"Dirty Tricks" and "Imagined Scandals": Power, Partisan Politics, and the 2011 General Election

If I was writing a history paper on this election campaign, that is what I would call it.

First, the dirty tricks. They are the actions of a small few, and not representative of the general population:

The sum effect is that people are left with a bad taste in their mouths (a new Angus Reid survey shows 80 per cent of Canadians are politically "scattered between mistrust, cynicism and alienation"), despite the best efforts of most candidates to run clean campaigns.

"I see it as a few bad apples in a pretty darn good system," said Capstick. "If you go to local debate, after local debate, you'll see candidates shaking hands — and meaning it. Some of them even hug."

Of course, hugging doesn't tend to make headlines.

But even looking at the bad behaviour that is making headlines, experts say things could — and have been — much worse, with most pointing to previous violence by the Front de liberation du Quebec between 1963 and 1970.

J. Scott Matthews, an assistant professor of political studies at Queen's University, said the problem is that the actions of a few are being mistaken for the sentiments of the many.

And now for the scandals, which are apparently imaginary.

A Liberal ad (now revised) claimed that Stephen Harper is after “absolute power.”

Really?

And, when one person was kept out of Harper rally, the media went on a feeding frenzy. I’m not saying it was right to keep that one person out of the rally, but I’m pretty sure that our democracy was not threatened.

The same is true of the various scandals surrounding the Conservatives: Afghan detainees, Kairos funding, Rights & Democracy, Bev Oda, in-and-out funding, ethnic fundraising, Helena Guergis, Rahim Jaffer, Bruce Carson, proroguing parliament, and right up to contempt of parliament.

Time and time again, we’ve been warned that the scandal-ridden Conservatives are a threat to our democracy.

Have we lost all perspective in Canada?

No. Perhaps you have. Because the scandals surrounding "Aghan detainees, Kairos funding, Rights & Democracy, Bev Oda, in-and-out funding, ethnic fundraising, Helena Guergis, Rahim Jaffer, Bruce Carson, proroguing parliament, and right up to contempt of parliament" all sound pretty threatening to democracy to me.

Anyway. The later part of the article is less eyebrow-raising. He makes the point that no one is really focused on the issues anymore, and we're all getting distracted by this flouffy scandal stuff, which is fair--I mean, Bruce Carson and Helena Guergis won't even be footnotes in history textbooks in twenty-five years, but the actual policies governments create have lasting effects.