The traditional policy campaign that the NDP election team seems to be planning will never work against Martin.
He will continue the Liberal strategy of sponging soft support on both sides of the spectrum. On the left he will promise health care investment, and money for municipalities. On the right it's difficult to guess what tact he will take until the Conservatives sort themselves out.
Martin wants a campaign on credibility after co-opting key issues on both sides of the Liberals. He will go to the public with a focus on the same investment areas as us, and ask Canadians who they trust to implement investment in these areas without upsetting the budget and the economy. Martin or Layton? Martin or Harris?
Martin has incredibly high credibility on fiscal management. With the campaign framed in such a way, as the typical Liberal campaign of policy/fiscal credibility, who do you trust to do these things, Martin the deficit slayer or the NDP, we may even lose seats.
I can't stress this enough, we will never beat Martin on a policy management credibility campaign, despite the best efforts of a charismatic Jack Layton and a shrewd Jamie Heath.
So change the focus. Shift to New Ideas for a New Canada. Don't play into Martin's hands and fight a?typical policy campaign. Besides, the political climate in Canada is ripe for change from a principled, ideas politician.
Canadians are ready to dream again. We were all hung over after the big ideas of Trudeau and Mulroney. So the public turned to a quiet, trustworthy manager. Chretien was perfect. Honest, funny, unassuming, simple. But now with the budget balanced and even running a surplus, baby boomers are taking account of the social ruptures of the last decade, and being close to retirement, are thinking about legacy.
Boomer children are entering the work force, getting married, having children of their own. The boomer as grandparent is thinking about legacy. Grand speeches will move them. Youth will also be moved by a New Ideas from the New NDP. They want to change the world, especially when they see a Canada that does not reflect them.
Martin has terrible credibility on a legacy/ideas campaign. His equivocation hurts him here. He equivocates on Iraq, on same sex marriages, on Kyoto. If you fight a traditional policy management campaign, then this equivocation is an asset.
In a management credibility campaign equivocating is seen as wise, it is prudence, it is something you want. In a principled campaign on big ideas, on dreaming again, on legacy, equivocating is weak.
Either the Iraq war was moral and the right thing to do or it wasn't. Either gay people are equal to straight people or they are not. Either the environment, the very air we breathe is worth saving for our kids or it is not.
An ideas campaign, a boomer legacy campaign, will work. We can beat Martin here, not on policy management.
Jack is the real deal. Jack has huge credibility for this kind of campaign. How many times did Martin ride public transit in Montreal on his way to firing Canadian workers at CSL? How many times did he ride public transit in Ottawa on his way to cut health, education, and environment spending? Martin isn't even the right generation. Jack lived what the 60s generation dreamed.
But there potential risks for an ideas campaign. Control issues, getting the agenda and keeping the agenda, would be the key to success.
The campaign would also be contingent on stock prices. It sounds a little strange, but it is by stock prices that boomers measure economic health. Providing the stock market and in turn retirement savings are doing fine, a new idea campaign, pulling at ego and heart-strings of a generation looking towards its legacy will have effect.
Provided the stock market doesn't't crash, boomers are secure. They have had a great run. But not a perfect run. Right now the legacy includes some really good things. Some important things like the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. But some aspects of the legacy are embarrassing.
We (if Jack was speaking) are leaving our children a half trillion dollar debt. This is unmanageable for our children's generation. They are in lower tax brackets, makes sense they're just starting out on their career paths, and there are less of them than there are of us. They were the ones that saw opportunities disappear in the merger mania of the 90s following globalization. When you merge two accounting departments you have new economies of scale. And new economies of scale mean you need fewer workers. The workers that got fired in the economic restructuring of the late 90s, or saw new opportunities completely disappear, were the young, our own children.
If we don't give our children, now starting careers and starting families, and making us grandparents, much too soon I might add, an economy and an inheritance of government that they can handle, the stock market will crash. Our retirement plans will disappear. Our kids are barely paying student loans back, how can we expect them to soak all the demand for stocks our generation is about to create, when we all try to sell stocks at one time to fund retirement?
The deficit, the job situation, the debt loads, in some cases equal to a mortgage without the house, are all unfair, and dangerous to the future economic health of our country. As we become new grandparents is this really how we want to be remembered? Is this really the legacy we will leave?
To this embarrassing legacy we add an environment in crisis.??We are leaving an environmental inheritance that is actually, physically, dangerous. People in BC know this too well, after being devastated by climate-caused forest fires. People on the Prairies also know this too well, after suffering droughts now years running...etc.
This would be a great start to a New Ideas for a New Canada. The New NDP campaign. Something to the same effect as above, as well as some key control issues, could give us the initiative very early in the campaign.
STRATEGY
I have seen the NDP call for policy input for the coming campaign and am a little disappointed.
We need to stop thinking that there is only one kind of issue in a campaign. There are three kinds of issues that make up a good election platform. There are policy issues, credibility issues, and control issues.
Policy issues are what we traditionally think of when crafting our platform. Credibility issues are important to the NDP especially if we decide, foolishly, to try and beat Martin on a policy management platform. Lastly, control issues are critical unless we want to repeat the mistakes of the past.
Too often we see the NDP, in for example the last federal NDP campaign, and most recently in the Ontario election, talking about something unrelated to the other parties and the issues debated that day. We need specific issues and strategies whose sole purpose is to seize the initiative and therefore set the agenda for the next day of the election.
We have to stop pretending we set the agenda for the campaign from the beginning. Incumbents start the campaign agenda, and we respond until we seize the agenda ourselves. If we instead choose not to respond to the incumbents agenda and strike out our own into a different policy direction, we will receive zero media coverage because it simply can't be incorporated in any meaningful way into the story being written about what the other two parties were debating that day. Without initiative and the control issues to seize the agenda, we have little pragmatic choice but to be led where the initiating party takes us that day. Control issues are probably the most important kind of issue, especially if the NDP election strategy wisely chooses to campaign on a New Ideas, New Canada, New NDP platform. We have to have a plan, and a plan B, and plan C, and a plan D to get control of the agenda.
When Martin brings up his economic credibility we have three choices.
1) Change the subject with a control issue. This is the best, if the media follows us or if it forces Martin to respond.
2) Thank Chretien and the great minds in the civil service for balancing the budget. Don't let Martin take credit. Give credit to Chretein and the cabinet (a cabinet that won't survive the PM transition and will have axes to grind). Try and force Martin into a fight or denouncement of the civil service's role in balancing the budget, and hope the leaks roll in to both the NDP and the press.
3) Say Martin actually did a bad job, sacrificing too much, especially health care, education, and the environment. He made a bad choice giving tax cuts instead of basic health care and affordable education.
I believe the last option is the weakest, although I know this is the approach most NDP strategists are leaning towards. If it can be done, it would take a massive re-education campaign, and a lot of time, more time than we have.
Time is always the most valuable resource in a campaign against a leader with a huge lead. I recommend leading with #1, cultivating #1, and planning for #1. If Martin can't be shaken off track, or if for some reason the Conservatives keep him on track, feeding the flames by choosing #3 above (which I believe they may do, the idiots, based on the questions surrounding Lansdowne and Irvine), then switch to #2 plus #1.
WHAT EXACTLY WOULD THIS LOOK LIKE?
In large part it would look like the Trudeau campaign that beat your father's candidate. The same campaign that beat Martin's father. Wouldn't you love the irony if we won? I'm sure the media would.
Below I outline what I believe a New Canada New Ideas New NDP platform would look like. I will group the issues into three categories, policy, credibility, and control.
POLICY
This would be a campaign on a theme, not on specific policy issues. Issues are framed and have relevance in how they plug into the theme.
The democratic deficit is a huge issue, and could form the perfect centrepiece for an ideas based platform. There are clean, simple connections between the democratic deficit and policy, meaning control issues will be plentiful to keep control of the agenda, a necessity and by far the greatest danger with an ideas based campaign.
Don't offer a PR referendum. Referendum is a bad word in Canada. Referendums are the plague of Canadian politics. They always open cans of worms, as they did in the Charlottetown and Quebec referendums. Promising a referendum turns PR into an intangible idea.
So just do it. Decide on a simple formula and offer it. Offer something tangible. Five PR reps from each region of Canada, plus two from each province would be reasonable. I think the key to avoiding a referendum is a region plus province formula.
I know the party platform is to eradicate the senate. But advocating a PR senate would be one of the easiest ways to hurt both of the other parties. It would hurt Martin credibility because as the most powerful man in cabinet he did absolutely nothing about senate reform for a decade. I suspect Chretien will leave him with a pile a patronage appointments to sign.
A PR senate platform could be a wedge issue against the Conservatives. If the Conservative party comes out with a platform that does not include senate reform, we can peel off a lot of support in the west with minimal time investment. This issue could (hopefully) divide the Conservatives during the campaign into their traditional camps, get us back some CA seats in the confusion, shore up vulnerable seats in the west, hurt Martin's credibility, serves our goal of addressing the democratic deficit, gives us the initiative, forcing them to react.
A new Global Canada. The American economy is sinking, especially with George Bush at the helm. There is no reason, outside of the country clubs in Toronto and Ottawa, for Canada to lash ourselves to this sinking ship. We are a truly multicultural nation. Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver are what New York, Miami, and Los Angeles can only pretend to be. We have tens of thousands of qualified, ambitious immigrants from every corner of the globe with the linguistic and cultural expertise to open every, every market in the world to Canadian goods.
But instead we have a system that won't recognize them for the talented, inspirational people they are. Instead we waste this talent, by having them drive taxi cabs and deliver pizzas.
If the immigration department actually had the money to do what it is supposed to do, Canada's recent arrivals wouldn't't have to struggle behind the wheel to put their sons and daughters through university. They would be behind the pilot sitting in first class, opening new markets in new corners of the globe for their new country, Canada. Canada would be using our great national advantage, our plurality. I for one would bet Canada's future economic prosperity on the collective abilities of our immigrants vs. the ability of one George Bush junior any day of the week.
Immigration issues are too often surrounded by equivocal language from all parties, including the NDP. Too often immigration is discussed in sanitized technical terms designed to keep immigration just below the public's perception. Speak strongly on the issue.
Banking regulation is a great platform piece, and may be the only thing in the platform that directly puts money in Canadian pockets. Offer specific numbers for credit card usury rates, and ATM surcharges. Calculate how much money this would save the average family. It has to be as tangible as tax cuts. It is also a good issue to chip away at Martin s credibility. He will let the banks charge whatever they want, just as they have the last 10 years under his watch.
Our policy issues have to be tangible. Even if we run an ideas-based campaign we have to be much smarter in connecting the issues to people's lives. Better healthcare, better schools, and a better environment are all intangible.
Tax cuts equaling $xxx.xx per family are tangible. One of the biggest and most unrecognized problems with NDP policy and strategy has been that we don't offer tangible results. The other parties do. We need to make our promises tangible. Canada is a numbers-orientated society. I have lived in both S Korea and Japan. Despite typical stereotyping, we are much more number-minded than either society. I suspect it is because of the metrics we most often use (and with even greater frequency with the rise of the right) to compare ourselves to the United States.
Promise full accounting of the taxation structure. Promise an investment statement for every tax paying Canadian detailing exactly how much tax they pay to each department and program. Show Canadians what their tax dollars are being used for. Show them that they are not wasted. Issue this investment statement with a tax return. $xxx dollars to pay interest on the debt. $XXX dollars to health care transfers. $XXX dollars for the environment ministry.
A fully accounted investment statement is a policy issue, a credibility issue, and a control issue. It is perfect to seize control in a New Ideas, New Canada, New NDP campaign.
Regional issues are an option to consider. Promise that the next finance minister will come from the West, the next fisheries minister will come from Atlantic Canada, and the next intergovernmental affairs minister will come from Quebec. Such appointments would have great impact considering the little time it would take to set up such a policy
Really there is one policy theme we put forward, NEW. Everything else we plug into this theme.
CREDIBILITY
Aggressive ads are necessary to strip Martin of credibility. The Fly your Flag campaign is a great example and a great start. Some advisors will say Canadians won't stand for this kind of "American-style campaigning". They are wrong.
These are the ground rules for aggressive advertising. No using personal information from the politician's life. No attacking on anything not chosen, race, disability, or sexual orientation for example. The incumbent can never start the aggressive advertising. Only underdogs can. Canadians have a sense of fairness that must be obeyed.
Any potential fallout from negative ads, if you don't trust the rules above, can be mitigated by two effects. Humour and intelligence. The more aggressive the ad, the more self-defacing you have to be. The liberal tactic is to diffuse, and dismiss. They won't resent the ads unless it breaks the rules above. Martin will campaign on character. He has no choice but to laugh them off.
Tax cuts. We have to be ready just in case it comes up, again, if for example the Conservatives somehow seize initiative. We don't have time to fight a protracted war over whether Canadians are over-taxed or not. And let's be honest, we lost this argument long ago.
I don't believe this argument can be won until the debt is paid off. As long as a third of every tax dollar goes to financing the debt Canadians will continue to perceive themselves as over-taxed or under-serviced. Canadians are correct, the services they get are not worth the tax dollars they pay. Business and the right wing jumped in and suggested it is because of over-taxation. And won the debate. But in reality it is because no one thinks about the one third of every dollar that goes to debt finance, as I noted earlier.
We won't win the tax cut debate until either the debt is gone, so that Canadians perceive value in services equal to taxes, or Canadians are educated about where their tax dollars go, especially to debt financing. My generation won't be able to finance the debt without deficits, and inflation and in turn employment can't creep up to acceptable levels until the debt is settled, due to the link between interest rates and inflation.
I realize I am alone on this side of the debate, but the left should adopt a policy position of paying down the debt. Only then can we win the tax cut debate by providing services equal to tax paid, only then can we implement a plan for full employment, and only then can my generation survive a ticking fiscal time-bomb not our making. Besides, this issue is currently unclaimed. It would provide some great fiscal credibility to the left-wing by claiming it as our own.
I understand many within the NDP would be uncomfortable with a debt reduction response to the tax cut debate. In the very least we have to shift the tax cut debate to number of taxpayers instead of tax per payer. The answer to reducing the tax burden is not tax cuts, it's getting everyone working and paying taxes. We have eight percent of the working age population that want to work, that are looking for work, but can't find work. If they were working tax revenue would increase 8%, $XXXXXXXXX dollars. This is the secret to reshaping the tax structure. This is how to afford the programs we want. Move these 1.X million people to the other side of the ledger.
We have to be more conscious of language. Grassroots, spending, and tax regime, are some prime examples of linguistic engineering that we have been ignorant of in the past, to dire results. Take back grassroots, if we can, or build an alternative, for e.g., participation democracy. Spending is lost, switch to investment. Activist countered free trade perfectly with fair trade. Use it. Broaden the use of activist to almost anyone; the word is starting to gather a radical, pejorative connotation, and needs saving. Use taxation (neutral) structure (slightly positive) instead of tax regime. In fact there is no reason to talk about taxes at all. Talk about revenue and talk about investment. Both have a positive, professional connotation and will help launder fiscal credibility.
When it comes to the economy and fiscal issues we have to talk the talk. Layton can do this.
CONTROL
The nice thing about campaigning on a theme instead of specific policies is that there are many opportunities to seize control. We can tie in to the issue of the day easily. Every policy has the potential to be a control issue. The key will be process.
We need to learn from the successful Liberal campaign in Ontario and start micro-managing our campaigns. In particular, we have to organize press releases. Press releases at the right times from the right groups, extend the media cycle, launder credibility, and launder character. If you run an ideas based campaign they are great for delivering the tangible facts to back up our positions, turning a quote into a full news article.
We need to cultivate and prepare different groups to release their own press releases right after Jack's speeches, and especially during and following the debate. We need to plan and co-ordinate policy contacts, character/credibility contacts, and control contacts.
Organize First Nations, Muslims, environmentalists, think tanks, farmers, accountants, human rights activists, students, anyone at the UN doing anything, university presidents, university profs, researchers, the various immigrant communities, even individuals like Paul Hellyer, Mel Hurtig, Maude Barlow, Linda McQuaig, and if you continue your personal, story-telling style, former students, and colleagues. If you insist on fighting on policy, than we must work hard to increase credibility, of Jack and any activist allies. This requires massive organization, serious micro-management, true trust and sharing between the NDP and the various groups, a gift for timing, and maybe even education on effective press communication with our allies.
The psychology that our arguments are too sophisticated for a sound bite, is a systemic problem that needs to be trashed. There are many left writers that can craft an effective sound bite. The problem is we have fallen into a habit of throwing out these fat bloated sound bites that are useless for the TV news, and too boring for the general public. You can't talk to the general public in the same way you talk to a supporter. Supporters come in with a higher level of knowledge, and more patience for a longer sound bite.
Our sound bite problems are self imposed. In fact, I believe the right has a much more difficult time explaining, for example, why they should send their children off to die in some ridiculous war, why the rich need tax cuts, and why you and your family would have better access to cancer treatment in a privatized system.
Jack's personal story-telling style suits him well, and I wouldn't't suggest a change. He needs to be a little more focused though. He should be working from an outline of topic areas and respective sound bites. The rest he fills in on the fly. The following is a general guideline for crafting sound bites, especially in something like a press release.
Sound bite 1-Hooks the readers and peeks their interest. E.g. A spectre is haunting Europe. - The spectre of communism.
Sound bite 2-Boldly summarize the argument. E.g. The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.
Sound bite 3-Provoke a response from your supporters and opponents. Initiative can't be lost, reaction from especially opponents is critical. E.g. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. Working men of all countries unite!
Sound bite 3 is critical. It has to be risky. It has to force Martin to re-act instead of act.
The following two control issues are a little different. They work indirectly and take time. They are generally less effective than direct control issues. But, when they work they really work. They target cultural phenomena, going directly to the public bypassing politicians, but not politics.
Just announce a list of candidates for directorship of the CBC. The only interview question; what would you do with the extra $250 million the NDP has pledged to restore the CBC? The candidates we have short-listed are ; Mike Meyers, Jim Carrey, David Cronenberg, Keifer Sutherland,?Sarah Polley, Rick Mercer, Steve Smith, The Arrogant Worms, Shania Twain, Margaret Atwood, and David Suzuki.
This creates a long media cycle, that Martin can't get in on. Some people on the list will respond, and why not it's free publicity for them. This launders character. It launders credibility. We could do this again and again, for any government organization, corporation?or independent but appointed position, such as the Ethics Councilor.
The campaign song is usually a piece of crap. If you insist on a campaign song, tap Joni Mitchell, the Guess Who, or Yoko Ono (for a Lennon song). Tap into the last time boomers dreamed. Better yet, get the Bare Naked Ladies to do a cover of one of these songs. It would appeal to both generations. It would create a media cycle when a campaign song, of all things, crept up the music charts. It would launder credibility and character, and best of all because of the time structure of rising on the music charts, creates the appearance of momentum. Anything that creates real or manufactured momentum is important for an underdog in an ideas campaign.
CAMPAIGN MATERIALS
If we campaign on a new kind of politics we have to be seen doing a new kind of politics.
Contingent on a cost analysis, I would forget the usual campaign pamphlet that no one reads anyway. It's just too dry. I love politics, and I can barely get through them. Tell some jokes, be quick, and be smart. The political pamphlet's time has passed.
In a New Ideas New Canada New NDP campaign, we have to get people thinking and talking. The following are tangible, they are tactile, and they are visual.
For Greens and Farmers- A package of seeds. Choose an easily recognizable plant or flower that if the climate changed, we wouldn't't be able to grow in Canada any more. Given the size and geography of Canada this may have to be regionalized.
For Families--Small promotional sized tissues or cheap thermometers. They are very common in Japan. On the top; The New NDP. On the back; Taking care of your family's health care needs big and small.
For Students-A hard pressed cardboard right-angled triangle/ruler. Instead of measuring in centimetres, have it measure years on the bottom and average debt upon graduation on the angle. It's not a true graph so the angle could be as steep as we want. But I would settle for a little over a typical right angle triangle, because tuition as a little more than doubled.