Typing up lists of the year’s political winners and losers is usually a pretty straightforward proposition: simply declare the winners of elections are godlike geniuses, and dismiss the losers as complete dummies. Per that hoary old political axiom, victory has a thousand fathers, and defeat is an orphan.

And, true to form, plenty of pundits and prognosticators have indeed bravely determined that (a) Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Party are heroes and (b) Stephen Harper, Tom Mulcair and their political parties are zeroes.

Trudeau and Team Grit won a stunning victory in October, yes. And Messrs. Harper and Mulcair indubitably lost what they had – a strong majority government and Official Opposition, respectively. But there’s more to political 2015 than that. And regurgitating the Blindingly Obvious is, well, being Blindingly Obvious. (And boring.)

Herewith, then, a list of 2015’s somewhat-less-obvious political winners and losers, with the reasons why.

Gutsiest political move: Tom Mulcair. The NDP leader – who, if the mutterings of anonymous Dipper strategists hold true, is soon to be the former NDP leader – did something during Election 2015 that you rarely, ever see in our politics: he was a frontrunner who took a very risky stand, one that he knew might cost him his frontrunner status. And it did. Mulcair’s refusal to go along with the Conservatives’ niqab-bashing was quite brave – particularly when you consider that most of his party’s seats were in Quebec, where aversion to the niqab (and the hijab) has always been high. Mulcair’s refusal to go along with thinly-veiled Islamaphobia precipitated a dramatic drop in the polls, and Justin Trudeau thereby became the only viable alternative to Harper. It may be small comfort when it comes time to write his memoirs – but history should record Tom Mulcair’s stance as a gutsy one.

Dumbest political move(s): the Conservative campaign. When political strategists know they are losing, they typically do one of two things. One, they dust off their C.V., and start quietly looking for greener pastures. Or, two, they douse themselves with gasoline and light a match, seeking to go out in a blaze of glory. The Conservative Party – led by Jenni Byrne, Guy Giorno and others – opted for the latter. In early October, when they still had a chance at re-election, the Conservative brain trust bizarrely decided to stop talking about the economy, and shriek endlessly about Muslims instead. So, they announced the creation of something called the “barbaric practices hotline,” which everyone knew was aimed at Muslims. It was “standing up for our values,” said Immigration minister Chris Alexander. It was “disgusting,” said Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi, and most of the country agreed with him. A few days later, Byrne et al. made a bad situation worse. They put their leader together with former Toronto mayor Rob Ford, and invited an astounded media to take photographs. Is it ever a good idea to espouse law-and-order themes whilst simultaneously campaigning with a crack-using, drunk-driving xenophobe? Um, no.

Craftiest political move: the Liberal pledge to never “go neg.” Long before he won the Liberal leadership in April 2013, Justin Trudeau solemnly pledged to never “go neg” – in the parlance of political consultants, to unleash a barrage of attack ads and nasty invective against one’s opponents. After he won the Liberal leadership, Trudeau mainly kept his vow – until Summer 2015, that is, when his party had slipped from first place to third. At that point, Trudeau continued to pledge “sunny ways” on the campaign trail – while also pummeling his opponents in advertising and (particularly) leader’s debates. In the latter case, Trudeau gave far better than he got, and left Messrs. Harper and Mulcair gasping for air, and wondering what had gone wrong. Now, Trudeau wasn’t the first politician to promise to never go neg while going neg – in recent Canadian history, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty did so in every one of his winning campaigns – and he won’t be the last. Because it pays dividends. (Oh, and Gerald Butts: the former Cape Bretoner was one of the guys who advised McGuinty to pursue the no neg/go neg strategy in 2003, 2007 and 2011 – and he did so again with Trudeau in 2015. And it worked, didn’t it?)

Most disappointing political move: the crummy candidates, in every party. It wasn’t the fault of social media, either. Social media simply provides a platform for crazy people to say crazy things – and for campaign war rooms, or the media, to thereafter publicize the craziness. (It’s been plenty nutty in past campaigns, believe me.) But the sheer volume of insanity and inanity in Campaign 2015 simply dwarfs everything that has gone before it: Truthers. Hitler comparisons. Racists. Anti-Semites. Threats. Stalkers. And even a guy who peed in a cup when he thought no one was looking. It was appalling, it was disgusting, and it reflected badly on the leaders of every party – because every leader signed the nomination papers of each and every one of those kooky candidates. And we wonder why people don’t vote as much as they used to. Wonder no more, etc.
 
All that notwithstanding, 2016 begins with the country in a better mood. You don’t have to be a card-carrying Liberal to agree that people generally seem to like Justin Trudeau – or, at the very least, they are prepared to give him some time to make a few moves of his own.

Will they eventually turn against him? Of course! They always do, with every leader.

And then, before you know it, we’ll be back in another election campaign – and we’ll have plenty of new examples of political moves that were gutsy, or dumb, or crafty or disappointing.

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Also, are there any new seat sales to the country of Islam? And do any other Canadian country and western singers get entire legal codes named after them?

(And, yes, folks, it’s “real” account, densely populated. I strongly suspect it’s fake, however. But it’s revealing, in the Trump Era, that we can’t be so sure anymore.)

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God bless Yoko Ono, eh?

    

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More than anything, I wanted to be a journalist. I started creating my own newspapers – ironically enough, about professional wrestling – when I was 10 years old.

During law school, I had the privilege of working for the Calgary Herald before Conrad Black and his henchmen gutted it. Before, during and after being called to the bar, I had the privilege of working at the Ottawa Citizen before things got bad there, too. 

While at the Citizen, I wrote something about how Brian Mulroney’s free-trade agreement would possibly place Canada’s health care system at risk. It wasn’t a big deal, particularly.

But it was refused. It was sent back to my editor, Randy Denley, by the paper’s then-editor, Keith Spicer. “We have to be nation builders,” Spicer wrote on a piece of notepaper. I can still see his hand writing. 

After that, I didn’t really have the stomach for daily journalism. Politics and law weren’t exactly paragons of ethics and virtue, but at least they didn’t pretend – unlike journalism – that they were. 

In 2016, I anticipate the end of the Sun chain in the first quarter, and the end of the Postmedia chain in the third. The reasons will be legion, but horror stories like this will figure prominently in the Post post-mortems.  It will be bad for a lot of amazing people – and for our democracy, too. 

I always find it ironic (and revealing) that I left journalism while it was still profitable, and I’ve been getting back into it when it isn’t. Shows you how much I know. 

In any event, my lovely wife got me an amazing Christmas present, one that starts today: home delivery of the New York Times. 

Everything else in journalism may be going to shit, but at least there’s one paper left that makes me remember how extraordinary it all was, as far back as when I was a kid.

  

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Joe Strummer – our hero, our muse, our shining light. Thirteen years today.

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Yes, yes.  I am a shit-disturber, as Bob R. says.  It’s how I roll, baby.

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Most people – most normal people, anyway – pay little or no attention to politics. 

They’re Joe and Jane Frontporch, and they’re busy. Ferrying the kids to and from hockey practice, getting stuck in traffic, worrying about paying the mortgage or the rent, trying to catch up on their sleep. Busy.

 They don’t have time for voluminous political party platforms, or sitting through ministerial speeches, or reading departmental press releases. Most days, Joe and Jane Frontporch don’t care about any of that stuff. In the digital era, they’re overwhelmed by too much information – what American writer David Shenk calls “data smog” – so they just tune it all out.

That’s why the politicians who attract the most attention are the Donald Trump and Rob Ford types. Guys like that are so outrageous, they break through the data smog, and capture everyone’s attention. But smoking crack or making racist statements – while indisputably newsworthy – isn’t always the best way to win elections.

So politicians and politicos instead devote most of their waking hours to dreaming up ways to pierce the aforementioned data smog, and capture and maintain the attention of voters. They concoct ways to simplify what they’re doing, or what they want to do. Thus, back in 1992, Bill Clinton was all about the economy, stupid. At any point in his 40-year career, Jean Chretien was the unity guy – vive le Canada! And in 2008, Barack Obama represented “real change.”

Justin Trudeau’s Liberals liked Obama’s 2008 slogan so much that they stole it in 2015. “Real change” was their mantra, repeated over and over, until it became their brand.

In the early days of the new Grit government, the outlines of something else is emerging. Real change is taking place, to be sure – in fiscal policy, on law and order issues, on the refugee file. No question: it’s a real change from what preceded it.

But something else is happening, too. And it’s this: Justin Trudeau’s government is the TV Government.

TV is pictures, and pictures are power. More than any Prime Minister in our lifetime, Trudeau seems to understand that they best way to captivate Canadians – the best way to pierce the data smog – is to be all about pictures.  

So, there he was, greeting Syrian refugees at Toronto’s airport in the middle of the night. Or sitting on the steps of Parliament, talking to a school kid having a bad day. Or posing for Vogue magazine, or taking a Maclean’s magazine pop quiz. Or taking a bunch of hospitalized kids to see Star Wars. Or – day after day after day – cheerfully posing for selfies with average folks.

Some people have noticed, and some of them are not impressed. Interim Conservative leader Rona Ambrose sniffed: “While on the international stage we saw leaders of the Western world come together, coalescing around the fight against ISIS, the impression that was left with Canadians and the international community was that our prime minister was consumed with taking selfies,” Ambrose said, hastening to add: “I mention this because it was mentioned to me many times by constituents.”

She added that last bit, of course, because she knows it’s working. Trudeau does, too. Asked about the selfies at town hall thing run by Maclean’s, Trudeau verbally shrugged. “It’s not about image, it’s about substance,” he said. “You have to get to know people.”

Of course. For sure. But it’s more than that. Trudeau was pretty young when his Dad rubbed shoulders with U.S. President Ronald Reagan, thirty-odd years ago. But even a little kid could understand that Reagan was always much more preoccupied with images than words.  

One of Reagan’s most influential advisors, Michael Deaver, didn’t hide it. “I have always believed that impressions are more important than specific acts or issues…I believe TV is a great boon to us in judging our leaders. It lets us see all the dimensions that, in the past, people could only see in person: the body language, the dilation of the eye, the way they perspire. We see them when they are tired, worried, under great crises. If television focuses on somebody every day, it shows all the dimensions.”

So too Justin Trudeau, who the camera loves and – to his critics – loves the camera right back. Trudeau knows, perhaps, that leaders are measured by the impressions they create, not the policies they promulgate.  

There’s a risk in all of this, naturally. If, six months from now, Trudeau is branded as Prime Minister Selfie – if his administration is simply regarded as a four-year-long photo op, punctuated only by state dinners and the occasional foreign trip – he’ll be in trouble. He needs to be more than the callow and shallow caricature his opponents suggest he is.

But if his visuals strategy works – and it’s working so far, big time – he’s golden. He can end up in 2023 as Reagan did: beloved by his partisans, and remembered as the great communicator by all.

So far, so good. But it can all end pretty swiftly, if Joe and Jane Frontporch sense that you’re all sizzle, and no steak.

UPDATE: And here’s the Troy media link. And, yes, for those who have asked, I am suing Michael Bate and Frank magazine – again – for their latest bullshit. Bate evades service, however. Anyone with info on locating him will be richly rewarded!

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Quote:

The famous New York City punk outpost CBGB & OMFUG, where Ramones, Patti Smith, Television, Talking Heads and many others cut their teeth and sullied its notoriously disgusting bathroom, closed in 2006. But now it will get a second life, nearly a decade later as … an airport restaurant.

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