Returning from a family gathering in the U.S. on Monday morning, I flew into Pearson International Airport, gathered my baggage and headed for the parking facility to pick up my car. As we approached the lot, I was the only person left in the mini-bus. I was refocusing on being back home and asked the bus driver who she thought was winning the federal election.
“I don’t like any of them,” she said.
“OK, but what would you like to see from them?”
“I just want things to be the way they used to be,” she said. “No crime. No high gas prices. No problems. No fear.”
When I asked her what she was afraid of, she couldn’t really say. She just shrugged her shoulders as if to say she was fed up with what the politicians were passing off as platform policy, problem solving and a vision for the country. But that fear factor hung in my thoughts as I paid for my parking and headed for home. Where was that coming from? What was making us afraid? And what was the point of it? I concluded it’s coming from the politicians themselves.
Just look at the election advertising. The Conservatives warn us that the Liberals will increase taxes and drive the country into financial ruin. The New Democrats say the Liberals are wolves in sheep’s clothing. The Greens forecast Armageddon if global warming isn’t addressed right now. The Bloc warns of linguistic and cultural disintegration in Quebec without their strong voice in the House of Commons. And everybody claims the sky will fall if the Conservatives win a majority.
In short the campaign has – at least to this point – done nothing to but kindle our fear, not engender our confidence in politicians or the country’s future. I don’t get it. What’s the point of that kind of campaigning? Why have politics come to this? Where does all this come from?
Well, in part, it comes from the politics of our cousins to the south. It’s fair to say that the re-election campaign of the current president was based primarily on fear. His response to the attacks of 9/11 and his war on terrorism have kept all Americans – not to mention the rest of the world – on edge. But George W. Bush isn’t the only guilty party. U.S. politicians going back to Teddy Roosevelt preyed on the electorate’s apparent fears. Roosevelt told his countrymen to fear the Spanish in the Americas and went to war. Eisenhower and Kennedy had the West terrified of communism thus fuelling the cold war and the Vietnam War. And this year, candidate McCain has Americans fearing Obama’s “liberalness,” while candidate Obama has them afraid of an Alaska hockey mom.
“America is a country gripped by fear,” wrote Barry Glassner, a sociology professor at the University of California. His book The Culture of Fear declared, “These peddlers of fear – politicians, advocacy groups and TV newsmagazines – cost Americans dearly, weighing us down with needless worries and wasting billions of dollars.”
Only one American president, a man who really did have to face global holocaust, understood the problem. Franklin Roosevelt announced at his inauguration in 1933, “The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself.”
And that’s where 21st century politicians have to go to win my vote. I think all of us should demand it – whether it’s during the national debates on TV or in local candidates debates. Enough with the fear-mongering. Get on with crafting a vision for this country. We have the greatest natural wealth on the planet. We have the widest diversity and skills reservoir. We have the most space and the greatest potential. It’s about time political leadership recognized our strengths and stopped preying on our weaknesses, principally our fears.
In that respect, my acquaintance driving the mini-bus had it right. We need to go back to the vision of a John A. Macdonald who built a railway and a national dream, back to a Wilfrid Laurier who encouraged us to embrace the 20th century as our own, back to the populist notions of a John Diefenbaker who crafted our bill of rights, and back to the exuberance of a Pierre Trudeau who patriated our constitution and trumpeted our multi-cultural makeup. Where are the dreamers? Where are the visionaries? Where are the leaders of hope and innovation? So far, none of them are on my TV screen or at the candidates debates.
Therefore, I echo the concern of my bus driver acquaintance and of my fellow constituents. I challenge the candidates: Stem the fear mongering and inspire our future.