John Tory’s burgeoning mayoral bid is heating up with influential Progressive Conservatives, Liberals, and New Democrats meeting to map out a post-Rob Ford Toronto.
A two-part, two-hour campaign session Monday night at the Bloor Street East offices of FleishmanHillard was the clearest signal yet that Tory will run in next October’s municipal election.
There were about 60 people in attendance, including current and former Liberal and Conservative cabinet ministers, NDP strategists, city hall movers and shakers, communications experts, and civic activists from downtown, Etobicoke, East York, North York and Scarborough.
Read that last paragraph. The key words are "NDP strategists." What is an NDP strategist, to say nothing of the plural, doing at a meeting to elect a "conservative" politician? Do you think Stephen Harper ever invites Tom Mulcair and his buddies over for staff meetings in the PMO? This is rather the problem with John, he is a Tory in name only.
The man himself was in Montreal and denied any involvement. He even emphasized the fact that he was out of town, so he could not possibly be involved. Apparently the telegraph lines are down in the whole of Quebec. It was a denial so transparent it could be used to wrap luncheon meats, assuming John Tory knows what those are.
Then there is the location. When you think high-power PR firm headquartered in downtown Toronto, does the common touch come to mind? John Tory, despite the very best advice from the very best people, keeps losing. He keeps losing because he comes across as an elitist. When he tries to act like an ordinary guy he comes across as even more of an elitist. During the 2007 provincial election, when he lead his party to its second ignominious defeat since the departure of the Mike, he was canvassing in some part of Toronto. Running across a young man he asked what university he was attending. The young man volunteered the University of Ottawa. John Tory, every inch the U of T graduate, then began making fun of the University of Ottawa. Seriously.
Now regular readers know that I'm a condescending elitist. Regular readers will also know that, for all my many faults, I'm not dumb enough to run for political office. My instinctive contempt for most of mankind, combined with my naturally haughty demeanour, renders me unfit for elective office. This level of self-awareness eludes John Tory, as it eludes most of the governing class of Toronto. Because they're ever so smart they believe they should be in charge.
It is at this point in the conversation that I let nostalgia get the better of me: I miss the old hereditary British aristocracy. We lost something, something at times quite useful, when we ditched the Toffs for a total meritocracy. People who have inherited their status possess two tremendous advantages over people who have earned, by means foul or fair, their place at the High Table of Life:
1) People who inherit great positions have often spent decades preparing for that role. They have therefore usually acquired some modicum of manners, a basic cultural erudition and some interesting personality traits. The meritocrats, by contrast, are in many cases crude arrivistes and curriculum vitae fetishists. They talk as if the spirit of Dale Carnegie infused every inch of their overly toned bodies. Having been born to climb they never stop doing so and therefore, sooner or later, destroy themselves and those around them. Their every waking moment must be filled with action, lest the silence bring forth unpleasant thoughts, the most unpleasant thought of all being:
What is it all for?
2) Because they have inherited their position by genetic lottery they are, relatively speaking, humble. They do not, in their heart of hearts, really believe themselves better than the common people. Had fortune's wheel spun a bit slower or faster, they too would be cleaning the silverware. This limits their ambition and, by extension, their threat to the stability of society. Their appetites are easily satiated, those of the climbers and plotters never are.
In a free society where government was small and democracy's powers circumscribed, none of this would matter very much. If John Tory or a sack of potatoes wanted to be Chief Magistrate of the Imperial Capital it would be of little import to the common man. But we are no longer so free and government today is quite large. Leviathan has breed a new meritocratic ruling class, one which combines the parasitism of the welfare state, the paternalism of the nanny state with the LCD mentality of modern democracy. The questionable merits this meritocracy displays are the ones of manipulation, crude pragmatism and a cynical contempt for the ordinary voter.
Thanks to many decades of modern public education, the older variety was decent if not great at its job, the ordinary voter is too ignorant to have the slightest clue what is going on. Don't believe me? Ask them about Justin Trudeau. Not just the minimum wage bolt tighteners, but university graduates too. And this is where we really go off the rails. There is a reason the liberal arts has acquired a bad name in recent decades, it is not because the liberal arts have ceased to be vital to our civilization, or that its classical truths fail to prepare the young for the modern world. Not at all.
It is that the BA has been so debased by lowered standards and inflated grades that young men and woman, who in previous generations might have been content to live out modest lives to match their modest talents, now aspire to higher things. They think themselves clever because their teachers have told them they are clever. So out these little darlings go, filled with grand dreams and little of anything else.
They find, soon enough, their talents incapable of practical accomplishment. They drift here and there. A few, a precious few, find themselves in the offices of public relations firms on some late autumn night. They find themselves, perhaps, managing political campaigns. They think themselves fit to rule because they have acquired, through crude imitation, a kind of animal cleverness in the manipulation of the English language.
The ordinary man without the BA is ignorant, foolish and greedy. But he has one great advantage over his BAed leaders. He knows he is not smart and distrusts most people who are smarter than himself. He suspects that the clever ones are trying to pull something over on him, though he is not sure what. So when he votes he votes for Rob Ford, a man who lies like a child. They will not vote for John Tory, a very smooth man from a very elite family who has learned since a young age how English can be bent to near breaking. The ordinary man trusts Rob Ford because Rob Ford knows he is not clever enough to run other people's lives. He cannot even run his own. John Tory, by contrast, isn't clever enough to know that no matter how clever you think you are, you can never be clever enough to run anyone's life but your own.
Good one. It's rants like this that keeps me coming back.
Posted by: Copinacus | Friday, November 22, 2013 at 11:09 AM
You have, in only a few paragraphs, distilled the reason that modern democracies (which even my supposed republic has morphed into) are, in most every case, ruled so self-destructively.
Our elites are the worst of us and the rest of us so foolish that we cannot figure this simple fact out and thus vote for them, over and over.
That Obama was elected once may be the fault of the media, that he was re-elected is a condemnation of the America people.
Our society as a whole (not all individuals, of course) deserves everything it will get just as Venezuela deserves its imminent catastrophe. Ours is not far behind.
Another bright side to a nobility is that you could blame God or fate for your terrible rulers. We can only blame ourselves and/or our neighbors.
Posted by: GaryP | Friday, November 22, 2013 at 11:42 AM
While I was reading your supposed virtues of leaders who have won the genetic lottery, I kept seeing images of the Spawn of Satan (Trudeau, for those who haven't read my rants before). And, while you were attempting condescension on the commoners, I kept seeing this image of a shop keeper's daughter who went on to become one of the better PMs of the last Century.
I tend to ID the mindless from all backgrounds, an equal opportunity elitist, I suppose.
Posted by: John Chittick | Friday, November 22, 2013 at 07:45 PM
Sometimes, even the Rosedale elites are right. To be blunt: I'm a fat, forty, working class truck driver (Thank you, 2008 recession) living in Etobicoke. I should be carrying a passport for Ford Nation...but I don't. I despise Ford (& his brother) as ridiculous low lifes, without honour. I rather like Tory, mainly because he's not a mouth-breather. Outrage against evil, evil elitism leave me cold. The problem with democracy is that the common man is susceptible to envy of his perceived betters. Just ask Aristides the Just.
Posted by: Jimmy Levendia | Friday, November 22, 2013 at 08:53 PM