Moderation is in the eye of the beholder

Wednesday’s column elicited a number of kind responses from wise old heads wishing me a pleasant visit on Planet Earth. Yes, yes, yes, was the gist: of course, in a perfect world the Conservatives would tell the public just exactly what the Liberals were doing wrong and what they would do differently. They would start with certain ideas they wished to see put into effect, then try to persuade the public to let them form a government to that end -- rather than having a vague sense they would like to be in government, and foraging for whatever ideas would take them there. But that’s not how the real world works, they would go on. Do not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Put some water in your wine; half a loaf is better than none; politics is the art of the possible; a stitch in time saves nine. Well, not that last one, but you get the idea. Those who suggest that the Conservatives should offer a distinct alternative to the Liberals, rather than passing themselves off as Liberals in all but name, are naifs, impractical hotheads who would fracture the party and consign it to the political margins. Leave these things to the professionals, pragmatists of the old school, the kind who led the former Progressive Conservatives to such an impressive string of victories. They’re right, of course. Compromise is a virtue. You can’t have everything. A bird in the hand is worth -- whoops, there I go again. But that’s not what was going on at the Tory convention. This was not a party sensibly paring its objectives to a manageable few. This was not a party seeking common ground among differing but broadly sympathetic schools of thought. This was a party desperate to denude itself of any views that might make it a target. This was a party so obsessed with achieving consensus that it made itself hostage to whichever group within its midst was most determined to have its way. To be sure, a party must seek to address the real needs of the electorate, rather than simply riding its own ideological hobbyhorses. But that does not mean the solutions it proposes to these concerns must be limited to whatever is already popular or familiar -- for if the status quo were sufficient, they would not still be concerns. Nor does the imperative of addressing the voters’ needs preclude the possibility that some items, as yet not on the public’s agenda, may still be added to it -- and that it is part of a political party’s responsibility to do so. The task of government, John F. Kennedy said, was “to set before the people the great unfinished business of the nation.” The unfinished business, not the conventional wisdom. What is advertised as “moderation” is more often one of two things: either a numb instinct for the status quo, on the theory that whatever is new or different must inevitably be worse, or else a simple preference for one point of view over another, which the speaker hopes to place beyond dispute. Differences of opinion, after all, are something that occur between reasonable people: whereas immoderation is suggestive of a character flaw. Yet moderation is commonly in the eye of the beholder. What, for example, would have been the response had the convention booed a pro-choice speaker as lustily as it did Elsie Wayne’s anti-abortion cri de coeur? Would the party have been congratulated in the same way for its “discipline” and “professionalism”? Or would it have been condemned as a hotbed of intolerance? Is that because abortion on demand is a more moderate position than any conceivable alternative? Or is it simply that it happens to be the status quo, in Canada if in few other places on earth? What the voters mean by moderation is something else again. The moderation they look for is more one of temperament: they want a person who has arrived at his views by a process of mature reflection, rather than dogma and rote. But it is equally important to them that he actually believes what he says. They are hardly likely to be left with that impression by a party that remakes itself every two years, that discards long-held positions whenever these become inconvenient, that appears defensive under attack, that coughs when it enters the room. So yes, the Tories have to present their arguments in sober, thoughtful terms, and yes, they should pay due heed to the constraints of practicability. But that is not the same as abandoning the battle before it’s begun. A clear position, resolutely defended, is as important to political success as a prudent sense of the possible. Do I even need to cite the examples? Of Reagan, Thatcher, and Bush? Of Mulroney in 1988 versus Campbell in 1993? Of Harris in 1995 versus Eves in 2003? In politics, as in business, the biggest rewards go to the entrepreneur -- who offers the public, not what it already knows it wants, but what had never occurred to it to want until now. As individuals, we wish to be thought honest, trustworthy, dependable. Are we likely to achieve this by declaring at half-hour intervals how “honest” we are, as the Tories now trumpet their moderation? Or do we earn such goodwill through our actions -- through a consistent pattern of behaviour, sustained over time, even at the cost of some inconvenience in the short term? And while virtue is its own reward, is it not also true that, in the end, an honest reputation is an asset that repays its investment many times over?