March 21, 1999 

Yet society bears its contempt of politicians with resignation, even mild amusement. They may be rogues, but they are our rogues. Keep in mind, these are the people we collectively pick to run our federal, provincial, and city governments, wielding billions in budgets and supposedly operating complex circuits of power that infiltrate every level of society. These are our leaders who can shape our national psyche. Theirs should be the most important jobs in our country. So what is going on?

• First of all, why would anyone with a fully-functioning brain want to get into politics? To suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous citizens, the newsman's commentary, the law's delay, the insolence of officials? Politicians have no union or professional organization to protect their interests or to threaten removal of services. And no golden handshakes - more like a boot up the backside.
• Given the disdain with which society holds its elected officials, it is not surprising that they are paid pretty poorly, at least on an hourly basis. Is this owing to a kind of implied noblesse oblige? Perhaps, but it wasn't always that way. In today's dollars, the President of the United States was paid $1 million a year in 1893 and nearly as much in 1943.
• While stingy as paymasters, electors are supremely difficult to please. They want politicians to make them feel all warm inside by being told they can have and eat their cake, and some are mightily surprised when no miracles are subsequently delivered. Electors want leaders, but don't particularly want to hear what true leaders will tell them. People are always clamouring for a politician with convictions, as long as those convictions coincide with their own.
• Indeed, most politicians start off as idealists. Many end up as cynics. This degenerative process can take years, as candour slowly deliquesces into guardedness. Speeches begin to ring hollow. And as long as the role of the press is seen as a game of tripping up the politician, namby-pamby political statements are seen as the only defence. Unless one happens to be in the Parliamentary cockpit. There, public debate and "professional" wrestling have a lot in common. The audience and media know the fight is faked. This verbal huffing and puffing - usually fuelled by sheer partisanship - further degrades the politician in the public's eye.

What to do? Well, political parties have to shoulder most of the blame for tarnishing what should be one of the most noble callings in our society. To start off with, the covert operations of political parties make freemasonry look transparent. Party solidarity muzzles elected officials and turns them into purveyors of pap and the party-line.

With deal-making, party hacks, back-room boys, and bag-men, the party machine just helps to reinforce the shady image of politics. Porkbarrelling, mutual backscratching, patronage plums - all these activities run at cross-purposes to what every politician should strive for: accountability, transparency, probity. Even party platforms are temporary structures: the only permanent plank in a party's platform is to get re-elected.

It's political parties that decide whom they will serve up to the public as candidates. The election ballot resembles a shop counter with a frustratingly narrow range of preselected goods.

Polls tell us that municipal politicians are more highly regarded (or held in less contempt) than their provincial or federal counterparts. It is no coincidence that many mayors in Canada are free of the impedimenta of political parties and can be themselves. Even in those cities saddled with the pettiness and sclerosis of party politics, their mayors are usually more respected than their parties.

So. Politician heal thyself. Start by shaking off the negative effects of political parties: conserve at all costs your independence, idealism, and honesty. You'll gain the respect of the public and they in turn will be well served. It's a consummation devoutly to be wished.

Peter F. Trent,
Mayor of Westmount
Member, Executive Committee of the MUC

I can report to you that my and Councillor Matossian's efforts to ensure that de Lavigne remain a dead-end street seem to have borne fruit. The development plan just approved by Montreal now shows the new street going into this property does not join up with de Lavigne.

Me Jill Hugessen

#875 2 Dec, 1998 deLavigne project, Me Jill Huguesson Brillon husband Mark Brillon,

See also Trent's letter and more on de Lavigne.

Previous page page

Please Sign Our Guest book

---

---

• Menu of Trent's Stories
  
  
• Febuary 25, 1999 OUR ACTING COUNCIL
  
• Febuary 4, 1999 VICTORIA HALL: A DOWAGER REJUVENATED
  
• January 14, 1999 O CHRISTMAS PALM
  
• November 26 BOURQUE REDUX
  
• November 12 MASS TRANSIT: GLORIA MUNDI?
  
• September 3, 1998 SOUND BEGETS FURY
  
• 2 Oct TAXATION BY MISREPRESENTATION
  
• 12 OCT on $500,000,000 TAX GRAB Tax grab turns into burlesque
  
• 16 OCT A MEETING WITH BOUCHARD