There is a tide that is surging across America. It carries a new reality that the most pressing divide today is not between red and blue states, or rich and poor, or even black and white. It is the struggle between generosity and selfishness, between transparency and secrecy, between inclusiveness and alienation. That was a central message in Barack Obama’s campaign. It will now be a force in the way the 44th President governs.
Today, in the land that invented modern ideas of representative government, Americans engaged in the largest single act of citizenship ever experienced in that country and perhaps the most significant event of its kind ever in the world. Sometime tonight, the expressions of record millions of voters from every part of the country, at every age level, from every ethnic and racial background, across a landscape where snows have already begun to fall to a hot Gulf coast where palm trees mock the winter, a page will have turned and a defining new one will be embarked upon in the great American experiment known as democracy.
Much about that future is unclear, but what is not is that the name Barack Obama will appear in the first lines of that new page. Before the dawn rises again, someone will turn to the young man who defied all the odds, and address him for the first time as “Mr. President-Elect.” And with those three words, his life, and the history of the nation he will lead for the next four years, will be forever changed.
Great presidents are the ones who have transformed America and raised it to something better than it was before. They are the ones who summon up in ordinary people the capacity to accomplish extraordinary feats they never knew possible. Washington, Jefferson and Adams freed a land from the shackles of distant princely tyranny. Lincoln freed one of its founding peoples from slavery. Roosevelt freed men and women from economic calamity and, later, from the march of fascism across Europe and Asia.
Barack Obama has freed countless young people from the cold gulag of cynicism and restored in them a confidence that what they do in public affairs can make a difference. And he has freed others of every age from the barriers of race and geography that for too long appealed to the darker instincts of men and women.
There is a tide that is surging across America and raising with it a spirit of hope and optimism that has not been seen in generations. It comes not a moment too soon, with an economic crisis worse than at any time since the 1930s, and a distant and costly war that has hurt America’s moral leadership abroad more than anytime since Vietnam.
But transformative leadership has always had the power to rise above setback and disaster. Mr. Obama appears to have that rare kind of leadership gift. The fact that people have recognized this reality on an almost unimagined scale is a testament to his character and ability, of course. Chief among his uncommon skills was the understanding that the most pressing divide today is not between red and blue states, or rich and poor, or even black and white. It is the struggle between generosity and selfishness, between transparency and secrecy, between inclusiveness and alienation. Most of all, it is the challenge to make the ethics and values we teach our children the driving character of how our governments, corporations and great institutions are run.
Mr. Obama’s victory is also a testament to the fact that governance matters, and what can happen when ordinary people decide to take charge of their lives and the instruments of power to reset the moral compass of government.
What new destinations of discovery and accomplishment history will record for an Obama administration are yet to be written. The task of maintaining the confidence of so many with such high expectations will not be easy. But if a young president can set a goal to free humans from the laws of physics and place man on the moon and safely return him to earth within a decade, if he can lay the groundwork in civil rights that helped overcome racial bigotry which in many ways was more intractable than gravity itself, as John F. Kennedy did, it is not inconceivable that his modern day successor can raise the torch that has been passed to him high enough to overcome the forces of arrogance and cynicism, selfishness and duplicity that for too long have managed to dim the embers of hope when it comes to matters of politics and national governance.
In many ways, much of the world, whose admiration of America may momentarily flag but never falter for long, cast its ballot for Barack Obama today as well. It was a vote for all the things it has found best in America over centuries: the spirit of innovation and unyielding optimism; freedom for each man and women to worship, to speak and to hold their governments to account; faith in the family and in God, and an irrepressible conviction on the part of every American -rich and poor, black and white- that tomorrow will be better than today.
Each generation needs its own new frontier where it is challenged to be defined more by what it gives back than what it takes away. President Kennedy articulated that ideal for his generation of leaders and citizens. A President Obama will speak with that voice for his. It is in the face of such responsibilities that leaders are wise to pray for wisdom in the hope that if that is not granted, perhaps at least common sense will be sent in consolation.
As this year began, we noted on these pages the gathering prospects of a young man whom we said had the improbably presidential name of Barack Obama. That changes today. The amazing thing about America is that the improbable can become the reality, which is why in America tonight there is an African-American who has inspired a nation to reach higher and beyond the barriers of the past, and why the nation he inspired now calls him Mr. President-Elect.
Canada, too, needs to turn the political page. That process is not assisted when citizens slumber while their political leaders tap dance silently across the stage in the dark, hoping that no one will notice how mediocre they really are.
Half-a-world away, in a country where hostile fire is heard on a regular basis, Canadians lined up to perform the sacred duty of every citizen: to vote. In one advance poll, more than 75 percent of eligible citizens serving in the Canadian combat mission in Kandahar exercised their franchise. Like their grandparents and great-grandparents, who, as members of the greatest generation fought to preserve democracy and defy madmen, they take voting seriously. Many of their comrades in arms have died for that privilege even in this bleak far off land of discord.
In towns and cities across Canada, democracy had a less familiar and imploring face. The line-ups to vote were shorter this year than in previous elections –shorter by 10 million voters. Unlike the United States, which appears to be on the way to producing a record voter turnout, Canada set its own record: its lowest voter participation in history. Only 59.1 percent of eligible voters went to the polls in the federal general election which elected 301 members of the House of Commons and, by extension, the country’s prime minister.
Nothing about this election really clicked with the Canadian citizenry. That seems odd in itself, given that the nation is at war abroad and battling a mounting economic firestorm at home. Canada’s currency was plunging during the course of the campaign. If a dollar falls in a forest of other currencies, will anyone hear it?
I suspect the more likely reason for this bout of apathy had to do with the perceived lameness of Canada’s national leaders. They are essentially dull and unaccomplished individuals of rather unheroic character whose life stories, curricula vitae and inspirational oratory seemed to fall short on the old impress-o-meter.
In the United States today, a phenomenon involving what we termed “the improbably presidential name of Barack Obama” is taking the American political landscape by storm. Voters in record numbers have been registered. Young people in historic waves are set to cast their ballots with an enthusiasm most doubted was possible.
There has been a yearning among Americans for a different kind of leadership that is capable of rising above pettiness and straightjacket-type stereotypes. The country has discovered that elections do have consequences. As both the folly in Iraq and the recent crisis in capitalism confirm, when leaders and policies become disjoined from the interests and values of ordinary people, when the privilege of elites becomes paramount over the primacy of stakeholders, society can find itself navigating a very perilous minefield.
America, once more, is preparing itself to write a new chapter in its historic experiment with democracy, and to pass the torch to a new generation of leader. It is a necessary task in restoring confidence in American leadership abroad as well as the confidence of Americans in themselves and their institutions at home. The journey along this road is both inspiring and riveting, and rarely uneventful. America, it appears, loves times when it is about to make history. No such prospect seems in the offing for Canada.
These facts may well account for what happened in that country last week. So dramatic was the contrast between the two national election campaigns that the excitement emanating from the United States made the Canadian political scene look even more like the embalmed creation of the local undertaker than it normally does. I’ve spent a lot of time over the course of 30 years working for and advising some who have held or aspired to the highest offices in Canada. My experience compels me to make this personal assessment.
Canada had a history of electing grey haired elder statesmen as its head of government for generations. Then John F. Kennedy was elected the 35th president of the United States. Eight years later, Canada discovered a man who was viewed as its own JFK, in the smart, youthful and sometimes irreverent, world-travelled Pierre Elliott Trudeau. He animated elections in a way that had never been seen before. Voter turnout set a record. He became Canada’s 15th prime minister and the rest of the world took note.
Someday the Canadian landscape will change again and find a new figure to excite weary generations, raising the country to new heights of self-confidence and global accomplishment, as Trudeau did. It may be a leader who is not even on the horizon right now. It might even be Trudeau’s son, Justin, who was just elected for the fist time to the House of Commons. But someone will appear on the scene to reinvigorate this somewhat somnolent democracy that has taught many nations important virtues about governance and has stood tall when the cause of freedom was in peril.
None of this excuses the millions who could not be bothered to show up last week, however. At a time when the nation has asked its young people to put their lives on the line, every Canadian had an obligation to at least support their troops by exercising the right to vote. This is how citizens remind the governors that they are accountable to the governed.
Canada, too, needs to turn the page. That process is not assisted when citizens slumber while their political leaders tap dance silently across the stage in the dark, hoping that no one will notice how mediocre they really are. Such political types are not terribly bothered by the lack of turnout; they thrive in a climate of uninvolved citizens who are loath to ask hard questions or demand higher standards from the people seeking office. Growth in an already over abundant class of untalented and self-serving politicians is never to be lightly tolerated. So it is the shortsighted actions of those 10 million Canadians who never showed up that are our choice for the Outrage of the Week.
The recent G8 summit provided another revealing glimpse into how bankrupt the world’s top democratic heads are at addressing its most vexing problems.
When the leaders of the G8 nations descended on Japan this week for their annual gathering, their private jets left a carbon footprint larger than the Grand Canyon. With that as a prelude to their discussions, they decided that greenhouse gases could be reduced significantly -by 2050. Later, over a dinner which included corn-stuffed caviar, winter lily bulb and summer savoury, hairy crab “Kegani” bisque soup, roasted lamb with cepes and black truffle, and exquisite offerings from 19 other dishes, the group digested the growing world food shortage and the soaring prices that have caused riots from Port-au-Prince to Cairo. Yet the gathering produced only re-hashed statements on this global epidemic and no meaningful plans on how to combat it. The spiraling price of oil and looming economic turmoil failed to prompt concrete action as well. Disquieting forces set the world further adrift while its management dine on the fine repast of complaceny and self-satisfaction.
We have often asked on these pages what crisis has the G7 or G8 ever anticipated or adequately addressed? Where are the Marshall Plans that the scale of today’s global disasters call out for? Where is the vision a troubled world needs? Where is the hope that the hungry children of Africa, and so many now cowering in refugee camps across a continent caught in the grip of genocide, to come from? Far from displaying the foresight of real leaders, they give the impression of a bunch of people who even have trouble getting the picture right when looking at it in a rear-view mirror. To have the eyes of the world upon them -at their own behest- at this time of crisis on so many fronts and to engage in such a shameful spectacle of hypocrisy shows how out of touch this group is. What is it about the world’s democracies that its collective leadership appears so irrelevant and lacking in an authentic and inspiring voice? Why are we faced with a plethora of smaller than life figures who seem unworthy of the term leader?
Ultimately, it comes down to what stakeholders are willing to tolerate and how much folly, stupidity and self-aggrandizement they think is too much before meaningful change is produced.
To that end, the recent G8 summit provided another revealing glimpse into how bankrupt the world’s top democratic heads are at addressing its most vexing problems. It is our choice for the Outrage of the Week.
With this posting the Outrage will take a much-needed break for a few weeks, while reserving the right to return in the event that the usual suspects act up too much in its absence.
The price of tyranny is always corruption and the trampling of the human soul. These costs are now evident to the world, but more significantly, to the Chinese people, in a decimated Sichuan Province and in the shattered ruins of a thousand classrooms.
When the earth opened up in central China two weeks ago, and the extent of the devastation and suffering became apparent, the world forgot about politics for a while and concentrated on the human dimension. Central committees and secret police forces, two functions long associated with communism, were the last thing on anyone’s mind. Many countries offered praise toward the Chinese regime for the openness it showed in permitting the world’s media to report on what happened. There were hopes expressed that things were changing for the better in the governance of the world’s most populous nation.
But all that came to a screeching halt when Beijing announced that it would allow families who lost their only child in the disaster to apply for a certificate permitting them to have another. So it is in this country, whose authoritarian regime regulates all aspects of society with no accountability or opposition, that human life is now subjected to the ultimate bureaucratic indignity. Like so many other things in China, childbirth is relegated to a mere transaction that requires some official stamp of approval. Perhaps it is a predictable Orwellian-style turn in a state where the government has such a formal antipathy toward organized religion and the practice of religious rights. One need look no further than recent events in Tibet for that evidence. But the larger question is: How short is the step between making decisions about birth and making them about the last frontier of human existence? Will it someday become inconvenient for the regime to permit older people who are sick to have the care they need? Once a government crosses the bridge and begins to dabble with decisions about birth, will it have any compunction about making the ultimate determination at the closing stages of life?
When, in North America last year, store shelves were stocked with poisoned dog food and tainted toothpaste, contaminated vitamin pills and children’s toys painted with lead -all the result of wrongdoing in China- the world was properly outraged. Some suggested, as we did on these pages, that such defects were the inevitable result of a society that lacked transparency, accountability and good government. With revelations that many of the buildings that collapsed in the earthquake, killing thousands of children, were the result of shoddy construction, now even some Chinese are beginning to look inward at their own system. The government’s spirit of openness in showing the world the aftermath of the tragedy has suddenly been shut to its own media’s examination of the corruption issues that led to such devastation.
The party officials and central committees, the policies that favor the friends of those in charge while muting dissent on the part of others, all have far-reaching consequences in the lives of ordinary people. The shameful misconduct of those responsible who allowed the construction of such substandard buildings is part of a longer litany of betrayal, from carcinogenic air pollution to contaminated lakes and rivers, that is leaving the Chinese people and their children a legacy of pain and disease that the world has seldom experienced on such a scale. It is being done in the name of profit, which, first and foremost, is about enriching the party bosses in Beijing and their friends, regardless of the costs.
What the rulers at the top do not grasp (as juntas, central committees and tyrants rarely do) is that it is not possible to indefinitely buy the loyalty of a society with the prospects of greater economic wealth while denying it the larger privileges of citizenship and basic human rights. The world, and in this respect the great people of China are no different, is not just the sum of its transactions and accounting statements. No amount of money can console the grieving parent of a lost child. Double-digit economic growth, which China’s regime has trumpeted for years, is no substitute for honesty and transparency in public governance. The price of tyranny is always corruption and the trampling of the human soul. These costs are now evident to the world, but more significantly, to the Chinese people themselves, in a decimated Sichuan Province and in the shattered ruins of a thousand classrooms.
Freedom and democracy are the only tools that give people the ability to hold the powerful to answer for their actions. Without the discipline of accountability, no organization, whether it is a corporation or a government, will function in a manner that serves anything but the vested interests of those on the inside and at the top. It is possible now, in their moment of national sadness, that this understanding will begin to gain new adherents among the Chinese people. They may well come to see that something of the old (but still very current) regime collapsed and fell into the rubble on that terrible day as a result of its endemic corruption and lack of transparency.
Many of the people in China who lost their only child must now look upon the government for their hope of another. But in that mournful gaze they might also begin to question if humans are not entitled as a fundamental right to make such decisions on their own, without the stamp of some government official posted on their bedroom door like a local building permit.
To live under the all-snooping eyes of such a corrupt regime stifles more than family life. It is an offense against human nature itself.
Only Dick Cheney could make Spiro Agnew look better.
“So?”
Never have fewer letters signified the arrogance of power and disconnection from reality more vividly than this reply from U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney. He was responding last week to the statement from ABC News’s Martha Raddatz that two-thirds of Americans believe the war in Iraq is not worth it, according to recent polls.
It is a war that has cost hundreds of billions of dollars, destroyed the lives of countless Iraqis, inflamed an already unstable region, sent America’s reputation to a new low around the world, and, most importantly, cost the lives of 4,000 American heroes and left tens of thousands badly injured. Mr. Cheney’s role as an architect of the war is well established. What he has managed to conceal to date is his utter disdain for the American people. This was exposed fully last week in that single-syllable response to a legitimate public concern. This one word from his own lips sums up the man better than entire books will do in the future.
There have been storied figures in American history who have occupied the office of vice president, beginning with John Adams. One can also remember characters from another unpopular war involving a different administration. But not even Richard Nixon’s corrupt vice president, Spiro T. Agnew, displayed such contempt for public opinion as his present day successor.
It takes quite a talent to make Spiro Agnew look better. He may be one of 46 vice presidents to have held the office, but as to the discredit and destruction he has wrought, Richard B. Cheney is in a class by himself.
If it were a crime for legislators to bring discredit to parliament, the MPs investigating cash payments to a former prime minister would long ago have been carted off and locked up.
A lot of people I have talked with over the years view Canada’s system of government as something akin to a relative without personality: they’re nice enough to invite to the party but nobody will be terribly disappointed if they don’t show up.
Canada’s parliamentary-style democracy lacks the history and majesty of the British and misses out on the vigorous checks and balances that define the U.S. system. Its politicians, except for the few rare figures like Lester B. Pearson and Pierre Elliott Trudeau, seldom stand out on the world stage. And if you happened to be watching the action in Ottawa this week, the experience would have caused you to have an even lower opinion about how Canada is governed.
The House of Commons ethics committee investigating cash payments to former prime minister Brian Mulroney (he had always denied receiving any until recently, and those assurances formed part of the basis for the federal government paying out $2.1 million to settle his lawsuit with it in 1997) held more of what can only be charitably called hearings this week. It’s a committee that has demonstrated a chronic inability to engage in a straight line of inquiry with anything approaching discerning and well-researched questions. Even the fact that while he was prime minister, envelopes of cash were regularly being dispatched to the first minister’s official residence every month, seems to have gone over members’ heads. Can you imagine the scandal that would erupt in Washington if a former presidential chief of staff admitted that cash payments were being delivered like pizzas to the president and first lady at the White House? In Canada, it barely elicited a shrug.
Over the years, I have frequently been asked to testify before committees of both Canada’s House of Commons and Senate on ethics and governance issues. The experience generally leaves me astonished at the lack of preparation revealed in the questioning. But this House of Commons ethics committee really takes the prize.
Its members are often juvenile, unprepared and disgustingly partisan. Questions are disjointed and answers rarely followed up. The committee looked like a ship of fools when it was interrogating the former chef at 24 Sussex Drive, the prime minister’s official residence. Yes, I mean chef as in top cook. The committee seemed stunned that he had nothing of value to offer that would assist in its deliberations. A soupcon of arsenic might have been in the public interest.
One member of the committee has the unimpressive habit of curling his finger through his hair, which he wears with bangs, while questioning witnesses. The “questioning” part is generous; it’s really a whine delivered while mumbling. Other members are so far over their heads that it is painful to watch. The committee chair lets the witnesses decide if they want to take an oath to tell the truth at the beginning of their testimony. His pedantic displays and facial contortions of impatience make all the lame vice principals I have known look like paragons of manliness and virtue. So lacking in backbone is this committee and its chair that when a witness refused to give evidence unless the chair recused himself, Liberal MP Paul Szabo obliged and turned the gavel over to another member. Try pulling that stunt on Chris Dodd, chairman of the U.S. Senate banking committee, or Barney Frank, head of the House financial services committee.
Yesterday, Canadians learned that Mr. Mulroney is refusing to re-attend the hearings to answer further questions. His lawyer claims he doesn’t need to and that he wants to move on. So now it’s the subjects of investigation and their lawyers who are running the show. The committee, which has the power to summons witnesses, apparently is not going to demand that the man who stands at the center of its inquiry, appear again. If it were a crime for legislators to bring discredit to parliament, the members of this committee would long ago have been carted off and locked up.
Canadians over generations have nobly opposed the onset of tyranny around the world and for that reason and others they are a people who deserve respect among the ranks of those who value freedom. It is a shame that they are so often underserved by the mediocrity of their elected representatives.
The ability of law makers to hold meaningful hearings on significant matters of public policy has been a central feature of American democracy. How many failures, cover ups and scandals would have gone undetected if it had not been for the fact that Congress can actually assert itself and demand answers? Testifying is generally not an option as a long line of figures from John Dean to Roger Clemens have discovered. It’s part of the checks and balances that make the American system, for the most part, the closest thing to a model of sound governance in the world today.
As this week’s antics in Ottawa revealed, the Canadian system is often so far removed from that model it’s hard to believe it inhabits the same planet, much less the same continent. The Ethics Committee of Canada’s House of Commons was given an important opportunity to strengthen public confidence in the political system. Instead, it did the opposite, which makes it our choice for the Outrage of the Week.
