It nev­er ceas­es to bemuse me that would-be lead­ers of coun­tries where peace and per­son­al secu­ri­ty are pret­ty much the expect­ed norm, reflex­ive­ly vow to fight on behalf of vot­ers, as opposed to work, which is what we actu­al­ly pay them to do. The upcom­ing Cana­di­an elec­tion is a case in point.

Hav­ing called the elec­tion two years ear­li­er than man­dat­ed, in the midst of the pan­dem­ic, Prime Min­is­ter Justin Trudeau’s Lib­er­al par­ty man­i­festo warns that Cana­di­ans can’t afford to move back­ward in “the fight against COVID-19” and must “come togeth­er to fight sys­temic racism.” And, of course, “fight cli­mate change”, as if that can be reversed with cudgels.

The main oppo­si­tion Con­ser­v­a­tive Party insists “Cana­di­ans deserve a gov­ern­ment that will fight for their inter­ests”. Its 161-page man­i­festo promis­es to fix every­thing that is wrong with the coun­try, which it claims is just about every­thing. That will be one hell of a ‘fight’. The Con­ser­v­a­tives embrace of bel­li­cos­i­ty includes “Stamp­ing Out Sex­u­al Harassment”. 

Canada’s peren­ni­al third place par­ty, the New Democ­rats, goes one bet­ter and promis­es a future “where we fight for repro­duc­tive jus­tice and an end to gen­der-based vio­lence” — an unfor­tu­nate asso­ci­a­tion of words and ideas to say the least. (Bold­ing is mine)

                                MISREADING THE SITUATION

 The prime min­is­te­r­i­al hope­fuls and their advis­ers seem to think (if the word even applies) that repeat­ing ver­sions of how they will “fight every day” for their con­stituents implies grit, deter­mi­na­tion, unshak­able prin­ci­ples and even courage. What they don’t seem to real­ize is that vot­ers know the only time most politi­cians real­ly show any of those qual­i­ties (except the last one, which is gen­er­al­ly con­spic­u­ous by its absence) is in their efforts to get elected.
The advan­tage in claim­ing to be “fight­ing” is you don’t have to have an actu­al plan. And even if you do, when it fails, you can always fall back on for­mer heay­weight box­ing cham­pi­on Mike Tyson’s assess­ment: “Every­body has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”
The prob­lem with politi­cians is that get­ting hit in the mouth just makes them talk more, not step back, catch their breath and reassess.

                       PREMATURE DECLARATION

A prime exam­ple is Pres­i­dent George W Bush. His “Mis­sion Accom­plished” dec­la­ra­tion for the war in Iraq would have been laugh­able had it not been such a bla­tant attempt to white­wash a polit­i­cal lie that brought noth­ing but trag­ic con­se­quences. Nonethe­less, Bush main­tains to this day that he made the right deci­sion. That stub­born per­sis­tence gives him some­thing in com­mon with the jihadists the war spawned, who seem to have embraced the max­im: “You only lose when you stop trying”.
Accord­ing to a recent arti­cle in the Wash­ing­ton Post: “The U.S.-led coali­tion esti­mates that between 8,000 and 16,000 Islam­ic State fight­ers still oper­ate in Syr­ia and Iraq. And with the mil­i­tants dig­ging in for the long haul and young men still being recruited…”
One would think that in the wake of Iraq and Afghanistan, politi­cians would look for some­thing oth­er than war imagery.
But no.
Pres­i­dent Biden has valiant­ly tried to ral­ly sup­port for “the bat­tle against Covid” and vowed to “fight Covid 19”. So far, the biggest fight seems to be with the virus deniers and vac­cine refuseniks, who, it might right­ly be said, are fight­ing log­ic, avail­able evi­dence, sci­ence and the wel­fare of both them­selves and others.
British Prime Min­is­ter Boris John­son, a man not­ed for smug ver­bosi­ty, out­did him­self with war imagery that includ­ed the Bat­tle of Water­loo and an appar­ent ref­er­ence to the movie “The Great Escape” to defend Covid restric­tions.                                    

             HOPE ABOUT TO BE DASHED

 Trudeau chose to “fight” an elec­tion in the mid­dle of the Covid pan­dem­ic on the cyn­i­cal cal­cu­la­tion that he could turn his minor­i­ty gov­ern­ment into a majority.
Cur­rent polling (cer­tain­ly to Justin’s dis­may) indi­cates that — in keep­ing with the “fight’ motif — he may have over-extend­ed his weapon­ry and sup­ply lines.
Who­ev­er wins next week, if the cam­paign rhetoric is any­thing to judge by, when the busi­ness of gov­ern­ing resumes, shout­ing, argu­ing and hurl­ing bare­ly con­cealed invec­tive will — as ever — dom­i­nate rea­soned argu­ment, civ­i­lized debate and bipar­ti­san­ship, even when it’s in the inter­est of all voters.
What a pity today’s polit­i­cal lead­ers haven’t been won over to the phi­los­o­phy of one who gen­uine­ly did fight for his prin­ci­ples and his peo­ple: “I nev­er lose. I either win or learn.”
So said Nel­son Mandela.

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