This isnt about American politics, so most of you can tune out now 
Mind you, I suppose I could say that it is about the creeping Americanization of Canadian politics, or more precisely about how the polarization of politics removes choice, and the loss of choice can reward mediocrity.
Here is the situation: in a few days I need to go vote in the Ontario provincial election, and Im not crazy about any of the choices.
Let me start in the middle, with the Liberal party. Theyve been in power for ages now, and have built up all the baggage of scandals, having to stand behind previous bad choices, and intellectual exhaustion that comes with that. Now, their former leader retired and the new one seems to me to be pretty competent (besides that it would be kind of cool to have a gay premier) and I dont hold too much of the old guys decisions to be her fault .but all the same the party has been in power for a long time, and I really feel that it is about time to kick the rascals out. You know, if you dont rotate your tires or your government, you are just saving up trouble for down the road.
The usual other party that takes control of government in Ontario is the Progressive Conservative party, but the problem is that theyve totally abandoned the progressive part of their name.
Despite that Ontario already has the lowest per capita government spending of any of the Canadian provinces they are promising to cut a 100 000 public sector jobs, despite that they only directly control less than 100k employees, so theyll be telling local school boards and hospitals to make cuts then letting them deal with the fact that there were already contracts and other agreements in place. They promise that this will create a million jobs in the private sector, although it has been shown that they actually counted job-years (i.e. someone employed for eight years counted as eight jobs, and by this logic those long term public sector job cuts would actually amount to 800 000), and the rest of their platform is as glib and simplistic from what I can tell. Given that their leader has a masters degree in economics and has spent pretty close to his entire career in and around politics, I assume that he realizes that none of this will be as easy as thatbut in that case he isnt saying what he really expects to happen.
Add in that in the last election he was promising some pretty odd educational reforms, and that he and his people have been studying up on the Tea Party movement in the US, and I dont trust him as a leader at all.
In short, the movement of the PC party ever further to the right has opened a massive gap between the Liberal and PC parties. Which gives the classical Canadian socially liberal, economically conservative (note the lower case l and c) guy like me a lack of choice when the Liberals arent a palatable choice.
The other possibility is the NDP, the party of the Canadian left. At least, in theory, although they are running on a pretty centrist platform this time around, obviously trying to pick up people like me who are not thrilled about re-electing the Liberals, but who are not comfortable with the current version of the PC party. However I dont overly trust their commitment fiscal restraint, and in the past when they came to power it was a bit of a gong showI think that people dont normally join the NDP expecting to ever end up in government, so I think they tend to have a shortage of hard-eyed realists and of course have a total lack of anyone with actual governing experience. I dont have anything particularly against them, but at the same time they have had a golden opportunity this election and have singularly managed to fail to excite me.
Part of me wants the Conservatives to fail epically, in hopes that this leads to them jettisoning both their current leader and the rightward swing, then maybe next election there will be more palatable options. Part of me feels that maybe a weak Conservative minority would be OK, where the damage they could do would be kept under control, it would lead to another election in the not too distant future, but give at least a partial refresh to the liberals. On the other hand Im wondering about an NDP minority, where they could get a taste of power, gain some experience, and we could see where they really want to head?
In the end, I just dont know. It may come down to the fact that Ive been reasonably impressed by my local MPP, so I may just vote for him to get back in, in hopes that putting a good person in the legislature is never a bad thing, no matter who is actually in the Premiers chair.
Mind you, I suppose I could say that it is about the creeping Americanization of Canadian politics, or more precisely about how the polarization of politics removes choice, and the loss of choice can reward mediocrity.
Here is the situation: in a few days I need to go vote in the Ontario provincial election, and Im not crazy about any of the choices.
Let me start in the middle, with the Liberal party. Theyve been in power for ages now, and have built up all the baggage of scandals, having to stand behind previous bad choices, and intellectual exhaustion that comes with that. Now, their former leader retired and the new one seems to me to be pretty competent (besides that it would be kind of cool to have a gay premier) and I dont hold too much of the old guys decisions to be her fault .but all the same the party has been in power for a long time, and I really feel that it is about time to kick the rascals out. You know, if you dont rotate your tires or your government, you are just saving up trouble for down the road.
The usual other party that takes control of government in Ontario is the Progressive Conservative party, but the problem is that theyve totally abandoned the progressive part of their name.
Despite that Ontario already has the lowest per capita government spending of any of the Canadian provinces they are promising to cut a 100 000 public sector jobs, despite that they only directly control less than 100k employees, so theyll be telling local school boards and hospitals to make cuts then letting them deal with the fact that there were already contracts and other agreements in place. They promise that this will create a million jobs in the private sector, although it has been shown that they actually counted job-years (i.e. someone employed for eight years counted as eight jobs, and by this logic those long term public sector job cuts would actually amount to 800 000), and the rest of their platform is as glib and simplistic from what I can tell. Given that their leader has a masters degree in economics and has spent pretty close to his entire career in and around politics, I assume that he realizes that none of this will be as easy as thatbut in that case he isnt saying what he really expects to happen.
Add in that in the last election he was promising some pretty odd educational reforms, and that he and his people have been studying up on the Tea Party movement in the US, and I dont trust him as a leader at all.
In short, the movement of the PC party ever further to the right has opened a massive gap between the Liberal and PC parties. Which gives the classical Canadian socially liberal, economically conservative (note the lower case l and c) guy like me a lack of choice when the Liberals arent a palatable choice.
The other possibility is the NDP, the party of the Canadian left. At least, in theory, although they are running on a pretty centrist platform this time around, obviously trying to pick up people like me who are not thrilled about re-electing the Liberals, but who are not comfortable with the current version of the PC party. However I dont overly trust their commitment fiscal restraint, and in the past when they came to power it was a bit of a gong showI think that people dont normally join the NDP expecting to ever end up in government, so I think they tend to have a shortage of hard-eyed realists and of course have a total lack of anyone with actual governing experience. I dont have anything particularly against them, but at the same time they have had a golden opportunity this election and have singularly managed to fail to excite me.
Part of me wants the Conservatives to fail epically, in hopes that this leads to them jettisoning both their current leader and the rightward swing, then maybe next election there will be more palatable options. Part of me feels that maybe a weak Conservative minority would be OK, where the damage they could do would be kept under control, it would lead to another election in the not too distant future, but give at least a partial refresh to the liberals. On the other hand Im wondering about an NDP minority, where they could get a taste of power, gain some experience, and we could see where they really want to head?
In the end, I just dont know. It may come down to the fact that Ive been reasonably impressed by my local MPP, so I may just vote for him to get back in, in hopes that putting a good person in the legislature is never a bad thing, no matter who is actually in the Premiers chair.
