We have entered autumn (although August here was a good primer) and we are weeks into a national election campaign here in Canada. It is difficult to comment on this subject without risking cliche and making the usual associations. The election cycle has become another predictably episodic ritual of life in the west. The campaign will heat up. The public will become weary of deluge then the voting day will come and a decision will be made that will divide the population for the next four years. It has become such a perfunctory sleep-walking exercise that we forget about how precious this whole process is. Recently there has been a spate of elections across the western world in which there was no clear mandate for any of the victorious parties. A telltale sign that we may have entered the "hanging-chad" era of electoral politics -- where the public refuses to put the majority of its trust in any one party to represent its interests.
What we are coming to witness in the modern election campaign is a "branding" contest that offers up political leaders who are trained to stay on message through carefully-scripted "catch-all slogans. I have tuned into the news coverage and discovered that it's more of documentation of each leader's respective glad-handing photo-ops du jour and less of a dispassionate analysis of their positions on any given issue. The political party itself seems to serve only as a convenient backdrop -- a banner -- to the individual leaders who are given more sustained, front and centre exposure. As a result, we get "cult of personality" politics. The marketing of political parties may be an ancient art, but nowadays its a much more carefully-staged exercise in manufacturing a political leader's made-for T.V. aura.
The once-respectable national news media here has become a mere distiller of more tabloid-style speculation rather than an "objective" and trustworthy news source from which to make an informed decision. I realize that I could invite the accusation of being naive for even implying that the fifth estate has ever been free of bias and true to its historical mission of serving the truth. Yet it seems now that even the most respected news media outlets have come to accept the their role as being an almost secondary news source and have responded with a somewhat more distanced approach of "meta-analysis" -- or coverage of the coverage itself. What we countenance in the television news media's superficial approach to election coverage is a tacit admission that serious analysis hurts in the ratings department and hence a stepping-back from any attempt at being a credible source of serious reporting. Spin itself, once the exclusive chicanery of governments to manage the message, has saturated media as well. The public is too savvy -- too hip to the art of spin --- and to fit expectations, the media has thus had to re-invent itself by succumbing to a the role of being an electronic carnival sideshow. The media's role is now fait accompli: diverting the public's critical gaze to a contest of readily digestible images rather than explaining the complex dimensions of underlying ideas.
Here in Canada, we're in the final days of a federal election campaign that has this overlapping effect with the U.S. presidential election, so the atmosphere here is saturated with election advertising, debates, speculative news reports and of course, damning soundbite moments that betray a proverbial chink in a candidate's armour. It can all become quite confusing for the average pundit on the street when so much of this obligatory charade of electioneering has become more tightly managed and slickly orchestrated to the point that if a candidate appears as contradictory or god forbid, less than superhuman, the carefully laboured illusion crumbles to the ground.
I will have a difficult time choosing who to vote for because I don't necessarily believe that party lines satisfactorily reflect much more nuanced and complex shifts in the world that demand more pragmatic and flexible approaches rather than rigid ideological ones. The problem with political parties is that there is always internal pressure for the party to adopt measures that mollify the special interest factions within that party and this often limits the party from assuming a more universal and outward-looking approach in addressing issues. This perhaps explains why so much emphasis is placed on the party leaders themselves. The leaders become iconic embodiments of the party's primary focus. Hence, Obama Democrats, Reaganites or Thatcherites, or here in Canada - Harperites or Trudeau-Liberals. The party is an extension of its leader and the leader's name becomes a hyphenated-label for a party in a given era. Is it fair to declare that the party's over? That in the age of the internet and ever-present and up-to-the-minute media coverage, the voter/citizen/consumer formulates his/her opinions based on impressions of individual political leaders rather than on the more cumbersome philosophical platforms that the leaders represent. The voters make a gut decision based on 30 second visual-clips rather than on the issues. It's easy to be impressed by Barack Obama for example, he is likeable, dynamic, telegenic and an outstanding orator but there is just as much mystery enshrouding his persona. Who is he really and what does he stand for? Although he may reflect good "core" principles in the vague sense of the word, is he a result of a choice made by his party to be a historical first (first black presidential candidate) rather than whether or not he has clearly defined policy positions. By all appearances, Obama demonstrates a fresh and new alternative to the status quo yet his candiacy is just as much about the American public's thirst to extend the heroic narrative in an age of such social and economic turbulence -- to make and then destroy another superstar. The winsome, youthful magnetism of Obama alone captures a tattered public imagination and it resonates on a primal level, far more than detailed, definable positions or salient character traits. This is not to deny the great attributes of Obama nor is it to negate his,no doubt, sincere intentions, it is however, meant to stand back from allure of his image and examine it with more scrutiny . The dismaying choice of Sarah Palin for the McCain ticket, illustrates this point even further.
In Canada we have an incumbent Conservative prime minister - Stephen Harper - who is considered cold-blooded and dictatorial yet decisive, while Stephane Dion, his Liberal Party adversary, appears on the nation's T.V. sets as a fragile, earnest, bookish type with a rudimentary command of English (French being his mother tongue.) Yet, if anyone had the patience or the rigour to listen to the substance of Monsieur Dion's ideas, they might discover that he is possibly quite a bit more capable of running a country than reassuring people with manly confidence. It is a sad indictment of our times that we as a society have become so shallow that we don't elect our leaders based so much on their credentials, experience or ideas but rather on how well they're able to play to a celebrity-driven media.
