Underdog (17 page)

This is why politicians give democracy a bad name. Democracy is not messy. The politicians are just adept at making a mess of it. I came to the sad realization as time went on during Mayor David Miller's reign that, save for a few exceptions, the right-wing members of council were absolutely ineffectual at forming any sort of credible opposition. They were lazy, egotistical, self-indulgent, and uninspiring. It was like herding a bunch of cats to get them to stand up to the many ridiculous measures Mr. Miller imposed on residents. I became the unofficial opposition at City Hall, using my columns or various radio talk shows to raise issues that received little attention by council's right wing or on which their follow-up was weak, at best.

Thank goodness I'm a runner. It has served me well throughout my career writing about politics and education, for there were many times when I found myself running down the halls or across a crowded council chamber looking to catch a bureaucrat or politician who was trying to avoid answering my questions. My best moves came just before I finished my investigative series in March 2012 on the aforementioned billion-dollar Regent Park revitalization. Before I could put the series to bed, I needed a comment from Councillor Pam McConnell, who'd represented the area for twenty-plus years and who had purchased a prime condo for $419,000 in the first gleaming glass building to go up on the revitalized lands.

Knowing full well that Ms. McConnell was not a fan – and that I would be slowed by the walking cast on my newly healed broken ankle – I ambushed her outside a committee meeting with my tape recorder and a videographer. When she tried to get by me and not answer questions, I planted my back against
the committee room door and pushed it shut with my elbow. She was forced to answer whether she liked it or not, although her answer included berating me for daring to suggest she might have a conflict in the matter. As loyal as Ms. McConnell's NDP colleagues were to her interests – as evidenced by the complete silence at council on her conflicts – loyalty meant nothing to most of the right-of-centre politicians at City Hall. It was amazing to me long before the crack cocaine scandal and Rob Ford's drinking binges came to light – and the mayor was fighting conflict of interest allegations in court – how ready the rats in his very own inner circle were to desert the ship. Most noteworthy were Karen Stintz, Ana Bailão, and Paul Ainslie, who, despite being given plum posts in the Ford regime, wasted no time tarring and feathering him publicly and playing into the insatiable desire of his left-wing detractors to gang up on Mr. Ford on anything and everything. All of them were misfits and hypocrites. Ms. Bailão was picked up for driving at twice the legal alcohol limit after the Mayor's Ball for the Arts in October 2012. She hid her charges for months. I had to shame Mr. Ainslie on Twitter into confessing to
his
DUI in May 2013 after he'd lied to my
Toronto Sun
colleague the week before, saying he had never been stopped for being under the influence. And Ms. Stintz? Well, as TTC chair, as noted previously, she flip-flopped so many times between subways and LRTs on the Scarborough transit file, she can be thanked for delaying a decision by at least two years or more.

We can blame the politicians all we want, and they often deserve it in spades. But what about those of us who elect and re-elect them? I shudder to think about the fact that so many would-be young and not-so-young voters know more about how the Kardashians tick than they do about the political
issues of the day. It makes me sick to think that long-time trougher Norm Kelly has gained notoriety not for his abuse of the taxpayer purse but for his Twitter exchanges with rappers. Perhaps past generations thought the same thing, but it is frightening to contemplate that these kinds of people are determining our future. I saw the same kind of wilful ignorance among voters in the federal election of 2015 which brought the man-child Justin Trudeau to power and most especially in Ontario's election of 2014, when a long list of unions, interested only in maintaining their lavish contracts and keeping in power the party who had bought their support (the Liberals), spent millions of dollars on attack ads to indoctrinate voters into thinking that PC leader Tim Hudak was ready to kill small dogs and babies, never mind his commitment to reduce the size of the unsustainable Ontario public service. Their ads worked. Granted, Mr. Hudak did little to help himself by not properly articulating how he'd lower the cost and size of government. But if anyone who voted for Ms. Wynne – anyone other than the union self-preservationists – had stopped to think about the fact that she'd already proven how little she cared about mounting debt, and that the great divide was steadily increasing between public and private sector wages, perhaps the outcome would have been different. It makes me wonder what exactly it takes to rouse most voters from their slumber, from their own self-indulgent lives or from a state of blissful ignorance to pay attention to what their government is doing to them or not doing for them. Such an awakening certainly did not happen in the provincial election of June 2014, and we will pay for it until 2018 and even beyond. But the pampered elitists certainly don't like that concept to be thrown
in their faces. When I dared suggest on the morning after the June 12 election that the mojito-sipping Torontonians had been seduced and indoctrinated by touchy-feely messaging and union attack ads into putting Kathleen Wynne back into office – with a majority no less – my detractors went berserk, disparaging me for days afterward. I was told repeatedly that the “people have spoken” and they have kicked my “tea bagger” to the curb. I was accused of having “sour grapes”; of having “contempt” for the will of the people; of being a “sad, lonely woman” – nothing more than a “Shrew Ann” – who hates anyone who has more than me. The latter very personal comment has often been directed at me by those on the left, as if daring to criticize or see through their hypocrisy has earned me the distinction of having a sad, bitter life.

Then there's former Toronto mayor David Miller, whose bloated ego-driven, elitist, and highly autocratic reign deserves an entire library shelf of its own. It wasn't his carefully practised polished delivery and vanity that bothered me. Nor the fact that he nearly drove the city to bankruptcy; that is, after all, the NDP way of doing business. When it got down to it, what really disturbed me was how he abused his power, treating with contempt those who dared challenge him. He was a thin-skinned bully who was widely known to ostracize bureaucrats and sideline politicians for the most minimal of slights, even those politicians who were principled enough to vote against his tax increases. I kept wondering throughout his regime why he wasn't the dictator of some third-world country where everyone would bend and scrape to King David. Perhaps it was because of Mr. Miller that Barack Obama's messaging and the willingness of the U.S. population to jump on the bandwagon of hope irritated me more than it
did the average Canadian. Mr. Obama's hopey-changey message that seduced voters was so eerily similar to the two campaigns of Mr. Miller – the same highly narcissistic would-be Emperor with No Clothes whom I'd watched in action at that point for five years. Like President Obama, and now our man-child Prime Minister, Mr. Miller was highly inexperienced in positions of leadership. In fact, during his time at City Hall before becoming mayor, he was known not to break a sweat on most files or take a leadership role on any committees. But he had the look and the smooth delivery that made voters feel hope and change was in the wind. Seeing through his phoniness, I couldn't understand why voters ate up his rhetoric. But they did. In May 2006, I stood in the crowded Steam Whistle Brewery off the Toronto lakefront, outnumbered by 450 fawning supporters, listening to Mr. Miller drone on for thirty minutes about how fiscally responsible he'd been in his first three years in office and how he'd kept his promises to make the city cleaner – with a City Hall free of backroom deals. Not one word of this was true, but the adoring supporters didn't care.

Mr. Miller informed us that, should he be re-elected that November, his focus would be on the Toronto of tomorrow. “My vision is of a city that is safe and strong…creative and clean…a city with opportunity for all…a city that leaves no one behind,” he said. I questioned in print what I perceived as absolute airy-fairy pablum. Nevertheless, he was swept back into office for four more years – granted, with a much narrower majority. Most voters didn't wake up until 2009, when he put the city through an ugly thirty-nine-day garbage strike that accomplished nothing. It took the media and voters six long years to see through his empty promises. In the end, the only future Mr. Miller was concerned about
was his own, as evidenced by his spending of ridiculous sums of public money on his green agenda to secure himself a soft landing at the World Wildlife Fund.

Other than during the few weeks I can grab in Florida each year, I watch President Obama mostly from north of the forty-ninth parallel. Like what I've read and seen of Mr. Obama in action, Mr. Miller knew exactly how to play to those media who fawned over him and how to sideline or freeze out those who dared question his policies. Mr. Miller, thankfully, was only responsible for a city of 2.5 million people with a nearly $12 billion budget and a $2.8 billion debt. Needless to say, President Obama's mishandling of a $3 trillion budget and nearly $17 trillion in debt and his pathetically weak foreign policies have been far, far more damaging, not simply to the U.S. but to the global economy as well. I had to laugh when I saw Mr. Obama trying to act tough with Vladimir Putin as the Russian autocrat invaded Crimea. Given Mr. Obama's weak-kneed approach to the nuclear threat in Iran, I suspect Mr. Putin considers the U.S. president is a joke. But it was the president's opponent in 2012, Mitt Romney, who had the last laugh. When Mr. Romney declared during the presidential debates that Russia represented the biggest threat to the U.S., as it endeavoured constantly to undermine America's influence on the world stage, Mr. Obama mocked his opponent. It's no joke that when the chips were down in the Ukraine, it was our former prime minister, Stephen Harper, who rushed there and condemned Mr. Putin for his actions – while Mr. Obama sat on his hands, or played another round of golf – or both, although he's reportedly not that proficient at the latter.

Sadly, what most politicians seem to share – no matter how far-reaching or limited their scope and how weak they are – is
an undying love for the image they see in the mirror. I was perhaps somewhat naive when I first got into the political game, thinking that those who are lucky enough to be elected – and considering it takes considerable money to do so – treat it truly as a public service. But I've discovered that, in fact, few go into the game because they really do want to change people's lives for the better. It doesn't matter what political party they affiliate with. Most politicians I've had the opportunity to observe over the past twenty years are driven completely by ego. Most are narcissists. Few have the guts to make the really hard decisions because that risks making them unpopular. Rarely do they stick to their principles, if they even have any, preferring to do what's politically expedient instead of what's right. It has come to the point where I consider many of them to be immoral.

Let's take as an example Mr. Obama's handling of the gay and lesbian file. He was the first black president of the United States, swept into power on that fuzzy-wuzzy mandate of change and hope. The world was his for the taking. He could have easily made a strong statement soon after being elected that he does not tolerate discrimination in marriage rights based on race or gender. His adoring fans, especially Oprah (who I believe is a closeted lesbian), would have cheered him on with reckless abandon. While individual states have the final say, Obama could have set the tone by saying enough is enough, that gays deserve to consummate their loving relationships in marriage – that it is disgraceful to think that gays are allowed to die for their country but not to wed each other. He could have used the example of his neighbours to the north – where same-sex marriage has been legalized since 2004 – to do what's right. When you think about it, considering
he's a Democrat who clearly leans to the left, Mr. Obama should have been downright embarrassed at how much the so-called Land of the Free has trailed behind Canada on such a vital social policy issue. Aren't Democrats supposed to own files like these, to be champions of tolerance and respect? Instead, when asked what constituted marriage, Mr. Obama said it was a union between a man and a woman. Full stop.

Compare this to all the hullabaloo and supposition in the left-wing Canadian media that our former Conservative prime minister, Stephen Harper – whose early ties were with the right-wing Canadian Alliance movement – would reopen the debate on same-sex marriage laws when he came to power. Mr. Harper was shrewd and decisive enough to recognize that this ship had sailed. He made it clear that same-sex marriage was here to stay in Canada. End of story. Not so with Barack Obama. Instead of showing that he meant what he said about hope and change, Mr. Obama dithered on the issue throughout his entire first term, only choosing to make a statement on the eve of a Hollywood fundraiser for his re-election bid in May 2012 at the home of actor George Clooney. I suspect he may have been pressured into doing it, his handlers recognizing that it would become an excellent wedge issue to separate him from those in the far right of the Republican Party who believe – like Mr. Obama – that marriage should only be acknowledged between a man and a woman.

Instead of criticizing the president, the media apologists – the same ones who have painted all Republicans as anti-gay – let him off the hook, gushing in a downright embarrassing way that his comments were indicative of how far public opinion has shifted. Never mind that public opinion in Canada had shifted two decades earlier! Crowing that
this was a clear sign of Mr. Obama's “strong leadership,” the media even bought into his nonsense about this being a personal journey for him and that denial of same-sex marriage rights to some couples didn't make sense to his daughters. His daughters? No one saw it as ironic that Mr. Obama had to use his daughters as an excuse to take a stance he should have taken the moment he stepped into the Oval Office and that it ultimately ended up being the courts that decided to extend same-sex marriage rights throughout the U.S.