First, Do No Harm—especially during an Election Campaign

Canadians are now embroiled in a short, intense election campaign. Responsible citizens will want truths surfaced, realities embraced, and honest appraisal of the options. Christians especially are warned to guard our mouths, resist gossip, and not set forests aflame with our tongues—or our social media posts.

Canadian Parliament Buildings (Credit: Saffron Blaze)

Herewith, then, a few guidelines for election talk, especially online.

People who don’t understand things shouldn’t post things they don’t understand. Making the rounds of the internet is a table of tariffs applied by Canada to U.S. goods. They are all greater than the 25% percent threatened by the Trump administration. The punchline is that “25% doesn’t sound so bad.”

Twenty-five percent, however, is pretty bad—by almost anyone’s accounting. And here’s a bit of elementary logic: Because A is worse than B doesn’t mean B is okay. [Insert your own gruesome example here.]

Moreover, those high tariffs are not imposed across the board, but deal with special cases—such as unusually high quantities of subsidized dairy products. (I pick on that one because it’s the first and worst—and, so far as I know, has affected almost no dairy imports ever.)

To pick another recent example, non-Liberals are breathlessly observing that Dr. Carney does not enjoy universal acclaim in the British press for his time governing the Bank of England—as if that should tell us Canadians something.

What that fact tells anyone even remotely familiar with the British media is precisely nothing. Roughing up people in the national spotlight—from celebrities to financiers to professors to, yes, politicians—is the bloodsport of Fleet Street. Of course he has his enemies in the British media.

Media fury was raised to a wartime pitch over Brexit—exactly when Dr. Carney was tasked with helping the United Kingdom stay financially afloat. What matters is how he actually did his job—in the circumstances in which he did his job. Is there any indication he did a bad job steering that ship in those extremely choppy waters? (Facile comparisons with other European countries not convulsed over their own version of Brexit would therefore be unhelpful. Ahem.)

Before posting something outlandish, ask yourself what it is and why it might be that way. Perhaps the claim is false. Perhaps the claim is comparing apples and oranges.

Perhaps you just don’t understand what’s being discussed. Quick, now: Define “tariff” and explain its use and its economic benefits and deficits. Or set out in a chart the economic pros and cons of Brexit, and the actual power of the Bank of England to respond to it. If you don’t know what you’re talking about, maybe stop talking.

Avoid judgments that fail to distinguish between minor and major. Currently Dr. Mark Carney is being challenged over plagiarism in his Oxford doctoral thesis. “Plagiarism” sounds bad—almost like “plague.” If this charge is true, is he therefore an inveterate liar unworthy of anyone’s trust?

Two points from someone who has edited four books of essays by seasoned professors, guided PhD dissertations at McGill and UBC, has recently served as an external examiner at Oxford, and who supervised several dozen MA and ThM theses at Regent College: (1) the evidence indicates plagiarism; and (2) the plagiarism is trivial: nothing important hangs in the balance.

Why "trivial"? Because no claim is made nor any phrasing offered that is clearly the "intellectual property" of the original source. Carney is not passing off something important as his own work that is specially the work of someone else. University plagiarism policies routinely distinguish between minor plagiarism—nothing much at stake, just clean it up—and major plagiarism—taking credit for substantial work or even powerful phrasing that is not your own. The examples provided are obviously in the former category and should simply have been corrected. Again, they’re not okay. But also: No harm, no foul.

Don’t immediately deride someone for changing his mind—and his policies. Flexibility and adaptability are strengths in politicians, not weaknesses. We want our leaders to be willing to improve their ideas, adopt better ideas, and implement the best ideas available.

I used to mock the federal Liberals in particular for taking good proposals from others—especially, ‘way back when, Tommy Douglas’s NDP. But isn’t that what we want the people in power (and the NDP was never going to form a government) to do—take as their own the best ideas?

Great Conservative leaders have done the same—from John Diefenbaker to Bill Davis to Peter Lougheed. Changing circumstances sometimes demand changing policies. It would be a damagingly doctrinaire politician who refused to alter his views when situations importantly altered.

Don’t crow over flaws: analyze them. Every politician is human. Ergo, they will be flawed. The interesting question is this: Do the flaws that come into view qualify a candidate (“Hmm: maybe they won’t be so good on that issue” or “Maybe he shouldn’t hold that post in cabinet”) or disqualify a candidate (“That statement is so awful that this person simply can’t be trusted with power”)?

I find one leader irritating. You find his main rival equally irritating. Leader number three seems nice. But are leaders primarily supposed to make us happy, like pleasant people at a party? Are great leaders distinguished particularly by their charm?

Getting along with people obviously matters in politics. But leaders always have a sizeable minority of people against them. Pleasing all of the people all of the time can’t be the measure of a candidate. So someone annoys you. So what? What matters? Focus on the flaws that affect governing.

Leave the mind-reading to mentalists. Prime Minister Carney has called for a very brief election. Did he do so, as some say, to avoid scrutiny?

Maybe he did—although he has had a very public career for a very long time. Maybe instead he recognizes that to serve effectively as prime minister he should win a seat as soon as he can. Maybe he recognizes that the Trump crisis would be better met with a strong mandate from the electorate. And maybe he recognizes that an election is due anyhow—and no later than October.

Maybe we shouldn’t so confidently ascribe motives to people when their actions are patient of a variety of explanations. (This is a good tip in family life also. Just by the way.)

Understand the power of the PM. Prime ministers—including premiers at the provincial level—wield almost total power over their members. One gets one’s position in government at the pleasure of one person: the prime minister. Committee appointments, cabinet posts, public attention: all depend on the preferences of the PM.

American government is importantly different (or, until Trump, it used to be). Senators and Representatives get their committee assignments within Congress itself, per their seniority, fund-raising ability, and other personal qualifications. The President has nothing (officially) to do with such posts and the power that comes with them.

In the Westminster parliamentary system, however, the prime minister decides everything in government. The same holds for parties in opposition: shadow cabinet posts come from the party leader.

It therefore is inaccurate and unwise to view every Liberal as a clone of Justin Trudeau—or every Conservative as a mere flunky of Pierre Poilievre. Not all New Democrats, you might have noticed, are Sikhs. Recall that Winston Churchill served in the cabinet of Neville Chamberlain before he got the chance to lead.

Leadership races are opportunities for candidates to show themselves as themselves, however briefly. Elections are such opportunities, too, but for the leaders. Non-leaders have to be careful since they know the leaders are watching. Be advised, therefore: Despite the fact that we don’t elect them directly, Canadian elections are centrally about the leaders because the system so heavily empowers leaders.

Remember what really matters: making the best choice of those available. Politicians are not, in a word, Jesus. Nor any other hero. They will disappoint even their fans as they surely will dismay their opponents.

Their politically relevant flaws and failures should be exposed, of course, so that everyone around them can deal with them effectively and, if necessary, they are replaced. But flaws and failures are to be expected and taken soberly into consideration. Not every disappointment deserves a shrieking denunciation.

The issue is always: What’s the best option of those on the table? To be sure, if we have opportunity to do so, we should work to improve the options on the table, through whatever influence we might have as citizens, donors, party members, and other sorts of influencers.

Still, we always have to work with what we have to work with. Who among the actually available alternatives is going to improve the most important things the most?

Candidate A may not impress much in this or that respect and I may really dislike his views about several other issues. I can easily imagine a better choice. Given actual alternatives Candidates B through E, however, Candidate A looks best. And if he is the best, then I should vigorously support him, not least for fear of being stuck with one of the lesser lights.

Please post anything truly helpful—and especially anything funny. Elections are generally grim and gritty affairs, mud (and worse) flying everywhere and bad tempers abundantly in evidence. Please: If you find out something true and important (and you have checked to ensure it is), let the rest of us know.

And if you can make us laugh, all the better. A friend of mine supports a particular party, but he recently agreed that a sketch about his party’s leader by a Canadian comedy troupe was, yes, undeniably amusing. I recognize that friend as someone whose political views I will take seriously: he can laugh at his own guy, and he can say so to someone of a different political outlook.

Let’s keep our friends during this election campaign. And let’s keep our heads. Following these few rules, I hope, will help.