The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Moore-Butts #9 -- Is The Medium The Message?

Episode Date: June 5, 2023

The latest from two political veterans is another winner.  Why do politicians say the things they say -- are they deliberately trying to mirror the views of potential supporters and if so is the message going through a generational change?  Conservative James Moore and Liberal Gerald Butts are back for their last conversation before the summer break.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. Beginning of a new week, beginning of a new month, beginning of a new Moor Butts conversation. It's number nine and it's a good one coming right up. And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. Glad to have you with us. I'm in Stratford, Ontario this morning. More Butts conversation number nine. Really? We've had that many conversations between these two incredible individuals in terms of their political knowledge, their political background.

They've both been through periods of excitement and periods of controversy for both of them. James Moore was a member of parliament for 15 years, from 2000 to 2015. He was in the Stephen Harper cabinet in a number of different portfolios, and the last one he was in was the trade portfolio. He's currently a senior business advisor at the multinational law firm Denton's and a public policy advisor at the global firm Edelman. As for Jerry Butts, he was the former principal advisor, principal secretary to the prime minister, Justin Trudeau, from 2015 to 2019, and was a key member, obviously, of the prime minister's staff. Before that, he'd been a key advisor to the Premier of Ontario, Dalton McGinty. Currently, he's the vice chair of the Eurasia Group, and they're an international, worldwide firm that advises governments and businesses on important matters, foreign policy matters. And so he's constantly in travel, but he's also been constantly with us, as you can tell by the fact that we've had nine of these conversations.

And the aim has always been, as we say all the time, to be as nonpartisan as possible. As you'll find out in this one, there's a challenge for that in today's topic. But in the past year of these conversations, they've been increasingly popular with our audience. There are those who still see the controversial nature of both these gentlemen, but the vast majority of our audience is quite happy with what has happened with these conversations, that they've sat back and actually listened to people who were there talk about how the sausage is made and current trends, and that's one of the things we're going to talk about today. So enough from me, let's get at it.

In fact, it's not quite enough from me. There's a little bit of a preamble before we start this one, just to place the conversation in context. But here we go. The Moore-Butts Conversation, number nine. Well, gentlemen, when we started these conversations, the aim was always to be above partisanship. And I think for the most part, we've done pretty well on that.

There have been a few bumps along the way, but nothing serious. Today, however, may be the hardest road to travel with that aim. I'm trying to get at the issue of the changing nature of how a political message is conveyed. I'll have examples, but keep this in mind. It's not really the messenger I'm talking about as much as the message itself and who that message is aimed at. Most of us in our lives have been impacted by others from different generations.

When you Google name the generations, they're looking at that aspect, like who have we been impacted by and there are there are seven of them i think most people who are listening today will have been impacted by somebody in one of these generational groups there's the greatest generation the tom brokaw a name was given to the people born between 1901 and 1924 the silent generation that followed them from 1925 to 45 the baby boomers of which i'm a proud member born 1946 to 1964 generation x born 1997 to 2012 generation alpha and those are the ones that were born since 2013 and that will go through until 2025 now political parties

are constantly trying to adapt their message to fit the people in that list, especially the people in that list who bear the possibility of the greatest number of voters. So let me start with a very general question, first of all, before I get to the examples, about whether or not we're going through a period of real change in how those messages are being constructed. As I said, I will have examples in a minute, but I want to start with some general thoughts from each of you. And Jerry, why don't you start? Sure, Peter, and thanks again for having us.

I think the big macro level change that I've witnessed in my time in politics, and I've had two stints in it just to situate both myself and those time periods for the listeners. Um, uh, frame of reference, my first, uh, I'm or Gen X, that small, but mighty generation that, uh, is now in its forties and fifties. And we're very tiny to the point where in some of the lists, like the ones that you've just rhymed off, we're not even included anymore. There's just a kind of white space between millennials and the baby boomers. But, uh, those of us who did grow up listening to grunge music and came out of university or a school in the nineties into a terrible economy remember it very very well and my two stints in politics one was the first seven years of the millennium and the second which many of your listeners will

know was the sort of 2013 to 2019 2012 to 2019 so I've had two kind of seven year stints about and it's amazing to me how much the communications environment changed between the first and the second. I think the last communications discussion I remember having in Premier McGinty's office before I left was a debate over whether or not the premier should have a Twitter account. So think about that for a second. My first in politics, it was still very broadcast media, even dare I say it direct mail and the social media revolution changed all that, the digital media revolution, more than the social media revolution. So I lived through the bridge period where TV and radio ads were King broadcast TV and radio ads were King and then sort of lived through the bridge period where TV and radio ads were king, broadcast TV and radio ads were king, and then sort of lived through the ushering in of the era where you could target in a much more

sophisticated way voters both within that demographic and any other way you want, as the pollsters would say, any other crosstab you want to run based on whatever belief system you might have expressed in surveys. So I think that it's the critics of that transition are fair when they say that it has eroded the common public square, right? So it used to be, if I were writing a TV ad for the Dalton McGinty campaign in 2003, you had to be extremely cognizant that everybody in the province was going to hear that ad. And you had to identify with that, with that broadcast purpose. But by the time the 2015 and 2019 campaigns rolled around, you could craft advertising that would only ever be heard by its intended audience. And you can have a high degree of certainty that those audiences would be the only people to hear it.

So to me, that's a very big change in political communications. James, I think you put it aptly in one of our previous broadcasts that I think you were paraphrasing our mutual friend, Steve, that, and I don't mean Harper, that political communicators, voters used to choose their politicians and now politicians can choose their voters. And there is a deep truth to that. Okay, James, your opening thoughts on this. No, I agree. You know, the, you know, medium is the message, you know,

it was true, it is true. It will likely forever be the truth. And certainly like Jerry, I remember the past, you know, you would, campaigns would craft sort of an ad narrative or an approach to it. And you would hope that the ad would land. You kind of, you run your ads, you do your testing, you do your focus, but now, I mean, you know, ads come out two, three a day and it's like

firing birdshot into the sky and you don't know which pellet is going to hit your target. And, and political advertising, cause it's so cheap to produce. It's so, it's so quick to put out there and you get your feedback straight away and you get your market data back very quickly about what kind of messaging is landing in terms of fundraising. What is animating old voters that have not animated in the past? Who is clicking through? How long are they spending time on a page? Are they then susceptible to take out a membership or offer a donation or subject themselves to volunteering? So, you know, very quickly with your,

with your constant engagement with the market, what messaging works and what doesn't, what animates and what doesn't. And I think we're now sort of at the stages we're going to pivot. I think this conversation towards sort of the negativity of it, and you can animate certain cohorts of the public at certain times about certain issues, but as you try to bridge into new voters and to get new people on your team and new people animated to go forward you're going to have to massage and oscillate your message to a different audience with a different tone with a different set of adjectives and verbs and narratives that are

going to appeal to different folks and so there, there's a capacity now for incredible flexibility of campaigns to, to be listening to their audience more than they have been in the past. In the past, you would put out an ad and you would hope that it would land, but you wouldn't quite know until election day. But now you have that sort of immediate feedback of, of, of response that you know what's working, what's not. Well, let me try my first example with you. And once again, it's the message and who it's aimed at as opposed to who's giving the message. So if you can try to keep that in mind. But when the David Johnston affair, if you want to call it that now,

first hit. Pierre Poliev went after him hard. He'd already set the table, really, with his comments about the relationship he thought that Johnston had with the prime minister. But he went after him to such an extent that some people were saying, including some in his own party, that if he wants to be prime minister, he's got to act like a statesman. And he's not acting like a statesman by trashing David Johnston in the way he's doing it. Now, at first I thought, well, that makes sense as a criticism.

And that's certainly the way my generation would have looked at it but i i didn't watch a lot of blowback i certainly didn't uh hear or see any um from the majority of conservative members uh but even after that there wasn't a lot of discussion around that point and And as a result, I got a letter from a very good friend of mine, um, who is, uh, is one of those millennials that's creeped you two guys out of the space. But, uh, let me just read you the kind of a summary of what,

um, she's talking about. And what she's talking about is that whole issue of the, of the phrase statesman and whether or not that was not that it was not fair criticism, but that it was criticism that anybody in her, her group was even listening to. And she's not a conservative.

Um, I don't think she's a liberal either. I think she's legitimate. That kind of floats around on the progressive side. Anyway, nevertheless, here's what she said. This is kind of a summary of what she said. A statement is, for many, today, out of touch. It's a teacher, not a doer.

Someone who doesn't live in the real world. Pierre Polyev is running with the idea that looking statesman like isn't what he needs to do because it's not what many voters seem to be caring about especially young voters angry voters disenfranchised voters disillusioned voters social media voters it's a continuation of being against elites elite aren't just rich but they think they know more they think they know He's saying, I'm not any better than you. I articulate what you think because I think that too.

I know how to represent you because I am you. Frankly, it's not a lot different than what news organizations are struggling with in terms of a new tone in journalism. Don't talk down to me. Don't lecture me. Don't tell me what I should know. You're not better than me because i have all the same information you do and i can make up my own mind it's not necessarily right

but again maybe it's not a slip-up a lot of people judged that a slip-up at the time polyev did that just the last sentence was here and the moreged the old school political thinkers get, I think she's talking about me here, the more he's going to do it. He doesn't think he needs that opinion, or any of the elite, because he's actively trying to not be one of them. It's not a lost opportunity. It's exactly where he wants to be. So, he wants to be so who wants to take it first jerry why don't you take that first if you don't mind i'll take i'll take a run at that i don't think like i you know look let's put the david johnson situation in a bit of a box you know it frankly it is largely

proven to be true you can people can criticize pierre and you know this this ski chalet comments the trudeau foundation ski buddies not fine criticize all that but but now we're on that particular circumstance david johnson is now standing alone he's dismissed the the views of the four opposition parties in parliament and he will now be leading leading in defiance of the majority will of parliament he'll be leading this standalone effort even though members of parliament the majority of them don't want him to so he'll effectively be defending the government through this process so so the criticism david johnson which may have seen you know odious at the time have not kind of proven true but but let's draw up to 30 000 feet feet beyond that example. So none of us want to go through that story.

Yeah, it's what it is. But look, I think what Pierre is trying to do, which I think all good politicians are trying to do, is mirror the energy, the anger, the tone, the aspiration of the audience that you're aspiring to speak to. And you're not ever going to speak to 100% of the population. You know, in our democracy, if 4 out of 10 Canadians think that you're doing a fantastic job, you're going to win a smashing government, perhaps a majority government. If 6 out of 10 people really don't like you, you're doing really well in Canadian politics. That's just the nature of it, right? And so I think any good politician, it's not just that you try to speak to an audience, you try to connect to an audience and you have to they have to look at you and see the same energy, the same angst, the same frustrations, the same language.

You know, sometimes it's sort of drawn down to a grade eight level, but the mannerisms, the emphasis, they want to see that mirrored because in our democracy people don't decide issues they decide the people who decide the issues and if i'm going to entrust you and you're going to be my delegate in ottawa and you're going to fight on my behalf i need to know not just what your program is but i want to know what your mindset is that your your values are aligned with mine that your language is aligned with mine your temperament is aligned with mine and sometimes that can be up sometimes that can be down but you're pursuing an audience and you have to mirror to them. A lot of Canadians are really, really angry, just as a lot of Canadians were really angry with Stephen Harper. This is a lot of Canadians are really angry with Mulroney. A lot of people were angry with the Liberals after 10 years in the 0406 window.

So I think you pursue an audience and you attract and sustain your audience by mirroring their emotions back to them. And for the six out of 10 Canadians who will never vote for you, for a lot of them, they think, my God, that's awful. But, you know, in the same week, by the way, the same last two weeks that Pierre Polyev has been dialing up the rhetoric on the David Johnson affair, the liberals were doing a campaign that's all over their social media networks and all their websites saying that, you know, the Conservative Party is going to roll back the clock on abortion because there's a big, of course, state by state fight happening in the United States post Roe v. Wade. You have one Conservative MP from Saskatchewan who put forward a private members bill of which the interpretation of an interpretation of an interpretation could lead to the possibility of the opening up of the conversation of when life begins. But it's no

frontal attack on a woman's right to choose, but it dialed up to 10 why because there's an audience and it's a it's an itch that hasn't been scratched for a long time and there are a lot of canadians who are absolutely amplified by that issue and they need to be spoken to and here's a window to do that in a way that is that is uh you know i think really um you know out of line proportionally relative to the to the threat compared to what you see in the United States. So these things happen in democracy. It's not, and by the way, it's not always a bad, it can be manipulative, but sometimes it's also very healthy because what happens when people don't see their emotions mirrored back to them by some of the political actors is that you start,

you acting out, you start going to underground sort of political cells online and you start, you know, protesting and doing weird things and and you can you can wander off i prefer to have politics that can be at times excessive where it draws people in because people say yes that person is talking like how i talk that person is speaking bluntly like how i there's an audience for a charlie angus there's an audience for a rob ford there's an audience for somebody who's who's more cerebral there's an audience for a Rob Ford. There's an audience for somebody who's more cerebral. There's an audience. So I think the more that our politics offers people to be seen to be represented by others in terms of their temper, substance, tone, language, I think the better it is for our

democracy. All right. Let's see how Jerry feels about that. Well, I'm sure we're not the only people who would like to put the david johnston thing in a box but with that it's i i think you have to separate whether your um correspondent your correspondent can be both correct in her analysis of what pauliev is doing. And Polyev could still be pursuing the wrong path, right? Because on the one hand, you can, there's a lot to be said for the argument James just made,

that you want to mirror the emotions that you get reflected back to you and your intended audience. But that's not the only way to represent people, right? That I'm a big believer in positive campaigning i think that the way um uh campaigning is done largely in the especially in the united states but not exclusively in the united states where you win by you know demolishing the uh personal integrity of the person that you're running against is not conducive to healthy democratic

behavior over the long run that you win a bunch of battles but you lose the bigger war and i that's why i kind of i'm repulsed by that that version of campaigning and i'm not saying that james is advocating for that but polyos approach is a lot closer to that than what we have traditionally seen in Canadian national politics. So it's an open question whether or not it's going to be successful, in my view. I think that she's right in that he's doing what he intends to be doing. And in the case of the David Johnston affair, he has made a decision that whatever it is that Justin Trudeau has is doing at any given moment with whomever he is doing it has to cohere with their overall narrative about Justin Trudeau, which is, you know, I'm not going to list off the adjectives so that they can chop it and put it in

an ad, but you know what they think of Justin Trudeau. So in that sense, it's incredibly disciplined, and campaign communications are about discipline, if nothing else. But it's a theory of the case that I think has yet to be proven. Okay, well, here's what I want to try and get out of the two of you. Once again, it's not about the messenger. I'm not passing judgment on pierre polliev here i'm i i guess what i'm trying to do is pass judgment on the audience if the audience likes an attack mode from a politician

is that something that has fundamentally changed and And I mean a significant portion of the audience likes that. Is that a significant change in the way politics has been conducted? And not just in this country, but that we are seeing this more evident. We are, you know, while there was a pullback at times, whether it was Trump or whomever in the states or polyev now there was a pullback on the part of some saying oh this this is never going to fly it's not acceptable people won't accept that and you know maybe at the end of the day they won't but apparently you know it looks now like they that a significant portion of that audience does want this and we're not just talking about the you know the the anti-vaxxers or or what

have you where we're talking about a significant portion who seem to think that this is an appropriate way of campaigning i mean it's a go ahead i mean politics politics in a healthy democracy is a reflection of society more than the other way around. Politics reflects society, right? So when somebody stands up and says, lock her up, all right, and then they get a cheer, all right, you know, we're going to throw Muslims out of the country, all right? But in a lot of ways, it sort of smokes out the worst elements of society. But then sometimes it kind of smokes out the best. And here's, I think, a reasonable contemporary example of reading the public incorrectly. 2014-15, but going into the 15 election cycle, Jerry will know this very well,

the issue of face coverings for ceremonies in public ceremonies, taking your oath, getting a driver's license, getting on a plane, getting a driver's license getting on the office citizenship getting on a plane getting a driver's license and so on in the province of quebec as we know because of the religious symbols issue and the and the need and the sense of the need to protect culture in quebec there's a much higher there's like at that at that point on that simple question should everybody regardless of your religious affiliation regardless of gender regard should you have to show your face if you're boarding a plane or in a citizenship ceremony? Asked in the province of Quebec, it was over 90% of people said yes. When you ask people in English Canada, it was slightly more nuanced.

It was over 80% of Canadians in English Canada said, well, yeah, of course. And so elements in the conservative movement took that and ran with it really aggressively and said we think that people should have to show their faces that they're getting a driver's license or get on a plane or have a citizenship ceremony it's a basic fundamental thing you should have to do that and a lot of voters said whoa whoa whoa whoa don't do that i yeah i agree i agree that you should have to show your face but i see see what you're doing. Don't do that. That's not what I was saying. Yes, I agree instinctively. Yeah, you should show your face and an oath of citizenship.

And there's a bit of a gray area here in terms of religious freedom and us all being aligned in terms of identity on a plane and all that. But don't don't take what I said to mean what what you think. Don't do that. I know what you're saying, but do not do that. And so that's often something that is missed in public opinion polling you could have a 90 of canadians saying that you should have to show your face and 80 of people in english canada saying you should have to show your face but if you take that data and you misuse it or you abuse it or torque it in a way that you think is to your advantage voters very quickly say no no no no i see what you're doing

and i don't like it. Don't do that. And the conservative party felt that heat, obviously in the reap and the, and the reflex reaction of voters, a lot of swing voters who said don't do that in a 2015 campaign. Yeah. I think that it reminds me of one of my favorite lines from one of my favorite movies, which is the big Lebowski. And I suspect that many of your listeners have seen the movie. So Jeff Bridges character and John Goodman's character having

an argument in a car on the way to a bowling match. And, uh, Walter, who's, uh, John Goodman's character keeps saying, am I wrong? Am I wrong? Am I wrong? And the dude, Jeff Bridges turns to Walter and says, no, Walter, you're not wrong. You're just an asshole. And, and there's something to that point that James is making that you can tell me you can discover some things that I believe in a public opinion survey. That doesn't mean I want them projected back to me from my political leadership and made into the law of my country. In fact, most people I think would, upon reflection, as James said, look at someone trying to take advantage of that kind of viewpoint and say, no, no, no, hang on a second. Don't do that. Don't treat me like I'm student.

And I think that that was the case there. And frankly, I think that that's the, the challenge with the approach that Polyev has taken that I'm not sure. I'm sure a lot of people are angry. I talked to a lot of them at home right now in Nova Scotia, but I'm not sure they want that kind of meanness projected back to them from their political leaders. There certainly is very, they're very scant. There's very scant precedence for it being successful in Canadian national politics. Which generation were they in? Are they your generation or are they? It's a smattering Peter. Cause I've got a lot of friends and family have been displaced by the wildfire.

So I've been on, I've been on social and the telephone, the good old fashioned bell telephone communicating with a lot of people at home. So it's, and we, I know you two gentlemen would share this, but our hearts are going out to everybody in Nova Scotia.

It's a really tough time around, you know, it's a shocking time, frankly. It is. The pictures are horrific. Okay, I'm going to take a quick break, and I'm going to throw another example. It's very different, a different kind of example about the nature of change that may be taking place or is taking place, or you may feel it's not taking place. So we'll get to that right after this. And welcome back. You're listening to a special edition of the Moore Butts Conversation.

It's number nine as we start another week off here at the bridge. Joining us, Jerry Butts and James Moore. You're listening on Sirius XM, channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform. Okay, here's another example. This one's different, but I'm wondering whether it talks to me about the changing nature of the political message and how politicians and parties are trying to get it across.

I think I mentioned to both of you at one time or another in the last month that I'd seen Polyev give a speech. First time I'd seen him give a speech since he was leader, like in person, watched him. And it was, you know, it was pretty, he was pretty impressive. It was to a construction trades union meeting in Gatineau across the river from Ottawa. Not a normal place for Conservatives to hang out,

but he was welcomed and handled politely by the audience. And he gave a good speech, I'll say that much. It was very targeted to that particular audience. But here's what else I noticed in the speech, and as a result of noticing it there, I've watched speeches in the House of Commons, other speeches that he gives, and there's something he does,

not 100% of the time, but pretty darn close, is whenever he talks about the future and the potential for his party winning the election, he doesn't talk about a conservative government. He talks about a polyev government. You hardly ever hear the word conservative come from his lips in the speeches I've seen. That may not be uniform, but it certainly has been what I've watched,

that it's constantly that. In his scrums as well, he talks about the, when I'm prime minister, when the Polyev government does this, that, or the other thing. It's not about the conservatives. And so he's not the first person to do that. In fact, I think Jerry Justin Trudeau did that a lot in 2015. It was about a potential Trudeau government,

as opposed to a potential liberal government. And we've seen in other parts of the country where the name of a party that's been throughout the history books has been dropped. We saw it in Alberta. We've seen it in BC. It's about to happen, I think, as well in Saskatchewan.

There is a movement away from the traditional, from what used to be accepted. And I'm just wondering whether this too is a part of change. Something as simple as that is a part of change that the feeling can be that you're going to be more influenced or find it more favorable to hear in the Polyev case, a description of a potential government as being his government as opposed to his party's government.

I think it ebbs and flows, right? Frankly, I think Daniel Smith and the Alberta Conservatives lean more on the Conservative brand, less the UCP brand and less the Daniel Smith brand. So I think there's a little bit of flex in the observation. But also we have a parliamentary system, but we have presidential style campaigns, right? We have a diminished media and you follow the leaders around and you have leaders having competing press conferences and leaders tours and leaders tours. And that's effectively it.

And local campaigns just effectively drive out the vote. And that's about it. So therefore, I think that is just kind of a nature of it. But also, you know, we have eras in Canadian politics. We had the Pierre Trudeau era, then we had the Brian Mulroney era, then we had the Craig Chant era, and then we had the Harper era, and then now we have the Trudeau era. In between, yes, there were prime ministers, Campbell and Turner and Martin and Clark. Yes, but really we've swung from era to era with some intervening personalities. And so I think Canadians know that. And I also think Canadians

know that when you're a premier or a prime minister, you have extraordinary power in foreign policy, domestic policy appointments, and you're expected to lead judiciously, responsibly, with the right temperament reflective of the public. And so, therefore, if this one person who's leading the government is going to be empowered with that much authority, then parties better invest pretty heavily into that personality and to make sure the public buys into who that person is, what they're about, and what they've accomplished

and how they present themselves. So I think it's the dynamic of our media environment and our parliamentary system kind of feed into an emphasis on leader more than it's sort of a clandestine strategy. But he certainly wants the emphasis on him as leader. I mean, it was the same when he ran for the office added to all that yes and uh his uh um what must have some polling that shows that he's doing well in terms of his net favorabilities as an individual relative to trudeau relative to sort of lingering

maxine bernier voters who who might be more interested in a pierre pauliev conservative party than a conservative party from previous leaders and Andrew Scheer and Aaron O'Toole. So an emphasis on Polyev in the near term, because Polyev is more popular with people's party voters than the conservative brand is, draw them in. So there could be some immediate term tactics, but I think overall, I think my theory holds. Okay. Jerry, does James' theory hold? I think it does with its intended audience, right? I think that most of what you're

hearing from Polyev is a fundraising message right now, that he's not trying for whatever set of reasons. He's not trying to broaden the tent of conservative support in the country. He's not trying to broaden the tent of conservative support in the country. He's mostly trying to raise money to run a campaign. And he thinks that will give him a disproportionate

advantage if he can raise twice as much money as the Liberal Party can. And he may be right about that. I suspect as we get closer to the campaign, he'll find his version of Mr. Harper's fuzzy blue sweater and try and shave the rough edges off of his image and make himself presentable to a larger swath of the population. But he might not. They could be pursuing a strategy that simply the liberals have lost a million and a half votes since 2015. And if they lose 400,000 uh in the right places then the conservatives are going to form a government maybe even a majority government depending on where those people fall off the table well if he's doing it for fundraising reasons as you pointed out he's doing a hell of a good job because they're raising a ton of money a ton of money and and i

think that this is this is one of the, I think one of the fundamental weaknesses in the conservative party, which we certainly poked at quite a bit in the time that I was in Trudeau, India, it's that it's, it's kind of a vicious circle that the more you amplify the negative side of your message, the more you get excited, the most negative people in your tent and they start to dominate your coalition. And then when it comes time to speak to people who don't spend their days walking around angry with each other and about their country and their government, it's difficult to reach them because your brand has already been colored by your previous couple of years of communication. And I think that that's, I'm not saying that I'm not making a normative judgment about that. I'm

just saying that's a very, that's, that's a weakness and it's hard to make that pivot. I agree with Jerry's observation there. And this is the point where conservatives always say yeah but and they point out the liberal hypocrisy which i'm about to do so in a second but but but but the reason why it actually is it's a different is that you're right about your assessment of the problem what that leads for conservatives and there is a hypocrisy about liberals but it doesn't work the same for liberals because liberals are about collapsing the NDP vote. So for them, fear is more about collapsing the NDP vote to stop the left wing vote split in suburban Ontario. So therefore, the negative campaign is actually to draw in those negative voters on a lent basis, on an election by election basis is strategically more important. Whereas for conservatives, as you observe, it's about animating your base and getting the fundraising. on a lent basis, on an election-by-election basis, is strategically more important.

Whereas for conservatives, as you observe, it's about animating your base and getting the fundraising, but that could limit and lower your ceiling for swing voters. But for New Democrats, the swing voters are there. They're already parked in the NDP, and to draw them over, you have to, and it seems to be at least the liberal ethos is, that's why there, this is excessive. And I believe toxic and divisive obsession about abortion and guns and official languages in the province of Quebec and in some official language communities as well,

that that is dangerous because it creates a really false polarization of politics that is not there, that does not exist, but is, but is put in the window in order to drive home those NDP voters. So, so there is a hypocrisy and conservatives get animated about it, but it's actually very functional on the left versus the right.

So they get to get away with it because they will soldier ahead in because it works. Well, I think in both cases, I wouldn't agree with that last part, but let's not be partisan about this. I think that they're both perfectly viable strategies, right? I would characterize the liberals, the, the, um, consolidation strategy a little differently. I think that in the 2019 campaign, which was the last one I was involved in the biggest threat to the liberal, the, uh, liberal outcome to the election was a bunch of people who would normally vote liberal in Quebec and Ontario not voting.

And they were not going to vote because they thought the Liberal Party was going to win anyway. I always ask that, not everybody agrees with this, but I always ask this question in nightly tracking. And I think it's the most important question in an election. So I'll give away a trade secret here, Peter, who do you think is going to win this election? Right. And that's, that's the most accurate assessment of whether or not, if you're, if you think your side is going to win anyway, then your side better pay attention to you

and better make sure you vote. I think that's less true, although I don't obviously have the same intimate experience with the inner workings of a conservative campaign as I do with the liberals. But that was a major threat to the Trudeau campaign in 2019, that francophones in Ontario took 15 seconds of, francophones in Quebec took 15 seconds of a Frank phones in Quebec, took a 15 seconds of a look at Andrew Scheer and said, there's no way that guy's going to be prime minister. So they kind of, well, we can have a Trudeau government and a bunch of block MPs. So if we can have our cake and eat it, we're going to do that. And in Ontario, in the greater golden horseshoe, especially in Hamilton,

but also in the greater golden horseshoe, especially in Hamilton, but also in the Northwest GTA, you had a bunch of people who thought that Trudeau was going to win and it didn't matter whether they voted or not. So I think that that's, they're just kind of two different approaches. I wouldn't characterize one as good and one is evil. They're just two completely different approaches. Well, and then there are, there are two, excuse me, contemporary, but we're all getting older, relatively conservative analogs to that as well.

Right. Where, uh, Christy Clark, when she ran and, and won her majority against, uh, against Adrian Dix at the time, which was, well, there's no split on the right. So whatever it was for Christy, look, continuation, you know, she had to drive the ballot question on LNG. And so, and she did, and she was therefore successful. She said, not only am I the only person who will do it, they will be against it. So if you're for it, you vote for me. And if you want to stand up to people who are against these kinds of this. So so she had the push pull message and it was successful. And then, of course, Mulroney in 88. Like people forget as well, the Reform Party. Yeah, they won 52 seats in 93, but they were a real threat to split the vote in western states in 88 and so brian mernie didn't just say reelect me because he

said reelect me don't like me that's fine be disappointed that's fine but you really want this thing a free trade right you want your resources going to the biggest you have the best market access in human history in the united states you want this free trade so feel free to hate me when you vote for me but vote for yourself and vote for free trade when you do it yeah and and so so similar um similar emphasis and conservatives do better when they put i think like a conservatism when conservatism is divorced from optimism conservatism fails in my view and so you have to put something in the window that speaks to other people's self and collective interests about how the country will be better if they vote and use you as a vehicle for a better country as opposed to self-aggrandizement for its own sake. Amen.

All right. I've only got a couple of minutes left, so a minute or so from each of you on this question. You've both been in politics at some level all of your adult life. What's the single biggest change in the political world in that time period? And we accept social media and all those aspects are one of those changes, if not the biggest. But beyond that, give me something which signals to you that things have really changed since when I got into this, when I started.

Jerry, first. That's a tough one, Peter, if you take social media off the table, because I do think that that is the number one change, right? The individually tailored message messaging delivered with algorithmic certainty to personally sorry personally tailored messages delivered with algorithmic certainty to specific individuals that that's the splitting of the atom of political communications it's also the splitting of the atom of political communications. It's also the splitting of the atom of advertising in general, right? Which is why you have so many problems with the advertising supported revenue model for media these days.

That the platforms have figured out a way to capitalize all of the equity built up in the communications industry and absorb it all for themselves. And nobody can replicate it. So if you want to communicate with voters, you have to go through those platforms. If you have to go through those platforms, you have to communicate the way it sort of ends where James began with the great Canadian philosopher, Marshall McLuhan, that the medium really is the message. And maybe that is a source of continuity in politics from the beginning of my career to the end of it. But the change in the medium itself is so radical that I don't think people, I think we sort of intuitively know what it's done. But unless you've seen it happen, it's very difficult to appreciate how profound a change that is

okay i like that mine mine would be that one's very good mine would be it's seemingly a complete lack of interest in the long-term health of country and society everything is short-term thinking from all sides uh five of the last seven federal elections have yielded minority parliaments. Everything is tactical, small ball. What's happening in the next quarter, in the next year? How do we get through Trump? How do we get through this recession? How do we get through this fire season?

And everything is just kind of what's in your face right now, just sort of managing the day-to-day and getting through the news cycle, getting through the next scandal, getting through the next. But nobody sees the horizon. It seems to me. And I know Jerry and others have, you know, spent big parts of their adult life focusing on climate change. That's gotta be the biggest frustration is convincing people about a generational challenge, generations of challenge and getting them to act today for with no immediate

benefit and no immediate sense of reward politically or financially or whatever. And having those two things connect. You started this podcast, Peter, talking about the generations and the greatest generation and all that. We came from our parents and grandparents who literally fought a war and lost their best friends and volunteered and offered to survive to stop menaces that were going to have generational consequence and impact. And I think that that brain at 18, 20, you know,

25 years of age and public service through the most noble means for a greater good, that's far beyond themselves. That in, in that reach and that perspective held for multiple generations, it held through different wars and held through different crises. And I just worry that people today we're, we're so transactional, we're so transient. We move around, we don't have this lack of sense of commitment to community because we move around and we do business with people through our iPhones

on different parts of the world. And there's just everything in politics seems now, transactional, short-term, get it done, hunt the problem down the road and just move on. And it leads to deficits, it leads to no action on climate change. It leads to no action for community building, no long-term commitment to infrastructure. I mean,

I last time I ran for office, believe it or not, it was 12 years ago. I left politics eight years ago. I'm still being invited and I go and I sit in the front row at infrastructure projects that I announced when I was in government, they're just being finished now. And I was at one this week at a hatchery. So it was like, so like, I made a, I voted and supported this project, you know, eight years ago. And it's just coming being finished now. And I was at one this week at a hatchery. So it was like, so like I made a, I voted and supported this project, you know, eight years ago and it's just coming into reality now. Well, but I wasn't running again. And so you take my point that the,

the constancy of short-term thinking and appealing to immediate audiences and immediate temperament, as opposed to long-term necessity for nation building, I think that has never been worse. All right. We'll leave it with that. I mean, you know, once again, you've given us so much to think about on so many different levels,

and those last two answers were fabulous, really. They really were. So thank you once again. Enjoy your summer. We'll plot what we'll do in the fall. There's never a shortage of things to talk about, and we are happy, as is the audience, to listen to you two

chat about it. So thank you, Jerry. Thank you, James. Great stuff. My pleasure. There you go. More Butts Conversation number nine. Well worth the wait, correct? And look forward to the fall, where we'll have more from Moore and Butts.

Now, before I go, a word about tomorrow. Today is, of course, June 5th, right? We all know that. And we know that June 5th is followed by June 6th. And it's also known as D-Day. June 6, 1944, is when the Allied troops landed on the Normandy coast and began the liberation of Western Europe from the Nazis. Well, tomorrow, being the 79th anniversary,

you know that next year on the 80th, it'll be a big deal. We're going to make it a big deal tomorrow as well. Brian Stewart will be by for his regular Tuesday appearance, but we're not going to talk about Ukraine. We're going to talk about D-Day. Both of us have been to many of the different anniversaries that have been held

on the Normandy coast, on the Canadian beach, Juneau beach. But we've also visited the, you know, Sword and Gold and Omaha and Utah beaches as well, where the Americans and the Brits landed. So we're going to talk about that for tomorrow's program. We're going to reminisce a little bit about D-Day. So it's a special show, certainly special for Brian and I,

and I hope we'll make it special for you as well. Wednesday, Smoke, Mirrors, and the Truth returns. Bruce will be here. Thursday is your turn. And listen, believe me, if you've got some thoughts on what you've just heard on More Butts No. 9, then you should send it in. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com.

The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. Don't wait. Write it down now, whatever you're thinking about. And The Random Ranter is also by on Thursday. Friday, of course, is Good Talk with Chantel and Bruce. So that's going to wrap it up for today. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening.

We will talk to you again in 24 hours.