Other Politics

A national election campaign is, or should be, the centrepiece of our democratic system, a time when great and important ideas – policies vital to the nation’s future – are debated before the jury of electors.

That’s the theory. In practice, big ideas make most political leaders nervous, especially during elections. They find it expedient to narrow their focus, to emphasize proposals with immediate or short-term electoral appeal, and to expend their energy on attacking their opponents.  

The current 2019 exercise in democracy is following the familiar pattern.

“Because America deserves better.”

That’s the campaign slogan of Bill Weld, the former (1991-1997) governor of Massachusetts, who made it official last week. He is doing what other Republicans – congressmen, senators, governors – milquetoast politicians all of them, fear to do. He is challenging Donald Trump for the party’s 2020 presidential nomination.

Once a year, Transparency International, a Berlin-based NGO, publishes a massive survey on corruption among the nations of the world.

The Corruption Perceptions Index, as it is called, gives national leaders, international businessmen, academics and journalists a tool with which to compare the honesty and integrity of the public sectors in no fewer than 180 countries world-wide.

In Canada, prime ministers do not publicly fire ambassadors.

From time to time, they are removed from their posts for reasons of job performance or policy differences, but the axe is wielded by the foreign affairs minister or, more likely, by the deputy minister or a subordinate.

And the cause, if any is given, will be obscured in a fog of bureaucratic opaqueness.

Until John McCallum, that is.

Do you get the sense that political world has gone off its rails?

In Washington, the president has shut down a good part of the federal government for a month because he is in a snit over the refusal of Congress to give him $5.7 billion for a 30-foot wall to protect the United States from its southern neighbour, friend, ally and trading partner, Mexico. It’s a wall that everyone, except Trump and his core supporters, agrees will do nothing to achieve its stated purpose of keeping illegal drugs out of the U.S.