Politics as Unusual: Darkness Visible

The gun control debate brought out a wide array of nuts. Turns out my urban riding was not so urbane. All leather and hair, two “biker babes” said to me, “Why shouldn’t we be allowed to have guns? Tell the minister of justice to stop shooting his head off about this!” An elderly Eastern European gentleman argued, “If we had guns in the 1930s, Hitler wouldn’t have taken us,” suggesting a historical parallel between Canada in the 1990s and Nazi Germany. “We need our guns to hunt,” said many. “But you can still hunt,” I answered. “Just register your weapons.” They’d say, “Why should I? I’m just a hunter” or “a sport shooter” or “a collector.” I put forward the obvious: what’s the big deal in a country where we register dogs and need licences to drive? “It’s our right to have guns,” some said. “Actually, gun ownership is not a right in Canada. It’s a privilege, and the state has a legitimate interest in requiring minimal rules,” I answered. “I won’t comply,” I was told. Great, lawbreakers with guns, perhaps even vigilantes, I’d think. The stridency of these folks had the opposite of the intended effect: owing to their charm, gun registration struck me as a good first step toward confiscation.

On a busy street adjacent to a residential area in my riding, the Correctional Service of Canada wanted to reopen a halfway house for discharged criminals. Residents were incensed because an ex-con who had lived there had committed a brutal rape and murder in the neighbourhood. They formed a committee that vowed to put the kibosh on any reopening plan. I wasn’t sure what to do. A neighbouring MP and I approached the solicitor general and explained the situation. He promised to look into it. Short days later, he told us that the halfway house wouldn’t reopen. Victory! We issued a press release and organized a meeting with representatives of the concerned community groups. We were jubilant. At the meeting, we announced that the problem had been solved. Silence. No cheers, nothing. We were stunned. Apparently, we had taken the solution out of the local community’s hands. I’d have to be less paternalistic to survive in politics.

Like most of my newly elected colleagues, I arrived in Ottawa ready to dive right in. Educated, experienced, a lawyer, I knew how to solve problems. I set out to wow colleagues with my logic. It didn’t work. Some of my fellow MPs just didn’t buy my arguments. (Some never did, and, like vampires, they wouldn’t die.) Worse, they thought they knew better and couldn’t understand why I was so dim. Politics, I finally realized, is the art of compromise. In the House, in caucus, and with constituents, the lesson is the same: more often than not, it’s about optics over substance, and it’s always about listening and sharing the credit. If you’ve ever wondered why government decisions seem so odd, it’s because they result from a hundred (maybe even a thousand) noble and ignoble compromises. What’s really going on is below the surface. It’s about momentum and direction, like the London tube map, which some say was inspired by the city’s sewer system.

A colleague from down east wanted to go after banks over credit card rates. As parliamentary secretary to the minister of finance, I was certain he had his facts wrong and that the government would not legislate interest rates on credit cards. “I know all that,” he said, “but this is good politics.” Off he went to tilt at the banks and get some crusading ink for himself. Another colleague got in a lather about insufficient bank lending to small businesses. His statistics were wrong, too, but he didn’t care. People often say that politicians operate in a fact-free zone. They’re often right.

We struggled not to react only to perceptions; but taking the time to deal with the facts and the limits of power was often just not in the cards. Politics is a netherworld with its own values, rewards, and purgatory (getting tossed out) and you’re tempted to do almost anything to stay in power, convincing yourself that a wrong action can be made right later.

As Paul Martin’s parliamentary secretary, I got a taste of how difficult it is to engage the public on complex issues. As we set out to deal with a crippling deficit and write a budget, he knew we had to consult citizens about the stark choices we faced. We discovered that most people had no idea what a deficit was, let alone how high it was, but they all had strong opinions on what to do and who should solve the deficit problem (not them). Bismarck said there are two things never to watch being made: laws and sausages. He should have included budgets. A budget is a mix of personality, context, bravado, politics, grandstanding, chance, and genuine desire, all of which smacks up against the hard, cold wall of reality. Budgets are messy operations, and like intensive surgery, you often have to save the vital organs at the expense of less important (but popular) ones.

To fulfill their mandates, cable companies must offer locally relevant programming. This often translates into public service broadcasting by politicians. My fifteen-minute spot ran several times a day, sometimes airing at 4 a.m., opposite Hawaii Five-O reruns and the test signal. Another omen. For my first appearance, I decided to review the Liberal record. We had been in power for six months, and I had plenty of material. I did my thing, loved it, and started to wrap up with “See you next time,” when I noticed the producer frantically waving at me. A note was slid along the desk in front of me: “Ten minutes more to go! Keep talking!” it said. Shit, ten minutes to go and nothing to say! I started over from the beginning, repeating myself almost verbatim. Viewers didn’t notice — or at least no one said they did. “How was I?” I asked my staff. “Just great,” they said.

I tried a call-in show. It was advertised, but no one called. Not one person. Viewers, if indeed there were any, got fifteen minutes of ad lib “insights” on a typical day on Parliament Hill. It was ghastly. Stubbornly, I tried it again, this time giving viewers a topic to chew on — “The upcoming budget: how should we deal with the deficit? ” I asked. “Call me with your views.”

“I have a little money to invest; what should I do? ” asked the first caller. “Sir, this is not a show offering investment advice,” I said. “But don’t you work for the minister of finance? ” he asked. “Yes,” I said proudly. “Well, then, you should know this stuff,” he said. We carried on in this vein for some time because, well, because there were no other calls. Finally, the phone line lit up — another call. I thanked the gentleman and moved on. “My daughter has just married this damn immigrant and . . . ” The producer was waving at me. Thankfully, my time was up. “Please join us next time,” I concluded, “when our guest will be Allan Rock, to talk about gun control.” I never took calls again. From then on, I ran my free political advertising like episodes of The Tonight Show: a short monologue, followed by guest appearances and whatever recent government announcements I could reannounce.

To my amazement and great delight, people actually do watch TV at 4 a.m. “I saw you on television,” they’d say. Everyone seemed to think I looked good, but no one commented on what I had said. Then it hit me. It was all just about being there, looking good. Not always. After an appearance on ctv’s Question Period with a Reform Party MP, a viewer was moved to write to me. His kindest words included a suggestion that “God intervene and give you a crippling disease which will be terminal.” The letter was written in longhand but unsigned. It ended, “In total contempt to a Liberal maggot.” Fortunately, the writer had provided his name and return address on the envelope. I passed it along to his local MP, Preston Manning (then the leader of the Reform Party), and sent a copy to the rcmp. I pretended to my staff that I wasn’t scared. Nut cases, I noticed, have excellent penmanship. Every so often, I received letters from religious congregations telling me that they had included me in their prayers. I took such remote intercessions as kindnesses, though too often such letters also exhibited superb penmanship.