A Face For All Seasons

I had varied responses to Michael Ignatieff’s reflection on his political tenure in his new book, Fire and Ashes, but most of all I just felt badly for the human emotion of disappointment he must have endured.  Many will pile on with their political punditry, but it must have been tough, that’s all.Michael and I had breakfast at the Chateau Laurier on the week he was to be the final signatory to the document then Liberal leader, Stephane Dion, had asked his caucus to sign in support of a coalition.  The air was painfully rife with tension all over Ottawa that day, but Michael himself was a picture of conflicted emotions as we talked over eggs and coffee.  Later, we walked up to Centre Block together, through the main door, where all hell broke loose and the media descended upon him.  I just shuffled off to the side and moved down the hallway towards our caucus room, aware that I was a person of no interest to the media, and thinking how hard political life is for someone reaching for the brass ring.One passage in the book I thought was poignant and revealing:

 I have never been so well dressed in my life and never felt so hollow.  I would say that some sense of hollowness, some sense of a divide between the face that you present to the world and the face that you reserve for the mirror, is a sign of sound mental health.  It’s when you no longer notice that the public self has taken over that trouble starts … you’ll soon surrender your whole life to politics.  You become your smile; the fixed rictus of geniality that politics demands of you.  When that happens, you’ve lost yourself.”

It’s helpful if we just suspend our own partisan thoughts and think about this statement for a moment.  It’s revealing and not a little troubling.  Politics has always been about the handshake and the smile, but never have the risks been as grave.  If you don’t possess that gift of the enigmatic in the political world you could well be doomed.  Michael, like many politicians, was a serious thinker in a fluffy world of images and soundbites, where pundits are never happy and citizens rarely engaged.  In such a world it becomes infinitely helpful if you can fake it – be animated even if you don’t feel like it.This has troubling consequences for the citizen/voter, who, in endeavouring to discover your authenticity as a politician, must fight through your acting abilities in order to discern your genuineness.  Some politicians are just so good at it that everyone believes them all the time.  In appropriate measure, such affectations have their place.  Play that game too much, however, and you consist mainly of plasticine – altering yourself to fit any occasion.  You end up becoming the casualty of your own adaptability: an empty suit or a dress, speaking about big issues.Where this pressure becomes really unfortunate is when it hits those who are thinking of entering politics.  We watch as the initial stages of conformity begin bending them out of shape.  It can take the form of demonizing others, nimbly compromising values, betraying historic alliances and friendships, and becoming different things to different people.  Of course, one can’t be “on” all the time and a certain ability to be positive is helpful.  But if a person’s pursuit of politics takes on a sense of overriding ambition, so much so that he or she bends into whatever shape is required at the moment, then that person loses not only their own soul, but the essence of public service.When we go to a movie or a play, we want the acting to be as fine as possible.  But we expect nothing in return except to be entertained.  When we merely expect to be entertained in politics, we are to be pitied.  Actions on the political stage can have the effect of ending homelessness or expanded poverty; make for an educated society or a “dumbed down” citizenry; engage the public or turn them off; expand citizens or deflate them; guarantee the public space or jeopardize it.  There are consequences to such performances, and to covertly fake them is to demean them.It is difficult to see aspiring politicians starting out this way, but perhaps it is because we as citizens have become so fickle that we continue to press those seeking office to dance on the head of a pin.  Moreover, the modern media can often make the politician pay for being candid or transparent.  The confluence of all these modern pressures has hastened the day of politics as theatre, where all the world becomes a stage, and politicians merely players.H. L. Mencken once noted that, “conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking.”  That’s true.  The problem with politics is that it is the knowledge that everyone is looking that gets us to deny our conscience, our inner selves.  We become what we believe everyone wants instead of what we need to be at a particular moment in time.  Political leadership should never be about playing the angles incessantly in order to gain favour, but to earn public trust by living a life of principle and transparency. If we forget that value at the beginning, we will have lost all sense of authenticity in the end.