CONFESSIONS OF A FORMER POLITICIAN

There is a delicious irony in Finance Minister Flaherty’s assertion that stimulus programs must continue, regardless of how much they expand the deficit. What he used to say has to be coming back to haunt him.

For years I sat on the journalistic sidelines throwing stones at politicians. Not that they didn’t deserve it, but it is always easier to judge from the outside. All it requires is arrogance,

I decided at last, that I wanted to be part of it. I ran provincially for the N.D.P., believing then that they were our best hope for fairness and social justice. I was then, and still am, idealistic. Some of that idealism has since become tarnished with age.

I ran in a riding against the sitting member: journalist Isabel Bassett and up-and-comer for the Liberals: Michael Bryant. He won. But so did I. I won something I had not had before: the freedom to pursue a path that made sense, a path that was pragmatic and not ideological. It was the realization that if you want to get anything done, you can’t be guided by rigid political dogma, but with judgment based on reality, e.g. pragmatism. I was quite tired, even bored, with the party’s political straightjacket. I quit the party.

I did however believe, and still do, that Bob Rae knew that the only way out of recession was to spend money, even if it meant deficit.



I ran at a time when the “Common Sense” Conservatives were running roughshod over everything in their mindless quest for fiscal responsibility, but only fiscal enough not to harm their buddies with the money, but enough to shut down the silly people who believed government had a part to play in making things better for people.
So were endured years of teacher-bashing and welfare wacking and a cabinet minister who advised welfare people to shop more carefully, like buying cans of tuna that were dented, a government that shut down Toronto’s subway expansion program, even filling in one subway that had been started.
The irony is that the most outspoken supporter of the Harris program was the Finance Minister Jim Flaherty. It was he who led the battle cry: you can’t spend your way out of recession. It the most important part of the skinflint and cruel financial program from the Harris government, it is what won them the election. It was how they defeated the idealism of Bob Rae, even though during the Rae government, more public housing was built, and more money spent on public works. I remember a Toronto construction worker saying: “If it weren’t for Bob Rae spending money there would be no work for construction workers.” (And even then there was little of it.)

I am not trying to re-argue the Rae government’s approach during a serious recession. I am only more that a little amused at the irony of it. Because the irony derives from the horrible fact that when you trot out ideology and call it politics, you abandon hope of getting anything done. It gets you votes.

So what got Bob Rae hammered was the very thing that his arch-enemy Jim Flaherty now endorses as the best medicine for recession.

Go figure.