LETTITOR

The New Monarchies

of our last five major prime ministers have all worked for the same corporation,
and every single leader of the Liberal Party has been a former cabinet minister in
the government of his predecessor. Indeed, practically every politician of note in
post-war Canada has been little more than a degree or two removed from their
contemporaries, connected in tightly interconnecting, Eastern Canadian-based web
of schools, businesses, bureaucracies, party hierarchies, and families.
But since the “Justin for PM” endorsement was the result of a poll, the public
deserves some blame as well. In a political culture marked by short attention spans
and an ever-declining standard of civic education, it’s unsurprising that modern
voters seem increasingly unable to understand politicians as anything other
than brands. If you liked the first Trudeau then just vote for another one. Same
name, same policies, right? Just as we assume any product bearing the Apple or
Sony brand will conform to certain predictable standards of quality, so too do
voters have a depressing tendency to equate family heritage with continuity of
competence.
Name brand politicians themselves actively foster this perception, as it’s
much easier to just be a partisan piggyback than actually work to get elected on
your own merits. Sad to say, female politicians in particular have tended to be
the worst exploiters of this state of affairs. Indeed, if we look around the world,
Margaret Thatcher stands alone as one of the very few female leaders of note
who did not achieve her office by leeching off the reputation of a more politically
successful male relative. Ms. Bhutto in Pakistan is the daughter of a former
president, so is Ms. Arroyo in the Philippines, as were the former woman rulers
S o I was visiting my pal and noted Other Press Arts Editor Luke Simcoe the _ of Indonesia, Panama, and India, to name but three. If Hillary Clinton eventually
other day. becomes president of the United States she will likewise hardly be the first wife of
“Did you hear who most Liberals want to be the next leader of the party after Power to benefit politically from a marriage. We can look at the careers of women
Dion?” he asked me. I shrugged. “Justin Trudeau,” he replied. I looked up the such as Senator Elizabeth Dole or MP Oliva Chow-Layton as evidence of that.

 
 

numbers when I got home, and Simcoe was right. According to a recent Strategic Many years ago we stopped being governed by monarchies because we
Counsel poll, a full 40% of Canadians want Pierre Elliot Trudeau’s eldest son realized that bloodline alone was not a sufficient standard for choosing rulers.
to be the next leader of the former PM’s political party, well ahead of more We sought to decentralize power away from a single personality and found
accomplished politicos such as Robert Rae or Michael Ignatieff. parliamentary instructions of governance where laws could be created by rational
There are two ways to look at this depressing statistic. One is as a deliberations, rather than unilateral decrees. In many ways we now seem to have
confirmation of a fact that should be readily obvious by now, but is generally come full circle. Politics is once again dominated far more by personalities than
suppressed by the flag-waving set; namely that Canada is a monstrously elitist. ideas, and what passes for parliamentary government today is basically just a
country, in which true political power is concentrated in the hands of a very, wimpy legislature controlled by a few bosses of extremely hierarchical political
very tiny community. Growing up, Canadians are taught that the United States _—parties. - :
is this uniquely terrible country in which all power and influence comes through But at least we now get to choose which royal family we want to rule us. Come
money and connections, but really, our political system is just as bad, if not on Ben Mulroney, we need you more than ever!

worse. While America might currently have a presidential son in office, anti- : . .
establishment, outside-the-beltway outsiders like Reagan or Clinton still have a J.J. McCullough, Editor-in-Chief of the Other Press
long history of being able to infiltrate the top job. In Canada, by contrast, four

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