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COMMENTARY
June 4, 2011
Courting decorum
I must so often be glum about the prospects for our country and times, that I leap at a chance to be merry. Such was provided in Parliament this week, with the election of Andrew Scheer as Speaker. Granted, it took the members six ballots to get there, but they arrived at the right decision.Now, I'd better admit to prejudice before I proceed. The Hon. Andrew is the son of a couple of very close friends. Indeed, this whole newspaper should be prejudiced, as his father, Jim Scheer, worked here for decades; and for the duration, was the most learned person on our staff. Jim's wife, Mary, is among my principal living heroines, for cheerful triumph over real adversities; and Andrew was not the only remarkable product of their liaison. That said, I intend to lecture gentle reader on the nature of decorum, which this Speaker must impose upon a House of Commons that has grown rude, crude, and ugly in debate. But I could not do better than to touch prefatorily on pride and prejudice. Yes, the Speaker is the son of old friends, and I was gleeful for that reason; but it does not follow that I wouldn't have supported him otherwise. All sentient creatures are multi-dimensionally biased, and our notion of "objectivity" must acknowledge this fact. We choose our friends because we esteem them, not vice versa. This goes directly to the point of what the Speaker does, in our system of Crown and Parliament. No one who is reasonable can expect the member of a party to be indifferent to party. He would have to be quite an airhead to achieve that kind of stasis. But we can expect him to be consistently fair; to remain ever conscious of his own prejudices, and make necessary compensations. Because, someone has to do the job, and we cannot afford to hand it to an airhead. This point is important, for we are afflicted today with fatuous ideas about "objectivity" and "fairness." To say nothing of, "niceness." Decorum cannot be suspended on such afflatus. It does not reduce to following the rules. It consists of subtle manner in style and tone; it depends on unwritten and unspoken traditions. And respect for one's colleagues, in the House or anywhere, is founded not on abstract principles, but on an unambiguously spiritual condition: Humility. We are at a critical juncture in the history of our Parliament, with more than 100 new members, many very young, and unprepared for the duties of an MP. This is not entirely their fault. None of the 59 new NDP members from Quebec could reasonably have expected to take his seat, at the beginning of the campaign; or even to finish second. Many were unserious candidates. They present a wonderful opportunity, for they are also uncontaminated by the atmosphere in the last several Parliaments, as members played to the TV cameras and to each other, rather than to the substance of debate. The unusually large new crop will be impressionable. Much of young Scheer's job will consist of counselling privately. As I know at first hand, he has humour, charm, quiet decency, and a very strong will. He'll be good at it; and his very youth, in combination with a preternaturally rich understanding of the parliamentary heritage, makes him ideal. Much will depend on Scheer's old colleagues in the Conservative party, who are suddenly the veterans of the House. As their ultimate beadle in caucus, Prime Minister Stephen Harper must prevail upon them to stop the heckling; to stop it before their bad habits have spread to the new people. This won't be easy. But it is in his own ultimate interest, to restore respect for honourable politicians. Statesmen do not earn this respect when they behave like undisciplined children. Do not expect them not to be partisan. Our whole system of government rests on an adversary, or dialectical process. It is the government's duty to propose; it is the Opposition's duty to oppose. Note that word "duty," the reverse of "privilege." With the fatuous notions mentioned above, comes perhaps the most asinine of current ideas about how politics should be conducted: that politicians "shouldn't be so partisan." Truth emerges from the conflict of ideas; falsehood and error are soft, dark, pulpy things that require protection from sharpedged analysis. But heckling is not debate; and much of what we've been reading in Hansard over the last several decades has been only heckling, recognized by the Speaker. The purpose of heckling is to impede debate, by cluttering the ground with ad hominem. Decorum requires the suppression of heckling; but more fundamentally requires that members be prevented from wandering off topic. It requires inculcation of the habit of answering an argument with an argument, and not with a smear. It goes deeper than respect for persons, and rests on a bedrock of respect for truth. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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