Ontario Election update
The Liberals won a landslide: 72 seats, to 24 for the PCs (Tories), and 7 for the NDP. The Liberal platform was an amalgam of left and right: more spending on health care and education, revoking new tax cuts to pay for new spending, bizarre touches like subsidies for auto insurance and day care, rent control, more police officers (with violent crime trending downward), converting coal-fired electricity generators to natural gas on a tight time frame, all wrapped up with a promise of fiscal responsibility/balanced budgets.
The numbers obviously don't add up, but in fairness, the numbers in the Tory promises didn't add up either. No one seems to know what's next. Are voters determined to have more government services, even at the expense of deficits or new taxes? (Liberal leader Dalton McGuinty has promised not to raise taxes). Or are they more determined to have "fiscal responsibility" and "tax restraint," so that they will gladly give up some of the pie-in-the-sky they have been promised?
A really good book still has to be written on the debate about the welfare state over the past few decades. The "right" has had some success in slowing the growth of the welfare state, and even changing its priorities a bit, mostly with a combination of tax cuts and spending cuts. Of course the left, which thought the welfare paradise would just keep on growing, denounces this as an expression of "resentment," mean, short-sighted (since the economy benefits if we keep "bringing the poor along"), etc. Both sides "buy the voters with their own money," both actively corrupt voters in comparison to some ideal of "self-reliance." Active politicians keep on discovering the wisdom of Aristophanes' Knights: the demos really longs for a comfortable pair of shoes, but this is somehow a shameful secret.
Update: PC leader Ernie Eves has taken criticism for not showing what he actually believes in. He ran for party leadership by saying it was time to move to a more accomodating position--not singling out groups such as the teachers' unions that seem to oppose reform. He cancelled a move to market rates for electricity, subsidized the rates for many consumers, and postponed one round of tax cuts for a year.
In the election campaign he sounded more "right wing" again, even adopting policies from his "right wing" opponent for the leadership, Jim Flaherty, such as a tax cut for parents sending kids to any private school, and a ban on teacher strikes during the school year. He did a media event on "law and order," waving a roll of barbed wire, and referring back to the recent murder of a child, which the parole authorities have supposedly not taken seriously enough. Another big tax break was on the interest component of home mortgage payments--an echo of a national U.S. program.
So people wondered "who the real Ernie was." Also, even in his switch to the right, he seemed to have no confidence in across-the-board tax cuts, such as Mike Harris had been known for. Instead there were targeted cuts--reminiscent of Clinton more than of Bush Jr. Have conservatives lost their taste for broader tax cuts, which in principle always mean reducing government spending by a significant amount? (Leaving aside "tax cuts create jobs, and thus pay for programs.")
McGuinty is bland, and his jokes are corny, but he has remained quite consistent since he became leader in 1996. His tendency to make Santa Claus-like promises really kicked in during the last weeks of the campaign--when polls showed he already had it in the bag. He may live to regret some of these promises (six months leave for family members of someone who is ill, if I remember correctly?), and they certainly seem to confirm the Tory charge that these people are out-of-control tax-and-spenders at heart.
It is to McGuinty's credit that stories now come out (carefully leaked?) saying that members of his caucus and campaign team wanted to match Tory promises of targetted tax cuts. Dalton said no: these policies are gimmicks, and they will make it harder to balance the budget. You may not like this message, but it was unquestionably his message, and he won with in. No tricks, unless you count the shopping list of promises.
There was obviously real anger at some apparent "breakdowns" in the public sector, to which Tory budget cuts may have contributed. "Walkerton," an example of tainted municipal water that actually killed a few people, kept coming up. There was damning testimony about the SARS crisis during the campaign. Somewhat to my surprise, there was anger at the very idea of letting the private sector build a hospital, which the government will then lease. This is I believe the Tony Blair model for private-public partnerships, or 3Ps. The total cost to taxpayers may be more in the end, but facilities get built quickly, leaving money free today for other things. One proposed 3P hospital would be in Brampton, and every Tory iin Brampton lost his seat--including Tony Clement, a real rising star.
Update: I should have mentioned another "targetted" tax cut that the Tories had just begun to implement: a reduction in the education share of property tax paid by seniors. This apparently struck many people as blatantly unfair, if not stupid. Eves tried to re-announce it at a seniors event during the campaign, and many of the seniors were apparently heckling him: we don't want a tax cut, we want more long-term care beds. Surely a gifted writer could show what that event can teach us about our times.
I have worked on "the political side" for the Tories, and somehow my heart always goes out to them. Even if it's true that they always give in to what they "conservatively" object to, sooner or later, and even if it is sometimes remarkably soon, I sympathize with people who say "hold it a minute." This always holds out the promise of actually thinking about alternatives; of course, this promise is seldom realized by flesh and blood Tories.
Tories vaguely like elites, maybe even winners. But which ones? Not poets or philosophers--too airy-fairy. The Church? Well, one has a drink with the Bishop when one absolutely must--perhaps after a funeral. Academics? They've all gone a bit crazy, haven't they? Well, perhaps except for a few, here and there--I'll think of a name in a minute.
Cops? Tories certainly love events commemorating cops, but do they socialize with them? Lawyers? Yes, I think they have become the priests of our age (along with IT people), but they are as likely to be Liberals as Tories.
That pretty much leaves business people, faute de mieux. As a group, somewhat of a bunch of bastards, if not quite as low and greedy as the left keeps suggesting. It's cheerful, in a way, to hang out with entrepreneurs, who are always full of hope at the latest perpetual-motion machine. We can even make common cause with them over low taxes. But still: what the hell do we actually have to talk about?
I guess conservative politics is really a contradiction in terms: true conservatives mostly want to "mind their own business," including friends and family. There's something distasteful about meetings, and something creepy about the welfare state.
One great, hilarious example of how this works is Disraeli becoming leader--not just of the Tories, but of the "die-hard" Tories of his time. He would regularly try to have something like a caucus meeting. The "guys" would absolutely refuse to come to London for such a ridiculous purpose, but they would grudgingly agree to spend a weekend at somebody's palatial country place, where the hunting was good. Of course, once there, all they wanted to do was hunt--an activity in which their leader, Disraeli, took no part. (I guess the equivalent today would be golf).
Update: Or maybe it would be better to say: in a liberal democracy, the business people are the natural conservatives. They have "met a payroll," and they more or less believe in hard work and the virtues that allow one to accumulate wealth.
In a way it should be a hard sell to persuade them to accept the welfare state, but they pretty well have accepted it.
Somehow farmers always have a special place among the "conservatives." They work hard, using their hands and bodies, so they feel strongly that they deserve any benefit they end up with. Their actual fortune still depends heavily on weather--nature or chance. So once again, if some benefit comes in, they have simply won one instead of always losing. The net result is that they preach individualism and self-reliance, but expect subsidies.
In Xenophon's Oeconomicus, which many professors will say is the dullest book by this dull (?) author, the main character, who is identified as a citizen but also a country gentleman, says that his father loves the land. In fact, he loves it so much, he loves to fix it up and then sell it at a profit.
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