The Yanks are brilliant. Just when the American Empire seemed to be on the edge of total economic collapse, and are in the process of losing yet another war – Second World War, Grenada and Libya excepted – they have developed a spectacular way to stimulate their economy and energize their patriotic souls. They boost the economy by holding elections.
Senator Barak Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign was a record setter at slightly more than $700 million. This year it will top $1 billion. The economic stimuli were pervasive. Renting venues and Port-a Potties. Hiring stage companies, renting halls and bleachers. Buying giant flags and balloons. Hiring polling firms and media-strategy firms. Producing radio and TV ads. Designing and making signs and temporary tattoos. Renting cars, and private planes. Painting rented buses (without visages of the candidate in strategically located positions). Purchasing last-minute commercial flights. Buying pizzas, bottled water and coffee for volunteers. Renting offices, computer equipment and furniture. And renting telephones. Printing posters and handouts. Hiring campaign consultants, campaign managers and contract staffers. Buying shoes and clothes. Paying hotel bills. Scripting robocalls.
And that does not include the newly introduced economic stimulus created by so called Super PACs (political action committees) so conveniently created by the Supreme Court at the behest of the Federal Reserve Bank and the television news entertainment networks.
Brilliant.
And then we come to Canada where we are boringly stable economically and have conventional submarines, which look pretty and are a model of British engineering genius. Outside of Harper party attack ads and silly unattributed robocalls, we have no imagination. Door to door slogging, Facebook family photos, occasional tweets, lawn (in the middle of winter) signs, publicly funded news clips, all-party discussion sessions. We are earnest and, for the most part, polite people who hesitate to offend anyone else’s sensibilities. Of course we do have a full range of Tim Hortons’ coffee cups with roll-up rims in most campaign offices (that’s different surely).
All very proper. At least that has been our tradition since the halcyon days of Diefenbaker and Pearson, until the imminent provincial election. Let there be no mistake. We are about to experience a battle of the Amazons. No one can be certain how this election will play out. Up to the present, the focus would appear to have been on health care, education, oil and gas economics and taxes. But maybe not this time. There is a battle emerging for the hearts as well as the so-called minds of Albertans. The cult of the leader is about to take over. Will it be the lioness or the mother bear who will prevail? And with it, is there to be a generational shift where grumpy old men will no longer be in charge of the agenda?
Let there be no mistake. Alberta is on the verge, like it or not, of a new way of doing politics. The present premier is intelligent, has international experience and connections, is tough and articulate. The leader of the Wildrose Party won’t go away. She is stubborn, forthright and politically untarnished.
And in St. Albert we have a fickle, independent minded voting public. It will be a door-to-door fight.
Now if we only had Super PACs.
