Summer is usually a down time for politics, but thanks to the Alliance Party and Stockwell Day, this has not been the case in 2000.
Day has dominated the thoughts of political cartoonists, with hapless Conservative leader Joe Clark a clear second, judging from the number of Day and/or Clark and Day cartoons appearing in publications across the country.
Day and the Canadian Alliance and Clark and the Tories have not only been a cartoonist’s dream come true in the summer news doldrums but also a dream come true for pundits and columnists.
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It has been said with some truth that Conrad Black’s National Post has become the Stockwell Day Post.
Indeed, that paper makes no bones about its support of Day and promotes him whenever possible. Recently, on the front page, it ran a “hot news photo” of Day reading a French dictionary.
In the same issue, a neighboring photo showed the prime minister struggling manfully as he rowed a whitewater raft.
The PM was also the subject of a full color double-page spread in that issue showing him in various action poses at home and abroad.
The coverage was not, nor was it intended to be, flattering. Rather, it was embarrassing, degrading and demeaning.
It speaks volumes about the nature of today’s politics that an aging (ChrŽtien is 66) prime minister should be forced to don the facade of a 25-year-old at a time of his life when he should be donning the persona of a statesman or elder.
The argument that Trudeau did it is a non-starter; he was a special case. The persona was him. It is not ChrŽtien.
It is a sad commentary, in these days of television journalism where looks are everything, that our leading politicians must be – or seen to be – young, good looking, well dressed and witty. These traits do not necessarily a leader make.
If we’d had television in the early years of our country, we would not have had our tipple-loving first prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, with his red nose and disheveled clothing.
Laurier, with his patrician manner and good looks, might have made the cut. St. Laurent and Pearson likely wouldn’t – too cerebral and old-looking – and Diefenbaker would have been a non-starter.
With a federal election just months away, we must go beyond the superficiality of the 30-second sound bite. It’s time to bring dignity and statesmanship back to politics, for in politics as in real life it behooves us to look beyond the facade to the real person beneath.
