The New Democracy?

Those who watched the Republican rivals in their leadership debate this week were treated to quite a scene – eight rivals squaring off against one another in hopes of the politics’ ultimate prize. Whatever your political leanings, it was an impressive sight as they spread out across the entire platform.Sadly, it might be a rare occurrence in the new age of Canadian politics. Last May’s federal election introduced citizens to a new kind of political strategy – opting out of debates. It occurred extensively and was practiced primarily by those running for the Conservative party. This isn’t a partisan shot; it was just a reality that was confronting Canadians for the first time.Somehow the Conservatives figured on two growing realities. The first was that citizens were increasingly tuning out of politics, and the second was the split vote on the left provided them an obvious advantage in any kind of electoral contest. In both cases they turned out to be right. And now we hear of reports that the Ontario Progressive Conservative candidates are refusing to attend debates in the run-up to the provincial election. What’s going on out there? How did it get to the point where aspiring politicians felt it was okay to avoid public debates? Conservative campaign organizers suggest that their people are canvassing instead, which they think is more meaningful. Okay, I’ve had some experience at this and I’ve learned that on any given day only some 30%-40% of the people are home and most don’t want to answer the door. No media is present to fact check and other points of view are most often not present. Regardless of whether one likes official election debates or not, they represent the best chance for citizen exposure and media follow-up. But when candidates refuse such opportunities, they cheapen the election process for the people they are hoping to serve.Parties like those who refuse to send their candidates to these important democratic arenas count on two very important allies: ambition and inertia.  I watched during the last federal campaign as Conservative candidates that I respected refused to stand in front of the public. Why would they do that? The answer is complex but much of it swirls around ambition and the desire to please the party leader in hopes of rising up through the political establishment. The drive that brings people into political contests is typically matched by a desire to hold on to position, power, and the perks that come with it. Furthermore, there resides the ongoing desire to pass on such things to their chosen party successors.To accomplish all this, parties and their politicians attempt to accumulate the tools of maintaining power that they feel are the most valuable. They educate their people with tricks and catchphrases to use to maintain the public’s support. They inherit networks of contacts and supporters that can assist them in their quest. This is the political system as it stands today and it counts on ambition to feed its engines.If the public itself is rapidly losing interest in the strategic games of political power, an opening is created that permits political aspirants to avoid accountability – nobody’s watching. The last federal campaign revealed that the government’s avoidance of political debates failed to hurt their electoral chances because people don’t really believe governments are accountable anyway. Nothing much was expected. Greens, NDP, Liberals, Bloc, and independents all took democracy seriously and showed up at debates. They eventually lost and the governing party won – leaving many to question the very validity of the political process. As long as this inertia remains - this “I just don’t care” attitude - then political parties have far more leeway to avoid political accountability and not be hurt by it. That process is now being replicated in the Ontario provincial campaign. At least its government members are showing enough respect to show up.I have talked to Conservative MP friends who acknowledge this erosion in accountability. But what would have happened for instance if they would have said “no?” One can imagine, but they didn’t want to find out. Pleasing leaders and their handlers is as old as politics; opting out of public debates is not. It’s new and it’s troubling.South African writer Helen Suzman noted during the worst of a difficult era: “Debate is almost non-existent and no one is apparently accountable to anybody apart from their political party bosses. It is bad news for democracy in this country.” That’s what happening to us at the moment. Another writer, better known, had his own take on this south of the border: “Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled.” That was Michael Crichton and he, too, was right. Too many parties in politics no longer debate because they have a well-structured plan to bring down their opponents – demonize people with whom they disagree or feel threatened by. It’s this kind of ideological framing that should scare us more than anything else. In the words of Joseph Joubert: “It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it.” Ontario is now the battleground to prove whether this is indeed true and the media has yet to take this matter seriously.For politics to truly matter, two things must happen concurrently. First, it’s time to leave behind the stale and predictable debates between political parties and take the resources we have and focus our combined energies on just doing those things that count. For example, the Conference Board of Canada just announced that the gap between the rich and the poor is growing faster in Canada that in the U.S. What are parties collectively going to do about that? Second, citizens must start paying attention, without which the first can never occur.If Jesse Jackson was right when he said, “Deliberation and debate is the way you stir the soul of our democracy,” then any jurisdiction where people refuse to participate in public debates is cheapened. When any party adopts the motto “Silence is Golden” in a campaign, the result is political and social deafness. It might be the new democracy, but it’s demeaning to us all.