Election Follies (III)

Congratulations and condolences are both in order this morning.

Congratulations… to re-elected Premier Dalton McGuinty. Granted, your chief rival pretty much handed you the victory, but still…there are skeletons aplenty in your political closet, and your campaign did an admirable job of keeping that closet door firmly shut. A question for you, though: can we believe a single syllable of anything you’ve said over the past month?

Condolences…to the majority of people who did not vote for Dalton McGuinty and his Liberals. Under our present system, the Liberals have received (I can’t very well say “earned”) a comfortable majority, reported this morning as 71 out of 107 seats, with just 42% of the popular vote. It is common to hear, in the fallout from any election campaign, that voters get the government they deserve. In most cases, including this one, it can be argued that voters get a government they neither deserve nor want.

Congratulations and condolences both…to Howard Hampton, leader of the provincial NDP. Sir, you ran an impassioned and reasonably effective campaign, strongly impressing this voter, at least. You alone among the leaders deserved a much better showing than you got last night. It really is too bad Bob Rae left your party unelectable in Ontario for a generation.

Condolences to John Tory, leader of the Ontario Progressive Conservatives and widely expected, at the outset of the campaign, to give McGuinty a run. I trust the person who decided to put the words “faith-based school funding” into your platform has been given the heave-ho? Strange, isn’t it, how in a 52 page platform, one third of one page can pack such an unexpected wallop?
I really do feel bad for Tory: it’s obvious he has more principle than many of his ilk. He chose to run in a Toronto seat, on principle, despite there being a bunch of much safer ridings he could have picked. And he lost. He stood behind the faith-based school initiative like a sitting duck, far longer than he should have, because he genuinely believed it to be the right thing to do. And he lost. Friends and foes alike praise his integrity. We need more people like him, from all political stripes.

Congratulations to the people behind a supremely effective Liberal spin machine. You took that one third of one page of Tory’s voluminous platform, distorted it to your own ends, and blew a comparatively trivial issue up into a dealbreaker for your rival. At no point did Tory suggest, as your commercials had it, that he would take money out of the public system to fund faith-based schools. When your opponents retorted that your leader is himself a product of a faith-based school, not to mention his wife teaches in one, you somehow managed to shrug your shoulders and change the subject. It’s obvious you relied on the electorate not to bother with a close read of each party’s platform. Good call.

Condolences to Frank deJong, leader of the Greens. Shut out of the televised debate again, you nevertheless hoped to elect at least one member last night. It didn’t happen, although your party was leading for quite a while in one riding, and did manage to finish third in a few. If it’s any consolation, you poll higher and higher each electoral cycle. It’s only a matter of time before you break through.

Congratulations to the voters of Ontario. I was worried about most of you: for the longest time it seemed as if you were blissfully unaware you were being given a chance to examine and perhaps change the entire electoral system. At nearly the last minute, you engaged. In the days leading up to the election, I heard chatter about the referendum everywhere I went. You could tell that people were turning to friends who were, perhaps, a little more politically aware and demanding an explanation. Eavesdropping on conversations in stores and restaurants, I heard many points both in favour and against the Mixed Member Proportional system we were being asked to consider. My father came up with one point against I hadn’t thought of: under MMP, rural and remote ridings would have even less representation than they do at present—unless some conscious effort was made to recruit list members from those areas, which would be unlikely.

In any event, MMP failed: 63% voted against it. To my mind, this suggests that many Ontarians recognize the need for reform, but believe there may be better alternatives than MMP. And 37% is not a number to ignore, for that matter. I hope this isn’t the last we hear.

Four more years. If Canadian political history holds true, McGuinty will let this endorsement go to his head and his party will become more and more corrupt, eventually resulting in a crushing defeat in 2011.

But I won't make any promises.