is the purely political one: the party is not in crisis, but it is in trouble. And it needed something big to get it started again. Democratic reform was their answer. Will it be believed?
Rex Murphy: Can a man who ignores his promise of open nominations credibly claim to be a great reformer?
It may be stated as an axiom that the desire to reform Parliament and the democratic system that underwrites it is proportional to any given political party’s distance from achieving power.
Parties already in power bathe in the pleasure that they have mastered the arcane and often outdated rules by which they have achieved office. While in opposition they rail at the putative inequities of the electoral system, the closed or secret nature of cabinet government, or the “top-down” nature of modern day Prime Ministerial administration.
They almost certainly declaim at the deficiencies of Parliament itself, the ritual exchange of talking points and insults (these are not mutually exclusive) during Question Period, or the disgusting incivility of parliamentary exchange in general. Parties waiting for their chance at government take an almost pastoral view of politics: they see a sky unclouded by partisan interest, ministers who stand to give real information, uninflected by partisan impulse, when asked a question; they see a prime minister as an ideal leader, one formed of the sagacity of a Socrates mixed with the temperament of an Abraham Lincoln, a creature of the greatest wisdom married to the deepest morality. They see democracy and parliamentary debate as a sweet Disney-world, drained of all rancour, emptied of all anger and bluster, utterly uncontaminated by the messy, compromising, shallow and self-serving measures and half-measures that — in reality, and sadness — constitute the living reality of almost every democratic government that is or ever has been.
I might offer as a corollary to this axiom that the slimmer a party’s chances of winning power, the more extravagant the vision it will offer voters should it ever achieve it. I have no doubt, for example, that if the Green party could promise to eliminate global emissions in a week and install Al Gore as the head of a new world government in two — both dreams securely fastened to their sheer impossibility — it would.
moar
Rex Murphy: Can a man who ignores his promise of open nominations credibly claim to be a great reformer? | National Post
Rex Murphy: Can a man who ignores his promise of open nominations credibly claim to be a great reformer?
It may be stated as an axiom that the desire to reform Parliament and the democratic system that underwrites it is proportional to any given political party’s distance from achieving power.
Parties already in power bathe in the pleasure that they have mastered the arcane and often outdated rules by which they have achieved office. While in opposition they rail at the putative inequities of the electoral system, the closed or secret nature of cabinet government, or the “top-down” nature of modern day Prime Ministerial administration.
They almost certainly declaim at the deficiencies of Parliament itself, the ritual exchange of talking points and insults (these are not mutually exclusive) during Question Period, or the disgusting incivility of parliamentary exchange in general. Parties waiting for their chance at government take an almost pastoral view of politics: they see a sky unclouded by partisan interest, ministers who stand to give real information, uninflected by partisan impulse, when asked a question; they see a prime minister as an ideal leader, one formed of the sagacity of a Socrates mixed with the temperament of an Abraham Lincoln, a creature of the greatest wisdom married to the deepest morality. They see democracy and parliamentary debate as a sweet Disney-world, drained of all rancour, emptied of all anger and bluster, utterly uncontaminated by the messy, compromising, shallow and self-serving measures and half-measures that — in reality, and sadness — constitute the living reality of almost every democratic government that is or ever has been.
I might offer as a corollary to this axiom that the slimmer a party’s chances of winning power, the more extravagant the vision it will offer voters should it ever achieve it. I have no doubt, for example, that if the Green party could promise to eliminate global emissions in a week and install Al Gore as the head of a new world government in two — both dreams securely fastened to their sheer impossibility — it would.
moar
Rex Murphy: Can a man who ignores his promise of open nominations credibly claim to be a great reformer? | National Post