Macho Man Politics

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Imagine if some CEO - say, Tim Cook of Apple - behaves in the following manner: He constantly bad mouths the company and tries to hide the fact that he has worked there for years. He runs Apple in such a way that is completely contra to its purpose as a company. During meetings he routinely shows employees videos of himself doing athletic activities and tries to act dumber than he actually is by talking like a movie tough guy. Wouldn't he have been fired years ago?

People have silly notions when it comes to politics and political leaders. Experience isn't valued much because being a career politician is supposedly bad. So is being too smart, because Average Joes don't like really smart people. For conservatives, attacking the government that pays you is a requirement; in fact, you should pretend you don't get paid by the public at all and that you're entirely self-made, whatever that means. Perhaps most importantly for male candidates, it's vital that you be sufficiently macho and hard-headedly practical. People don't want artsy eggheads or sensitive metrosexuals. They prefer careers that come from the 'real world' - businessman, lawyers, doctors, economists.

When Justin Trudeau first became the Liberal leader, I played a game with people who complained how unqualified he was. I described Trudeau's resume and then I did the same for Steven Harper, without giving his name. Every single person was surprised when I told them who I was talking about because they thought Harper had had far more real world experience. He was sold to the public as an economist and while he did have a master's degree in that subject, he had never worked a day in his life as a professional economist. His whole career was milking the political teat; the only 'real' job he had was a brief stint after university with an oil company his dad just happened to work for. After that, he was an aide to an MP and then became an MP himself. When he resigned his seat in 1997, Harper became head of the National Citizen's Coalition, a political interest group . After five years, Harper was back running for the leadership of what would be the new Conservative Party before becoming PM in 2006.

Alberta Premier Jason Kenney has also spent his entire adult life in politics. After dropping out of a Jesuit college in San Francisco, Kenney got a job working for Liberal MP Ralph Goodale, before moving to the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, another donation-funded interest group. He became an MP in 1997 at age 29 and has never stopped collecting government paycheques since then. But here's the thing: like him or loathe him, Jason Kenney was absolutely qualified to be Alberta's premier. He had many years of experience, held several federal cabinet posts, and knew the workings of government. Arguably the most successful Prime Minister of the last 50 years, Jean Chretien, had been in politics for almost three decades and had held seven different cabinet positions, including Justice and Finance, before he became PM. Experience matters in every line of work imaginable but for some reason people want to pretend it doesn't in politics.

As if the unthinking rejection of experience isn't bad enough, the demand for masculinity is even dumber. What we get is a bunch of old men trying to pass themselves off as tough guys in photo ops. Stockwell Day famously raced around in a jet ski in 2000 to kick off his leadership campaign. Or who could forget Chretien's "Shawinigan Handshake", where he put a protester in a headlock, an act which seemed to revive Chretien's sinking popularity. Even the ultra-conservative ignoramus Don Cherry heartily approved of Chretien's rough stuff. Conservatives prefer their leaders dripping with testosterone, which might be one reason that Peter MacKay - who has a law degree, had a brief but distinguished career as a crown prosecutor and then spent nearly ten years in various cabinet positions - was continually passed over in favour of far less qualified candidates for the Conservative leadership. It seems like some folks never got over Mackay's heartbroken TV interview in 2005 after his then-girlfriend Belinda Stronach dumped him and the Conservative party so she could briefly become a Liberal cabinet minister.

Trudeau has been repeatedly mocked for being a drama teacher; anything to do with the arts is simply not practical enough or manly enough for some people. (Never mind that there is certainly zero shame in being a teacher.) In what was likely an effort to macho up his image, Trudeau had a boxing match in 2012 with a very cocky Conservative senator named Patrick Brazeau. Trudeau won, much to the chagrin of conservatives who were all hoping he would get a satisfying beating. The whole episode was very unseemly, and the fact that Trudeau felt the need to do it at all speaks volumes about what sells in politics.

This preference for strong, ultra-practical male leaders ( Research consistently shows that female leaders are still viewed with apprehension by a majority of the population for reasons that don't really make a lick of sense. That's another topic altogether.) invariably leads to the stupidest statement you can make about politics, which is that government should be run like a business. This is a ludicrous notion because a country does not resemble a company in any way. But this idea allows businesspeople to parachute into politics despite not having any experience with government. This was the rationale for picking Trump, whose business background was supposed to make up for his mind-blowing ignorance about the simplest basics of being president. Trump failed miserably at nearly everything, so he did run the government exactly like he ran his businesses. Hopefully, his four years of ineptitude and lunacy will consign this notion to the garbage dump once and for all.

If you want better government, start by using the proper criteria to choose your leaders. Government should never, ever be run like a business. Being a prime minister or premier is a very hard job, probably the hardest job around. Therefore, experience and working your way up the ladder should be demanded, not frowned upon . Neither should education, because you definitely want someone smarter than the average bear making decisions that can have catastrophic consequences. And high testosterone is not of any value in most jobs, much less one as complicated as being a leader with critical responsibilities. The onus is on us citizens to demand better, because in a democracy you get the government you deserve.