Perhaps I should follow my own advice whenever Garth Turner asked for it when Angry Janke would post erroneous after erroneous blogs about my good, and former, politician friend. My advice was ignore it and don’t give it the time of day. But that advice was when Garth was still in politics when sometimes even just setting the record straight can – by characters the likes of a Steve Janke, who proudly promote himself as a “heat-seeking missile in the Conservative arsenal” – be taken further out of context in deliberate partisan effort.
Now that Garth’s time in politics is squarely behind him, Mr. Janke’s parting shot; “Garth Turner leaves politics as a failure” deserves closer examination if not an apology.
In case there is any confusion, Angry in the Great White North which poses with journalistic-like and fact-based qualities is, in my opinion, anything but journalistic or fact-based. Rather it is driven solely by shameless partisan motivation as the website’s subtitle indicates. Fair enough, political operatives for any Party, not just the Conservatives, are free and in most cases do operate as they see fit.
However, political operatives and the Parties they represent are well advised to not lose sight of one basic principal; maintaining a sense of personal respect for others. When I glean over the manner and specific style Mr. Janke chooses to attack and write about figures such as Garth and numerous others, Mr. Janke must believe that disrespectful and misrepresentative character assassinations lead others to feel the same way about his intended target of the day. While the tactic has some effect short-term, over time I believe readers come to appreciate the source for what, in my view, it truly is. Purely partisan, disrespectful, and above all deceptive.
Garth Turner leaves politics as lots of things but a failure isn’t one of them. Then again it depends by whose standards, objectives, and what unit of measure.
If in robot fashion mindlessly towing the party line is the unit of measure, and, if at all cost winning at political gamesmanship over good governance is the objective, then by those standards Garth failed. I am certain however, these are not the terms under which Mr. Janke deems Garth Turner a failure. Indeed, Mr. Janke would prefer to have his readers believe Garth made his final exit from the political arena as a failure on all fronts. This general and inaccurate characterization is what I object to.
For all his traits that we may or may not agree upon, Garth Turner most assuredly did not fail in the one area that I know, from years of polling and focus group research, voters say they expect of a person seeking the role of constituency representative. That is, to put your beliefs and the beliefs you will represent on the table, raw and exposed. Second, they expect you to listen and to represent what people believe, not what some unelected partisan and tactical weenie in the PMO expects you to interpret and represent. At the risk of over-repeating one of Garth’s most often made claims, he steadfastly believed in “representing the people to Ottawa, not the other way around.”
I observed roughly 20 of Garth’s 50+ town hall meetings over the past five years. I am not talking about carefully crafted, controlled and staged meetings with some predetermined message for the media to consume and re-distribute. These were open focus-group-like public meetings where on any given evening Garth never knew who or how many people would show up or what to expect in the way of supporters versus his detractors. This is a far cry from the history and common complaint about politicians who only show-up on your doorstep at election time to tell you what they think you want to hear or what they think will get them elected, not what they truly believe.
No doubt Garth’s most powerful tool that worked both to his advantage and disadvantage was his political blog. It gave local and far-away constituents everything they could ever ask for in terms of where Garth stood on any and all issues. It also gave his detractors all the ammunition they would need, and more, to take matters out of context in order to deliver a desired political blow. I challenge Mr. Janke to identify a single other politician who willingly left himself so over exposed in the name of digital democracy. If doing anything less sincere is Mr. Janke’s definition of success, then I believe most Canadians would choose failure. I say this with the full knowledge of Canadians’ failure to have action follow suit.
If we didn’t before, Canadians now live in a world of political one-up-man-ship, pure and simple. Elections are called and called-off based only on what Parties, all of them, believe they stand to win or lose based on media-shaped public opinion results. In perpetual minority governments this results in the gutless, cowardly, and whimsical behaviour that is now political commonplace. Rising public apathy and cynicism is what’s leading to lower and lower voter turnout. The system is broken and the will to fix it is in serious decay.
Far from leaving politics a failure, I believe history will show Garth Turner’s greatest success will have been to pave the way for others to achieve even greater digital democratic success.
As for the Steve Janke’s of the world, they strive to remain angry. Sad actually.