Payback is a mother: Conservative edition

“…rationality has little to do with political myth making…”

Tim Powers, Conservative backroom guy and Ottawa lobbyist, wrote that in a recent post over at the blog space he has alongside Rob Silver at the Globe and Mail.

He was venting some frustration over some political smoke being blown at his friend the Prime Minister over a handful of jobs at a call centre that the federal government wants to shift from St. John’s to Halifax. 

Political opponents of the federal Tories have tried to make the debate about the Prime Minister and their manufactured view that he has some sort of disdain for the province.

Political myths have absolutely nothing to do with rationality, facts or any other sign of higher mental function that is supposed to distinguish humans from pond slime.

We are not talking of the rather harmless fairy tales like chopping down cherry trees.  We are talking about beliefs about people or events that are simply not true.

Tim is right:  there are a bunch of people who would have you believe that these 12 jobs are yet another sign that Stephen Harper and his band of knuckle draggers just don’t understand [insert the topic here]. They will screw Newfoundland (and Labrador) sometimes out of malice, sometimes out of stupidity.  But those nasty Conservatives will screw “us”

There is no evidence for any of it, of course.  But that doesn’t matter.  political myths, as Tim noted, have nothing to do with rationality.   Still, that hasn’t stopped a few thousand people from believing it as surely as they believe in sunshine.

A lot of people in Newfoundland (and Labrador) believe Stephen Harper is some sort of demon merely because Danny Williams told them so a couple of years ago. That idea was at the heart of his now legendary “Anything but Conservative” campaign during the 2008 federal election.

To savour the truly dry cosmic humour in that,one has to know a bit of back-story. Danny Williams’ is a political legend.  That is, so much of what people think about him and what they believe he accomplished as a ,politician is simply a matter of myth.  As your humble e-scribbler noted when the old guy skedaddled out of politics last December, the tributes to him praised him for :

• things he never did;
• things other people did but credited to Danny
• things that never happened, and,
• stuff he did but that still had to roll along enough so people could see if they were good, bad or indifferent.

And that was all they included.

Take the Muskrat Falls deal that Tim mentions in that same column.  Danny grabbed a bunch of people together and had them scribble names on an agreement to keep talking about maybe coming up with a deal.  He didn’t actually sign the final deal that will actually see a couple of dam and a bunch of hydro lines built in Labrador.  But that hasn’t stopped reporters from praising it then and now even though it really doesn’t exist at the moment beyond a lot of talking.

Tim helped to bolster the Danny myth  - or a fairy tale Danny was spreading - on more than one occasion.  And that, as they say, is really what really makes Tim’s post a delicious display of Karma in action.  This lack of rationality…

unfortunately does a great disservice to the serious discussion that should be taking place about marine rescue co-ordination on the East Coast.

Indeed it does, Tim.  And on everything from the provincial government’s sorry fiscal state to the Muskrat falls debt project, the people of Newfoundland and Labrador have been done serious harm by the myths foisted on them by Powers and his  political friends in the province.

The danger for the Conservatives is that the myth is becoming the symbol, which could present major challenges for the federal government with the province in future.

Absolutely true, again, Tim Powers, but the verb tense is wrong.  Danny the Myth cemented the symbol years ago. What we are seeing today is just a sort of cosmic payback being visited on the Conservatives who after 2001 in this province never met a myth they wouldn’t monger.

Karma is a bitch.

Looks good on ‘em.

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Retribution

Hisself in the House of Assembly on Tuesday:

Let me be very clear. This government never has and never will inflict retribution on a district. It does not happen.

Jerome! on the same day, in the same place:

Mr. Speaker, as pointed out by the MHA for The Straits & White Bay North, there is quite extensive medical personnel in St. Anthony; four anaesthetists in St. Anthony for a population of 14,000 people on the Northern Peninsula; four general surgeons, Mr. Speaker, more than in Grand Falls-Windsor or in Gander.

Mr. Speaker, besides all of that we have put over $12 million in capital equipment in this hospital in the last number of years. There is a hospital there to serve the needs of the people. I would suggest to the members opposite that they should concentrate on that because when you look at the numbers of doctors there, it certainly causes concern.

Given that Jerome!’s information on how many doctors of what type are where in the province is highly suspect, Jerome either didn’t get the memo about retribution and threats or Hisself is no longer in charge.

The two comments can’t live in the same space.

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The Cruel Shoes

The picture says it all.

Suddenly, Jack Layton is suddenly not so keen on an election.  He’s talking about making parliament work, about working with the Connies.  You know, the sort of stuff Jack and his householders used to chide the Grits over.

An unusually media-skittish Mr. Layton said little Saturday during an event in Toronto, but what he did say lowered the temperature somewhat.

“I think that everybody involved would want to see us co-operate in the House of Commons and get some results for people — especially those that are struggling right now: the unemployed and people being left behind,” Mr. Layton said as he inched away from reporters at an archway opening in Toronto.

“So that's going to remain our preoccupation.”

Looks like the real preoccupation will be getting the shoe that’s on the other foot out of Jack’s ass.  Hint:  it went in via the mouth while he was shooting it off before.

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There’s no pleasing some people

That’s the thing about being a political saviour.

People expect you to save them.

There’s no good complaining, as Danny Williams did last week with the host of a local talk radio show.

Not only do you manage to overshadow your own good-news announcement less than an hour after you made it, people don’t really care any more about the umpteenth round of good news.

In central Newfoundland, people are not happy since the major private-sector employer left Grand Falls-Windsor and the provincial government stepped in to scoop up the most lucrative asset, the hydro-electric generators owned by three companies.

The provincial government resisted calls for financial assistance before finally coughing up $35 million for some. Others have gone looking for a bit of provincial help and have been told  - as some of them might see it - to sod off. The local chamber of commerce and the town aren’t happy either since, as the chamber put it, the whole thing looks like the region has lost while the province – read provincial government  - has gained.

And if all that wasn’t bad enough, CBC’s Here and Now is reporting that people the Premier’s own district are worrying that their mill – the last paper-making operation in the province – might also be in jeopardy.

Then there are the 10,000 or so in the fishery reeling under the downturn in markets for their products.  Ask talk show host Randy Simms about them.

Then there’s health care.  On another radio call-in show last week, this time on CBC, Danny Williams made it plain he hasn’t been thrilled with the string of strings about problems in health care.

Compared to previous administrations of any political stripe,  Danny Williams and his administration have had a relatively easy time of things.  The usual local political demands have either never materialised or were met with the cash.  No one got a “no” unless there was a good reason.

Those days appear to be over.  The global recession is producing economic problems and political demands, that seem fairly typical for anyone watching local politics for more than the past few minutes, are surfacing with unsettling regularity.

As much as it is pretty simple to criticize Danny Williams’ for his public tirade last week, that litany of problems recited above is probably the view from his office.  As much as he claims to be an optimist, and as much as Williams talks about the bright future, the view from his office window must seem pretty bleak.  before the current stuff there was breast cancer and before that there was the House of Assembly scandal.  Neither of those is over and, given some media, it seems like it might never go away.

Inside the office, things must surely be stressful.  Government is a tough place to work at the best of times.  There are all manner of problems and issues that crop up.   Cabinet government is designed to manage that by distributing the power to make decisions among different people.  Pull everything together into the Premier’s Office and it can seem to the few people on the end where the spray comes out like  the three inch fire hose of demands is always running on high and that someone has secretly replaced the line with a six inch gusher. 

On top of that, consider that the provincial Tory administration can no longer blame everything on the crowd that went before.  They are now in control and everything is theirs to manage.  That’s a normal transition for every government to make:  after a certain period, every government hits the point where they have effectively taken ownership of government and they see themselves as indistinguishable from it.  

The current administration has been able to work through the past few years thanks to oil money and the lack of any coherent political demands from the province as a whole. They wandered through the first six months and whatever they set in place back them has largely become the pattern. They gained control of the political agenda by inertia and default.

Countless items got left behind in the meantime, a sure sign of a government that took office without the plan of action it claimed to have.  major projects get tackled one at a time, in serial fashion.    Even if this administration isn’t run entirely from one office on the eighth floor of the East Block, it gets pretty hard for cabinet to form a cohesive team if half the people aren’t working every day in the same place (or even the same town) and get together only every week or so for a few hours of cabinet.  That doesn’t get any better when there are large numbers of people within the administration shifting jobs or being appointed only on an acting basis. 

If you stop and think about it for a second, if you put yourself in Danny Williams’ place, it’s not hard to see why he blew up at Randy Simms or even he’s been known to get a bit testy on a fairly regular basis.  He’s in a hard spot.

In 2007, voters gave Danny Williams what he asked for.  They voted for him because they’d learned the way to get anything done was with a Blue member in the legislature.

They performed the rituals of the local political doctrine and now they are looking to get into the Kingdom.

And here’s the thing:  if people think Danny Williams was testy, wait until they see a pack of voters who feels condemned to perdition.

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