Ah, summer. Time to empty your head, fill your cooler and recharge the batteries.
Nothing on the horizon but day after carefree day of Huck Finn-ing down the river/surfing YouTube. Stretch out on the couch, turn on the television and …
“The Harper Conservatives: They won’t be there for you.”
Um, pardon?
“Justin Trudeau: He’s just not ready.”
Really? Here’s what we’re not ready for: Political attacks ads on television four months before the federal election. Political attack ads that cannonball into your vacation like Cousin Eddie, swamping your happy place.
Doesn’t matter whether the message is true or not. It’s summer. We’re on holiday. Stop it.
But no, no, no, this is a consequence of Canada adopting U.S.-style fixed-date elections: U.S.-style election campaigns, which drag out for months, if not years, until the end of one runs into the beginning of the other, like circus clowns piling in and out of a car.
In olden times, when the party in power got to choose when elections were held, our campaigns lasted no longer than a month or two, just like the Victoria Day parade. That changed in 2007 when we switched to a fixed-date system, though it wasn’t until Stephen Harper formed his first majority government in May 2011 that we were able to say with any sort of certainty when the next general election would be: this Oct. 19.
Officially, the campaign will probably begin Sept. 13. Unofficially, knowing the election date 41Ú2 years ahead of time makes the campaign as long as you want — or as deep as your pockets. It makes it easy to skirt campaign spending limits.
Which is why, since May, you haven’t been able to turn on the TV without being subjected to a Conservative party spot dismissing Trudeau as a doe-eyed lightweight who is “just not ready” for the job of prime minister.
More recently, we have seen the anti-Conservative “won’t be there for you” commercials. Citing growing income inequality and $36 billion worth of cuts to health care, they paint Stephen Harper as the enemy of the middle class. The ads are paid for by a group called Engage Canada, which, although led by people with ties to the Liberals and NDP, isn’t officially linked to either party.
This leads to another issue: Elections Canada rules say such third-party advertisers may only spend $205,800 during the election campaign, but can throw money around like a drunken senator until then. Also, third parties only have to identify their donors if advertising during the campaign. Before that, they can snipe away in anonymity, just like a social-media troll.
And good lord, but political ads have become negative. Angry old curmudgeon negative. Trudeau-loves-ISIS/Harper-is-the-anti-Christ-with-better-hair negative. Injecting a glorious summer like this with negativity like that feels like going to the Pride parade with Vladimir Putin. It borders on blasphemy.
There’s a time and place for everything, and the time for gutter politics is not when Fantasy Island here is drifting through a sun-drenched daydream.
Longtime readers might recognize my habit of going a wee bit off my nut about stuff like this.
A few years ago, I was at Safeco Field in Seattle, bathing in the bliss of an absolutely perfect baseball day, when I heard a voice behind me: “You can’t help but feel that she’s luring him into some form of toxic co-dependency.”
Say what?
“I fear that she’s manipulating him, which is empowering her, but in a negative way.”
I quickly look around to make sure I hadn’t been drugged and hauled off to a Dr. Phil studio audience, but no, no, I was still at the game — as were the two women behind me, deeply immersed in a domestic crisis.
“He isn’t blameless,” said one.
“No, his acquiescence makes him an enabler,” agreed the other.
Which, gosh, might have been an OK conversation to have IF YOU WEREN’T AT A BASEBALL GAME.
I closed my eyes and prayed really hard, but Ichiro Suzuki failed to line a frozen rope into the noggin of either woman, which caused me to lose a little bit of my religion.
A baseball stadium is a cathedral, a sanctuary, an escape from the complications of life. It is no place to publicly dissect private relationships, other than those between pitcher and catcher.
Likewise, summer is a time to cleanse the soul of the pessimism and bile that build up the rest of the year. There’ll be lots of time to get worked up about — and to tear down — Justin and Stephen et al this fall.
