being portrayed: That all is well and that national politics don’t really require public attention. Again, Harper can be used as an example. When an average Canadian is asked if Harper is doing a good job, they may recall a positive news bite and respond that he’s doing okay, even though, for a long time his overall numbers flat-lined. A late-August Angus Reid poll noted that the PM’s approval rating had been at 32 percent since June. That stagnation is what the pollsters like to call “negative momentum.” But Harper’s goal is a majority aimed at executing a neoconservative controlled agenda to wipe out government participation in the fabric of Canada and, therefore he will do what the spin doctors advise – slip into a cardigan, learn to smile and appear moderate.

Clearly, Stephane Dion and his Liberals, with no pre-election budgets and, therefore no ability to deal with Harper heavily financed bullying (save a carbon tax shift plan) have been floundering. A deep thinker but not a dynamic performer, Dion has stumbled in the face of Harper’s bullying. He has occasionally tried fighting back with taunts, but these just come off as lowering himself to the same level as the Conservatives. It looks like an unfair schoolyard fight rather than a great democracy.

With bullying also comes fanatical control of all communication, a management style fully embraced by Harper. The sensational flameout of Max Bernier, and going to the polls to shut down further investigation into the Cadman Affair and last election’s “in-and-out” schemes, are just the latest examples. Garth Turner, one of Harper’s own MPs when first elected, felt the full brunt of Harper’s controlling style when he dared to choose discussion over bullying. Harper hastily tossed Turner out for holding differing opinions.

“This is a world in which a Member of Parliament, sent by the people to represent them, is cowed and threatened by an unelected staffer,” Turner wrote in a recent Toronto Star article. “It’s a place where a political party can silence internal debate and, in a hasty few moments, overthrow the results of an election. It’s where Harper MPs are told they need permission from the PMO to speak to reporters, and are expected to carry wallet cards reminding them how to avoid the media. It’s a capital in which promised free votes don’t take place, where a government elected on openness fights to restrict access to information and public servants fear for their careers if they dare speak in the public interest. Where regulators are fired for seeking to regulate and federal scientists muzzled for talking about science. Where MPs like myself and Bill Casey are expelled for speaking, and former cabinet minister Michael Chang demoted for having convictions.” The Harper Conservatives didn’t invent that sort of martial loyalty, as former Grits like John Nunziata and Joe Comuzzi can probably testify. But Harper has definitely taken it up a notch.

“Shut up and do as you’re told” isn’t anyone’s political ideal, but it’s the new reality, with bullies masquerading as leaders taking us to the dark side of the political landscape. Advertising – above-board PR campaigns, video news releases and covert spin – has been pivotal in allowing politicians to exploit the current political media situation. The Bush administration, for example, spent $1.6 billion in public relations and media contracts in just two and a half years. Harper’s Conservatives spent almost $87 million on ads in their first year alone, more than twice what Paul Martin’s Liberals had in a similar period. Spin is in and the results have been devastating to democracy. September 11, 2001 is an obvious case in point: In the cloud of that crisis, Harper’s Magazine dared to report that the events were tied to American policy in the Middle East and, later, that weapons of mass destruction were never a factor in the decision to go to war in Iraq. The magazine was crucified by its media peers, including The New York Times and The Washington Post – once stalwarts of objectivity. The press has been bullied, as has the public. Writing in The New Yorker shortly after 9/11, Susan Sontag struck back at this sort of debased strain of politics. “The unanimously applauded, self-congratulatory bromides of a Soviet Party Congress seemed contemptible,” she wrote. “The unanimity of the sanctimonious, reality-concealing rhetoric spouted by American officials and media commentators in recent days seems, well, unworthy of a mature democracy. Those in public office have let us know that they consider their task to be a manipulative one.”

Bully politicians survive because they fill a void. When in need of a figurehead, political parties can turn to them because they’re easily manipulated to look like well-intentioned, competent leaders. It often isn’t until years later that voters realize they’ve been duped. Think back to Harris’ years in Ontario: Ontarians are still licking their wounds from his Common Sense Revolution, which left the province deep in debt and, some would argue, near social bankruptcy. This manipulative breed of politics is born out of a school of thought that supports a democracy that is anything but democratic. It draws inspiration from the recognition that, in a polarized country, you can win by successfully fighting over fundamental divisions rather than the concerns and ambitions that unite us. Every issue is potentially a wedge issue. Any tactic that advances your agenda, however suspect, can be rationalized.

George W. Bush’s strategists and advisors understand this tactic innately. Their advice? Don’t discuss ideas that are difficult to g.html, or put forward any idea that you can’t shoehorn into highly condensed news clips. The public, their reasoning goes, doesn’t understand complex ideas. Better still, avoid the conversation altogether – it’s better to destroy your enemies. This theory worked in securing Bush’s power not once but twice. The problem is that it lowered the political conversation in America and turned voters, especially young ones, off politics. Until the recent Obama effect, political participation in Western democracies has been plummeting.

Here at home, Harper is following similar advice. Immediately after Dion’s election as leader of the Liberal party, the Conservatives launched an unprecedented, multi-million dollar assault on his character – often using clips manipulated out of context to make Dion look particularly foolish. Like most advertising, it worked. With no money in the Liberal coffers to fight back, Dion could not advertise a rebuttal. Harper’s attack campaign on Dion is strikingly similar to the infamous Swift Boat Veterans For Truth attack on presidential hopeful John Kerry.

The synchronous strategies of Harper and Bush are no coincidence. Donald Gutstein, a senior lecturer in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University, has noted that both Harper and Bush are graduates of the same Straussian school of thought – a controlling force in the White House and also the University of Calgary, birthplace of the Reform Party and Harper’s brand of conservatism.

“Strauss believed that allowing citizens to govern themselves will lead, inevitably, to terror and tyranny, as the Weimar Republic succumbed to the Nazis in the 1930s,” Gutstein wrote in The Tyee. “A ruling elite of political philosophers must make those decisions because it is the only group smart enough. It must resort to deception – Strauss’ ‘noble lie’ – to protect citizens from themselves. The elite must hide the truth from the public by writing in code.” In an age of sound bites and eye candy political leadership, turning official talking points into a media mantra is often enough to degrade or destroy intelligent conversation about ideas. Bullies face criticism by destroying it through grossly exaggerated meaning applied to the criticism, and the press reports it, as they should. But in a world filled with noise and competing messages, people have a hard time distinguishing nonsense from truth.

For Bush, however, the world is simple. There is only left and right, for or against. Gone is the discussion that allows for compromise and the thoughtful policies that result from negotiation. As opposing voices, all critics are easy to dismiss. When Barack Obama declared that he would talk to America’s enemies, Bush framed the statement as the equivalent of complying with Hitler during the Second World War. Obama said he would talk to Syria and Iran; he didn’t say he would give them a free ride. You could imagine how far you would get in a business or personal discussion if you made out everyone opposed to your ideas to be friends of the devil. Yet political leaders are doing just that.

Obama argues that the U.S. Congress has, over the past decade, become not a place of discussion and compromise but a place of divisive politics. In his recent autobiography, Obama laments his first years as a U.S. senator, in words that could easily describe life on our own Parliament Hill. “The demands of party loyalty, the imperative of campaigns, and the amplification of conflict by the media, all contribute to an atmosphere of suspicion,” he writes in The Audacity of Hope. “Moreover, most people who serve in Washington have been trained as lawyers or political operatives – professions that tend to place a premium on winning arguments rather than on solving problems. I can see how, after a certain amount of time in the capital, it becomes tempting to assume that those who disagree with you have fundamentally different values – indeed are motivated by bad faith, and perhaps are bad people.”

Naively principled? Maybe, but that optimism has been embraced by Americans, perhaps because it is in stark contrast to Bush’s with-us-or-against-us ultimatums. This pitting of citizens against one another is, according to feminist author Gloria Steinem, bullying at its finest. As keynote speaker at the Women and Power Conference in September 2004 in New York City, close to that somber anniversary, Steinem drew a connection between bullying’s central role in neoconservative politics and the philosophy of terrorism. When Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld went to war on a calculated lie and effectively managed to make the United States more hated than ever before, they were doing what, according to Steinem, is natural to bullies. But she commended those who refused to side against civilized discourse. “I am so proud of New Yorkers whose words are the most lasting words for me of 9/11,” she said. “Our grief is not a cry for war.”

So why do well-educated grown-ups elected to lead a highly advanced democracy, the most powerful country in the world, resort to schoolyard tactics? Steinem, talking about bullying and middle-class men, provides a clue. You would think, she says, that men who commit terrible acts of violence, such as gunning people down in a shopping mall or a college campus, come from poor backgrounds full of suffering. But for the most part they don’t. White middle-class men, she explains, have “been the ones most likely to be raised with the maximum expectation of dominance, with the purest expression of the masculine role, the greatest ideas that they will be able to control others and therefore the greatest susceptibility to frustration when they can’t and bursting out into these killing rages.” A sense of entitlement, Steinem argues, can turn adults of both sexes into power-hungry bullies. No surprise, then, that bullying in response to bullying fails to achieve peaceful results. Until people realize they have common interests at stake and take their egos and black-and-white views of issues out of the equation, negotiating and peace will remain outside our global g.html.

When you break things down like that, it all seems pretty obvious. So why do we elect “leaders” who go on to make things far more dangerous for all of us? Maybe it has to do with how our society raises children. “We are beginning – just beginning to realize that child rearing is the greatest determinant of the foreign policy we will have,” explains Steinem. “What happens in the home, what happens to children is the single most important element in...whether or not we can have democracy. If children’s authority is not respected in the home, they will accept dictatorial leaders because that has been bred into them.”

Bully politics has even become commonplace at a local level on municipal councils, where it often lacks all nuance, finesse and compromise in the best interests of its citizenry. Hamilton’s City Council has an illustrious history of in camera decision making, where bully dynamics and nepotism are most potent and damaging to the public interest. The sorry saga of the city’s Civic Square redevelopment, where special interests stifled sane debate, is a case in point.

Personal attack advertising shuts down political discussion because any politician with money can easily destroy the credibility of his or her opponents. When politics becomes personal it is left in the hands of bullies and ideas are the first victims. If I were to run ads saying Tide doesn’t actually get clothes clean, the Advertising Standards Council would be all over it, the ads would be pulled and Procter & Gamble’s lawyers would be knocking on my door looking for retribution. And, rightly so. You can’t say stuff in product advertising that you can’t back with irrefutable evidence. Why is it then that political advertisers get away with attacking personal character by claiming their Charter right to free expression?

It’s all subjective stuff, I realize, but here is my point: negative political advertising and media manipulation works, but like kids with matches, unless we establish standards to control them they’ll burn down the house. I’m not against free expression but not with impunity. Negative political advertising, especially the kind that includes personal attacks, lowers the political discussion and hurts democracy by destroying what we advertising types call the “category” of politics. While people need to wash their clothing, they don’t need to vote, so if voters are turned off politics because politicians behave like schoolyard bullies, political participation rates plummet and democracy suffers. It’s how the United States ended up with George Bush.

Maybe it’s time for us to embrace a diplomacy of generosity, to stop electing leaders who manipulate to make things work for them – time to question candidates before they are leaders – and to hold them accountable once in leadership. All of us desire peace, dignity and a global community that converses to solve differences. That’s what we pay our politicians to embrace. So, in the coming elections, let’s take a stand against bully politics, and make informed decisions that affect us – locally, nationally and internationally. Let’s ask our leaders to help make the world we deserve. HM

Brian Torsney is President of PLAY Advertising and veteran of many local and national political campaigns.