It’s no surprise that Toronto elected Rob Ford as mayor according to Warren Kinsella, one of the Canadian left’s most vocal campaigners, spin doctors and pundits. Toronto is following the trend across Europe and the Americas where countries have elected leaders with more conservative values than the population’s. That’s due primarily to the Conservative’s strong communication style and values based campaigns–two strategies the Liberals will need to master if they ever want to get back into power.
At least that’s the thesis in Kinsella’s new book Fight the Right: A Manual for Surviving the Coming Conservative Apocalypse. He discussed his thoughts on the future of the Liberal party with Noah Richler at the Toronto Reference Library as part of The eh List authors series last Thursday.
The first reason the Conservatives have been so effective, Kinsella explained, is that they have found a communication style that Canadian’s can connect with. “Number one they have learned how to communicate their ideas and their programs and policies using language that is clear and concise and accessible,” he said.
The attack ads have been particularly effective. The reason both Dion and Ignatieff did so badly, Kinsella believes, was that they held back on running negative ads which provided an opening for their opponents to define the campaign. “They aspired to a world where negative political advertising and all of this tough stuff wasn’t necessary and wasn’t required,” he said.
While Kinsella said that he too would like to live in that world, that’s not how politics works. “For sure people say that they don’t like it and they don’t approve and so on,” he said, “but I liken it to a car crash, nobody likes car crashes but they all slow down and take a look.”
And while the ads may seem negative, he said democracy needs that kind of campaigning. “There’s nothing negative about telling the truth about the public record, quotes and the votes and the expenditures and the travels of an opponent seeking high public office,” he said. “That’s not negative at all, that’s what you’re supposed to do.”
The Liberal’s failure to understand that strategy has been their undoing, he said. At one point in Michael Ignatieff’s 2009 campaign the Liberal leader asked him to pull back on negative ads. “If we could do nice stuff like that and win the election for you we would,” he told Ignatieff, “but these bastards are getting ready to rip your face off so I want to rip their faces off first.” The Liberals ignored that advice and stopped making the ads. We all know how that election turned out.
The second strategy Kinsella believes the Conservative have used successfully, even more so than the first, is value’s based campaigning. They focus on “the ineffable stuff of life, your hopes and dreams and aspirations and also fears and resentments,” he said.
While some Canadian’s don’t share those values, Kinsella said, they appreciate when a politician takes a stand. “Even if they disagree with your position on something as difficult as abortion,” he said, “they appreciate the fact that you have a position.”
The unabashedly Liberal Kinsella said the criticism that Liberal politicians don’t stand for anything is warranted. “As a consequence of being bullied by focus groups and quantitative research and all that stuff we came to the position that we shouldn’t take a position on many important issues,” he said.
Though he hopes that this might change given that Justin Trudeau recently came out against a new language law in Quebec, Bill 101. Upon hearing that decision Kinsella thought, “Wow that’s pretty cool, a liberal taking a position on something, a contentious issue,” he said.
With a book subtitled “A Manual for Surviving the Coming Conservative Apocalypse,” it’s not surprising that Kinsella doesn’t pull his punches when discussing Conservatives– at one point he unapologetically made snide remarks about Stockwell Day’s creationist beliefs and referred to Rob Ford as a bumbling oaf. As much as he is anti-conservative, in the end it seems his real problem is with the Liberal party and its inability, or reluctance, to adopt the successful strategies of the right.
But Kinsella doesn’t believe the grits are going to be in the political wilderness for too long. He sees Trudeau as the likely leader of the party, and thinks that his willingness to take a stand might help him win. And given the slow economic recovery and the age of the other leaders, Kinsella believes that come the next election the country will want someone like Trudeau.
“Imagining that panorama in 2015 you have the two grumpy old guys, Mulcair and Harper on stage and you’ve got this young guy, you know optimistic and cheerful and full of energy,” Kinsella said, presuming Trudeau’s leadership bid will succeed. “My hunch is, my gut tells me we’re going to starved for a guy like Justin Trudeau.”
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Emily Loewen is a journalist working in Toronto. You can follow her on Twitter here: @erfloewen
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