Coup de Dief et Ford

When everyone's favourite liberal plotted to overthrow the Canadian government:

President Kennedy was a beacon of liberalism and a promoter of the Canadian Liberal party. He hosted a dinner for Nobel prize winners that featured Pearson during the 1962 election campaign. His team surreptitiously worked behind the scenes for Pearson, encouraging bad press notices for the Tories. His pollster, Lou Harris, did secret work, and helped Liberals learn modern techniques of doing politics.

So for those Canadian conservative who do not already regard the Kennedy mythos with distain, here's another very good reason: JFK helped create Trudeaupia. It was Pearson, let it never be forgotten, who plucked that socialist out of his Montreal bobo lifestyle and placed him gingerly in the halls of power. 

In fairness, for we are nothing if not fair here at GCH, Dief was self-destructing by 1962. The Canadian MSM was vigorously plotting to destroy the incumbent Tory government, bitter at Dief's common man touch and his supposed usurpation of power. Since Mackenzie King buried what was left of R.B. Bennett's political career, it had been understood that only Liberal technocrats, and their buddies in the universities, public service and media had a divine right to rule Canada. Dief, for all his many faults, was a powerful counterblast to the Establishment. Sadly he blew his chance.

There is a parallel, albeit an awkward one, between Rob Ford and John Diefenbaker. It is, of course, noted that Dief would never, even in his most eccentric moments, have described sexual acts in public or pushed over a grandmother. There were certain proprieties in mid-century Canada that everyone observed. Even the drunks of that era had a certain class about them. No artist half a century from now will be making winsome dramas about crack smoking mayors. 

For their times each man represented a populist angst. An increasingly powerful technocratic state, an arrogant and tin eared elite who had become disconnected with the concerns of the common Canadian. In the 1950s it was the emergence of the early welfare and regulatory state. Today it's the panopticon society created by modern technology and the stagnant incomes of the middle class. The cultural disconnect was also deep in both eras. By about 1960 few of Canada's educated elite took religion very seriously, yet most Canadians still did. The new technocratic and highly urbanized age disturbed and alienated many ordinary Canadians. Dief was able to emotionally connect with that alientation, though only George Grant was able to articulate it. Both men were, in time, ignored and half forgotten.

There is and always will be a separation between the elite and the common man. There is nothing inherently wrong about this cultural and intellectual gap. The function of any elite is to lead. Every society requires leadership. But in order to lead effectively an elite must understand the needs, aspirations, strengths and limitations of the common man. When they fail to do so they become arrogant, assuming that any divergence from the elite consensus is the product of idiocy or ignorance. To lead, however, requires you to first respect those you are leading. When that respect is not offered, your followers revolt.

Whatever the rhetoric of democracy, the reality of human nature is that the vast majority of people prefer to be lead rather than to lead themselves. Their concerns are parochial and their aspirations comparatively modest. This is not because they are necessarily stupid or ignorant, but because they prefer real everyday connections with human life. Grand abstractions are unappealing. The lived reality of the moment matters. What comes after or beyond is of little interest. Leadership is, among other things, a specialization of function. Some lead so the rest can on with the business of living. 

When their leaders fail them the common man looks for new leaders. In 1958 they found John Diefenbaker and gave him the greatest peacetime mandate in this nation's history. He offered a grand and noble vision with little in the way of practical details. Dief promised a better Canada more intuned with the needs of ordinary Canadians. Unfortunately he hadn't the slightest clue how that could be accomplished. The game plan seems to have gone little further than: The Liberals are the problem, so let's get rid of the Liberals. But Liberals are never the real problem, the party is simply too pragmatic to be an intellectual force in its own right. The late St. Laurent - Howe Liberals were a sympthom. 

In 2010 the leaders of Toronto, and indeed of the province of Ontario, had failed in their duty. They had become disconnected from the needs and strengths of their people. The common man sensed this and sought out other leaders. At the provincial level they found only the empty suit of Tim Hudak. At the municipal level they found the improbable and seemingly impossible force of Rob Ford.

His life has been lived like an episode of the Trailer Park Boys, though produced on a millionaire's pay scale. The man is a vulgar, emotionally awkward brute with a limited vocabulary and modest intelligence. Rob Ford, however, is also a man of remarkable personal courage, which occassionally shades into deluded arrogance. There is, somewhere, in that bloated mass of instincts and contradictions an essentially decent man trying to do his best. That does not excuse his behaviour or make it any less necessary for him to leave political life, it should still give us pause.

The elite hates Rob Ford. They are, unfortunately, too mediocre and arrogant to understand the man or what he represents. He is not merely a populist simpleton who has allowed the common man to vent. He is a sympthom of a frustrated age. Rob Ford is an indictment of the elite. They failed to lead. Instead they sought to command. A free people, even a free people in the incipient stages of decadence, will not be commanded. You cannot tell the Canadian people that teachers are co-parents, that windmills are a practical alterntive to sustaining a modern economy and that spending on ideological baubles is a substitute for fiscal prudence. They will not believe you. They will hate you for deceiving them.

The common man might not understand why they are alienated, abstractions are not their strong suit. They do, however, feel alienated. Thus the inchocate and at times almost fanatical loyalty toward Rob Ford. If this were simply a matter of a bad man with good policies, someone else would have picked up that banner. But there is no one else. The common man sees a row of arrogant elitists who have deceived him time and again. A stubborn minority will cling to Rob Ford all the way through hell fire, as they did for John Diefenbaker fifty years ago.

There is another Trudeau in the wings. Let us tread carefully. 

Comments

[MikeG81]

"They failed to lead. Instead they sought to command. A free people, even a free people in the incipient stages of decadence, will not be commanded. You cannot tell the Canadian people that teachers are co-parents, that windmills are a practical alterntive to sustaining a modern economy and that spending on ideological baubles is a substitute for fiscal prudence. They will not believe you. They will hate you for deceiving them."

This paragraph might have made sense had the people of Ontario not voted for team Dalt so often and are probably going to vote for Team Wynne.