PM, Dion dumb down public discourse

TheStar.com - opinion - PM, Dion dumb down public discourse
March 01, 2007
James Travers

OTTAWA–Stéphane Dion is positioning Liberals dead centre in Conservative crosshairs. That's recklessly dangerous, but not necessarily fatal. With two controversial anti-terrorism provisions formally declared dead today, the unsteady new Liberal leader is locking his party into an argument Conservatives are confident they will win.

This week, and in the months ahead, Stephen Harper and his chorus will chant that Dion and Liberals are, among other horrid lefty things, soft on terrorism.

Tactically, Harper is doing to Dion on terrorism what Dion is doing to Harper on Kyoto: Each is putting the other on the defensive side of an inflamed and often irrational debate.

That shouldn't surprise anyone. Wrong-footing an opponent is as pivotal to partisan politics as spin and the pithy TV clip.

In fact, both leaders are scripting for television. It's no more possible to make a coherent 30-second case for or against extraordinary police powers than it is to weigh the benefits and costs of climate change.

Instead, politicians offer props and theatrics. In all senses of the word, Harper is using the families of Air-India and 9/11 victims to tilt public opinion toward national security and away from individual rights.

Equally mischievously, Dion is using imperfect Kyoto to demonize any who question its late application as synonymous with the flat Earth society.

Voters should be insulted. Conservative and Liberal alike are making unflattering assumptions about the collective IQ as well as the national capacity to separate wheat from chaff.

Harper is behaving as if Canadians are susceptible to the same scare tactics Joe McCarthy used to terrify Americans into believing Reds were under every bed. Whispers and innuendo are now the Conservative weapons of choice against Dion's defence of civil liberties.

In the same way, Dion is counting on Canadians to forget or forgive that after finally signing Kyoto, Liberals did so little that Canada's performance is among the worst. To now cast Harper as a climate-change denier is, at best, disingenuous.

Buried in both campaigns is just enough truth to trap the unwary. While hardly alone, Liberals have a history of dabbling in diaspora politics. And even if Liberals weren't environmental activists, there's no doubt Conservatives are 11th-hour converts to save-the-planet evangelism.

So what's the anticipated result of this ugliness?

Harper hopes to be seen as Horatio at the bridge and that Dion will be dismissed as a weak leftover from a gentler era. Dion hopes to be seen as safeguarding core values and that Harper will be cast into political darkness.

But in constructing images from suspect material, both leaders are carelessly deconstructing a democratic foundation. Even though citizens delegate responsibility for wise governance, there remains a civic duty to reach considered conclusions on issues that matter.

By any reasonable standard, locating the sweet spot between individual rights and national security is one of those. So, too, is finding the fulcrum between a sustainable environment and a sustaining economy.

If war is too important to leave to generals then surely these decisions are too significant to leave exclusively to politicians.

Current antics make contrary arguments null and void.

In treating fellow citizens with no more respect than a talk-show audience, Harper and Dion are dumbing down the national conversation and making it disturbingly uncivil.

The scurrilous Conservative suggestion that Liberals are flip-flopping on anti-terrorism to protect extremists combined with Liberal environmental fear-mongering are pushing the quality of debate to new lows.

Blending a little truth with a lot of fiction has defined U.S. politics for a long time. But dismissing what's happening here as just catching up would be to ignore the obvious pitfall.

Politicians who get too far out in front of reality lose credibility and ultimately support when voters catch up to them after finally catching on. Dion and Harper are making themselves vulnerable to that phenomenon.

Dion's exaggerated case against Harper collapses the moment Conservatives unveil a reasonable environment plan.

Harper's fantasy about terrorism's new best friend will evaporate if – and it's a big if – Dion can articulately explain that it was his party that responded to extraordinary times with intrusive measures and that it now has good reasons to reconsider the worst of them.

Allowing Harper to position the Liberal leader in the soft-on-terror crosshairs is dumb politics.

But the targeting is so crude and the defence of human rights so central to democracy that Dion might just duck the bullet.




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James Travers's national affairs column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. jtraver@thestar.ca.