In 1956, as he was racing towards a second straight loss to Dwight D. Eisenhower at America’s polls, Adlai E. Stevenson offered up one of his characteristically insightful thoughts on the nature of campaigning. The chronically underachieving presidential hopeful was recorded saying: “I’m not an old, experienced hand at politics. But I am now seasoned enough to have learned that the hardest thing about any political campaign is how to win without proving that you are unworthy of winning.” Truer words may have never been spoken by an honest person thrust into the deeply dishonest arena of politics.
The nature of political campaigning has changed a lot since Stevenson’s back-to-back losses to Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956, and again in 1960, when he lost the Democratic Party nomination to a handsome young senator from Massachusetts named John F. Kennedy. Nevertheless, Stevenson’s message carries hints of prescience.
How political candidates choose to present themselves has become a more calculated science as time has gone on. Consultants have come out of the woodwork to tweak and perfect every aspect of a candidate’s public image, from the colour of her ties to the content of her speeches. The organization and logistics of running a modern political campaign are staggering. The amount of time; effort; and, increasingly, money, that are required to get a candidate out of the gate complicate the process. With so much at stake, it is not difficult to understand the vague promises and glad-handing on the part of would-be representatives looking to distinguish themselves.
It would be an oversimplification and, ironically, dishonest of me to suggest that all politicians are liars, or that campaigning is fundamentally corrupt. Nevertheless, there are definitely threads worth pulling at: there is a fair bit of misrepresentation and showmanship that goes into any campaign. Plans must be presented moderately, experience must be conveyed modestly, suits pressed, and smiles polished. Opportunities to attack a competitor on her record or to charm a specific demographic make campaigns a drawn-out and twisted popularity contest rather than a competition of ideas. Too often, salient points are lost under the glaring lights of campaign stumps and in the deafening cheers of supportive crowds.
Take, for example, the tried and true methods political candidates employ. Appeals to a vague notion of a national narrative; simple, down-home values; and other attempts at authenticity are typical. We exist in a paradigm characterized by mistrust of public figures and the media outlets that report on them. Every slogan, campaign promise, and headline is perceived through a cynical lens, searching for an inkling of bias or mistruth.
Jason Stanley of The New York Times argues that such a paradigm completely undermines “the possibility of straightforward communication in the public sphere.” So then, what are we left with? The incorruptible messages of family values, patriotism, and progress are hardly worth writing home about. The result is a political sphere lacking in earnestness, where the adequacy of potential leaders is sold to the public from behind a mask.
There are, however, a number of aggravating factors exerting themselves on the electoral process in addition to the general apathy of a suspicious public. Little doubt remains about the corrupting influence that money in the form of campaign donations has on respectable and genuine politics, if such a thing exists. Special interests, with considerable pocket books, are making their presence known through financial gifts. The inherent issue of increased political donations is one of accountability: when the costs of national campaigns are rising every year, and candidates are being forced to accept more money to stay competitive, the possibility of those with money exerting undue influence over policy becomes a legitimate concern.
This situation raises questions about the realities of electoral democracy if politicians are in some way beholden to private interests for money to run successful campaigns. US President Barack Obama summed up the issue perfectly in his remarks during the most recent State of the Union address. Speaking on his administration’s attempts to patch the holes in the country’s Voting Rights Act, Obama said: “It should be the power of our vote, not the size of our bank account, that drives our democracy.” Though it was a fleeting moment, the weathered president hit the nail on the head.
Every slogan, campaign promise, and headline is perceived through a cynical lens, searching for an inkling of bias or mistruth. The result is a political sphere lacking in earnestness, where the adequacy of potential leaders is sold to the public from behind a mask.
New legislation and changes in legal interpretation in Canada and the United States are striking deep into the core of the issue. The federal Conservative government is doing away with Canada’s per-vote subsidy, a mechanism put in place to allocate Canadian tax dollars to federal political parties according to their popular support in past elections. While the per-vote subsidy only represents a third of the total amount of money flowing into political parties on the federal level in Canada, the move has many journalists speculating as to how the parties will make up for the lost revenue. Some, including the National Post’s John Ivison, have suggested that the government’s recently proposed Fair Elections Act — legislation expected to increase the amount of money Canadians can donate to political parties, among other policies — is a direct response to the changing subsidy.
It is imperative that Canada looks to the current situation in the United States — as it so often does — to see the effects of money on politics. We are far from a watershed moment similar to the United States
Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, but we should be wary of how money drives our democracy in the Great White North. The influence it wields is nothing less than pollution — tolerable in so far as it is here to stay, but disastrous if left unguarded.
Stevenson’s remarks foretold what we now know to be true: any politician willing to do what is necessary to win an election — whether it is making promises in exchange for cash, doubling back on their positions, or lying about their records — may not be worthy of their prize.
Mark Twain is often credited with popularizing the saying, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” Twain himself would attribute the quote to the former British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli. If we are to preserve our right to self-government, we must be ever vigilant against those who would use any of the three against us. We must not forget that, in our politics, the electorate are price-makers dictating effective strategies to potential political suitors. We must hold those who would lead us to a higher standard. They will only lie as long as we let them.
Through education and skepticism, we can set a higher bar for politics, and to that end, our society. We cannot allow ourselves to be dazzled by snake-oil salesmen — but at the same time, we must not become so hardened in our cynicism towards the process that we miss the genuine article.