Obama and Harper: more in common than you might think

I’ve noticed that every time some marginally interesting blip of Canadian news — like, say, an impending federal election — briefly enters the international media cycle, it becomes popular for Canadian bloggers to churn out a long, detailed, and somewhat patronizing “Guide to Canadian politics” for curious American readers (the best one I’ve read recently can be found here).

Now, I know my American readers are too smart to require such a pedestrian work of exposition. You guys already know all about the Bloc and NDP and non-confidence voting and governor-generals and all the rest of it (and if you don’t, there’s always my Guide to Canada).

What I think more Canadian-savvy Americans may appreciate, however, is an analysis of the remarkable parallels between the state of the ruling party in this country, and the state of the ruling party in the USA. Though one leader may command a center-right government and the other a center-left one, ideological differences aside, President Obama and Prime Minister Harper are really quite alike, both in terms of the sorts of successes they’ve already achieved, and the challenges that await in the future. As a result, the dominant political “narrative” in both countries — that is, the collection of assumptions and conclusions that forms the average voter’s understanding of What’s Going On In Politics These Days — is eerily similar:

Read the rest of this entry »

Election blog

I know it probably seems like I’m spreading myself all over the place these days, but a couple of friends and I recently decided to make a blog of daily political commentary on the 2011 Canadian election. It’s still a bit ugly at the moment, but if you want to read some shorter blurbs of writing from me, be sure to check it out. My buddies are pretty cool writers, too.

The site is called The Mace, after one of the useless symbolic relics that decorates the House of Commons.

My election predictions: Conservatives ride the incumbent advantage

So Canada’s party leaders, apropo of nothing other than their own strategic calculations, have decided to impose yet another pointless, boring emergency election upon the country. Since I find these multi-million dollar exercises in political brinkmanship exceedingly irritating and tiresome, I’ve been lately busying myself with statistics in an effort to prove precisely how dull and pointless they are.

One set of stats I’ve found quite interesting is the very high rate of incumbent re-election for members of the House of Commons. As I mentioned in my previous article on gerrymandering, in any given election, the success rate for incumbent MPs seeking another term is incredibly high, usually around 80% or so. Likewise, the number of MPs who choose to run for another term is also incredibly high, almost always in the 80s as well.

But both numbers do nevertheless fluctuate a little bit. I was curious if these fluctuations can in any way be used as predictors of election outcomes, especially in emergency elections such as the one Canada is currently experiencing.

The precedent of minority elections

Since 1968, the earliest election for which we have data, Canada has had six minority governments, and (now) six premature elections either caused by a non-confidence vote or a snap prime ministerial decision to unilaterally dissolve parliament. Two of those six minority government elections ended up causing a change in government.

Here’s the complete breakdown: Read the rest of this entry »

T-shirts!

Check it out, I made some Filibuster t-shirts featuring everyone’s favorite mascot of Canada, the Little Beaver Friend.

These silkscreened shirts are lightweight 100% cotton and avaialble in Large, XL, and medium.

Right now I am still figuring out shipping and selling and stuff, so as a result, the sales are still in the trial phase. The first five Canadians and first five Americans who email me at jjmccullough@gmail.com can buy one at the discount price of $15 US, which includes the cost of shipping. Just be sure to have the subject line “shirt order” and tell me your size, and how you want to pay. I’m hoping most of you guys have Pay Pal.

EDIT: Please no orders from the greater Vancouver area at the moment.

EDIT: The offer is now closed. Thanks to everyone who placed orders! Stay tuned for the regular store!

— J.J.

BC premiers and me

Premier Christy Clark

Christy Clark was sworn in as the 35th premier of my home province of British Columbia yesterday afternoon. She’s a strong Liberal, and though politically I can take or leave her, I do nevertheless feel something of a personal connection to her in a way I haven’t experienced with past politicians.

I’ve interviewed the woman twice, once quite recently, and once back in 2004, and both times she came off as an effortlessly friendly and affable woman, with an unguarded bluntness I found quite refreshing. Clark has a sort of sassy, fun, casualness to her personality in the style of a typical suburban, middle-class soccer mom — which I guess she basically is. While I don’t imagine this will change my perception of her views or policies, it is a nevertheless comforting feeling to have some sense of familiarity, on a personal level, with the man or woman leading your government.

Though I often wonder if this is a uniquely BC, thing, or a Canadian thing, or even a Vancouver thing, I always grew up with a keen awareness of provincial-level politics. Not that I necessarily cared on my own — a lot of it was osmosis. From my childhood to teenage years, and then into early adulthood, I’ve always been surrounded by family, teachers, and friends who endlessly discussed provincial issues and gossiped about provincial politicians, usually with a degree of passion and interest far exceeding that shown towards the federal government — or any other level of government, for that matter.

Of course, part of it might originate from the unique era of British Columbian history I happened to be born into. Since my birth in 1984, BC has gone through 11 premiers from three different parties, and witnessed the rapid rise and fall of successive partisan machines and dynasties. In many respects, it was probably difficult to live through the 1990s and early 2000s in BC without gaining a substantial knowledge of the political process, albeit via the often jaded biases of those around me. Read the rest of this entry »

Is the King’s Speech republican?

Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush

Having now seen The King’s Speech a second time, and in the wake of its recent Oscar win, I figured I should say a few words about the movie before it completely passes out of the cultural zeitgeist. Passionate anti-monarchist that I am, I was obviously interested to see how the film chose to portray royalty, and whether the presentation was ultimately favorable or unfavorable to the institution of monarchy itself.

To the extent the film has been analyzed from a political perspective to date, most critics have obsessed over the film’s (rather minor) World War II sub-theme, with some pundits, notably Christopher Hitchens, griping that the movie unjustifiably downplays the Windsor dynasty’s historic ambivalence towards, or outright apologism for, Hitlerian Germany.

Less attention, however, has been devoted to analyzing the way the movie engages with the very idea of monarchy as a system of government, and its interpretation of the the increasingly tense, defensive, anachronistic qualities that came to define 20th century royalty. Which is a shame, since The King’s Speech has quite a lot to say in this regard.

Read the rest of this entry »

Redistricting: something Canada does better

The trouble with Wikipedia, Part III

Earlier this month, the New York Times ran an interesting little debate seeking to answer the question of “where are the women in Wikipedia?” noting that, according to recent surveys, less than 15% of the site’s content editors are female.

I say “interesting” not because this sort of politically-correct gender ratio stuff is something I ordinarily concern myself with, but rather because of the way the Times‘ discussion on gender and Wikipedia unintentionally highlights so many of the site’s other systemic flaws. Such is the sad reality of Wikipedia; you pull on one loose thread and the whole thing unravels very quickly.

To broadly summarize, the Times’ debaters came up with a few rough conclusions to explain Wikipedia’s lopsided sex imbalance: Read the rest of this entry »

Are liberals ever radical?

“Well, that’s it,” said one of my liberal American friends following the President’s recent State of the Union, “Obama is now officially a Republican!”

Obama’s gentle slide to the center has been a matter of considerable concern to much of his progressive base as of late, with the President’s pragmatic, and even somewhat Kissingerian response to the Egyptian riots serving as but the latest example in a long string of decidedly un-left responses to problems with clear-cut lefty solutions. From Gitmo to the Afghani surge, to tax cuts to the public option, as the years progress, liberals are having no difficultly assembling quite the little list of ways in which their once brightest star is proving to be such a dull disappointment.

In such a context, it’s easy to dejectedly form some grand theory about why Obama was “never a true progressive” or whatever, despite the fact that the man clearly comes from the most actively left-wing background of any president in at least a century. It’s impossible to read Dreams from My Father, for instance, and not conclude that Obama is quite clearly the ideological product of a particular sort of late-’70s early-’80s lefty radical aesthetic; certainly moreso, in any case, than many of the fat, white trial lawyers who serve as his Democratic contemporaries.

If anything, the disconnect between Obama’s unprecedentedly impressive progressive credentials and increasingly middle-of-the-road governing style should make the question all the more pressing: why is it so hard to elect left-wingers capable of governing in the same full-steam-ahead, no compromises, sweepingly ideological fashion as right-wingers?

Read the rest of this entry »

Parliament vs. Michael Chong

MP Michael Chong

Though their exploits may not be particularly high-profile or celebrated, those Canadians lobbying for democratic reform to our country’s parliamentary system are a tight-knit interest group like any other. They have their own catchy slogans (end the “democratic deficit!”; towards a “Triple-E Senate!”), their own somewhat obtuse terminology (“party discipline,” “free vote,” “first-past-the-post”), and their own revered texts (The Friendly Dictatorship, by Jeffrey Simpson). The one thing they lack, however, is a political vessel to carry their ideas forward.

Since the decline of the Reform Party in the late 1990s, serious parliamentary reform has fallen off the radar of the mainstream Canadian political discourse, overshadowed by causes far more fashionable — and some would argue, pressing — in the current partisan zeitgeist. True, Prime Minister Stephen Harper occasionally trumpets the issue, as did his predecessor, Paul Martin (who once declared democratic reform to be one of the yardsticks against which he hoped future generations would measure the success of his premiership) but aside from the creation of the oddly Third World-sounding office of “minister of democratic reform” in 2003, successive years of self-righteous posturing from both parties have been just that.

Toothless ministers and grandstanding PMs aside, if the cause of parliamentary reform has a single leader in contemporary Canada, it may very well be Michael Chong, the Conservative member of parliament from the Toronto-area riding of Wellington-Halton Hills. Highly unusual for an MP lacking the stature of cabinet to elevate his profile, Chong is one of the few politicians in the country still able to grab headlines championing a cause most of his coworkers would be perfectly content to ignore.

The 39-year-old Chong, who looks Hispanic but is actually the biracial offspring of Dutch and Chinese immigrants, was one of several “new wave” Conservative MPs elected in the 2004 federal election. A former IT professional with only a modestly partisan background, when I met Chong at a lecture on democratic reform last week, he expressed considerable disinterest in identifying himself according to any sort of left-right axis, insisting that pragmatism and common-sense were the only useful political watchwords of the future. Read the rest of this entry »