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COMMENTARY
June 16, 2012
The incredible lightness
First, the good news. This came to me as an email from an old friend, who is an economist up in the Canadian macroeconomic policy stratosphere (whom I have no intention of naming, until he retires). While basically agreeing with my Wednesday column, about the structural problem explaining the fiscal death spirals of Greece, Spain, Italy, and soon every other western government, he disagrees with my conclusion:"I would say that your prognostications are somewhat overly pessimistic. The resilience of financial markets to serious economic and financial shocks completely utterly and totally amazes me. For example, Argentina has mismanaged its macroeconomic policies for a century. Yet somehow, somewhere, new lenders always emerge, and the country somehow keeps on, even though its economic potential is systematically obliterated. Similarly, Russia and Mexico default on their financial obligations, and yet after relatively short periods new lenders emerge and these countries somehow manage to keep functioning. Not prospering, but functioning." As an aside on macroeconomic policy, he recently took in the film about Margaret Thatcher (The Iron Lady). That amazed him, too. Why? Because nowhere in the film could he find the slightest hint that she "had facilitated a re-structuring of the British economy to enable it to prosper in ways that it hadn't since before 1914." People who have seen that film will know what it does slightly hint at, and I have seen electronic reams of copy discussing whether Meryl Streep, the actress, had portrayed the mature Mrs. Thatcher fairly. The consensus was: a brilliant performance, not insulting to the protagonist. But note how the film led the conversation astray. The point of Thatcher was missed entirely. She was reduced to Hollywood or television terms: to personality. We get the voyeur's thrill of intruding into her private life. Do we like her or do we hate her? This is significant. We are now a generation out from the ReaganThatcher "revolution," the fall of the Berlin Wall, and all that. We have now lost all the painfully-wrought gains, and the "conservative" children of that revolution are debating such things as whether Michael Bloomberg was right to ban the sale of upsized fizzy drinks in New York ball parks. We are back to talking "micro" on the "macro" scale. Even in bankruptcy, our Nanny States are flourishing, because the red ink doesn't interest us. It is boring, except when it is used as an excuse to restrict our entitlements, in which case we riot. What does interest us, in politics, is political personalities. That is what made Barack Obama president. That is why Tom Mulcair has a job. That is why little Justin Trudeau, pathetically unsuited to public office, and unequal even to the requirements of parliamentary behaviour, commands national attention in a third-party leadership race. Because our politics have sunk to the level of American Idol. We have real problems to face, and we have solemnly decided not to face them. Michael Den Tandt, the wellinformed national affairs columnist, wrote a piece recently celebrating the "fact" that, across the country, a "nearly unanimous" consensus has emerged for "socially progressive values." All the divisive debates are behind us, and in Den Tandt's view, while "there are still racists, homophobes and gender-haters in Canada," the rest of us will punish at the polls any politician who so much as mentions one of the traditional matters of moral concern. I disagree with "nearly unanimous," and think it would be more accurate to say that many millions of Canadians have been marginalized, to the point of disenfranchised, by the tireless efforts of our progressive elites - indeed, characterized as "racists, homophobes and gender-haters" in order to eliminate them from public discussion. And I might add that as part of that minority myself, I do not celebrate our defeat and humiliation. Yet Den Tandt's view remains largely correct: there is a substantial majority of voters, now, who cannot be bothered by the hard issues in morality and law. And in my contrary view, it is this same majority that cannot be bothered with the fiscal questions, either. They will vote for the path of least resistance. Anyone voting against is "divisive." Democracy works for as long as electorates are willing to take responsibility, and consider the consequences of their actions; for as long as we are willing to take public issues seriously, and therefore pay attention to genuine debate. By the time we are reduced to watching politics as a form of serial public entertainment, revolving around identifiable "screen" personalities, we are cooked. In the show as it is now presented, we do have a consensus between "liberals" and "conservatives" that nothing important ought to be discussed. The policies themselves are an extension of the personalities, and we vote for whom we like more, or dislike less. And, that would be the bad news. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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