The poet’s pen, we are informed by Shakespeare, can give to “airy nothing a local habitation and a name.” Politicians might then learn from poets, for they are in the business of taking large ideas and issues, and presenting them in a manner that can be felt and recognized by their fellow citizens.
Airy nothings are all very fine. Academics feast on them. But politics demands the specific, the local, a real connection with people.
This is the very great and undervalued virtue of our present riding-by-riding winner-take-all system of electing politicians, much derided of late under the damning phrase of “first past the post.” It forces the translation of abstract issues and large ideas into the idiom of personal and local politics.
A Canadian federal election is not one election but 308 elections. Candidates for office have to prove themselves to the particular voters of a particular place. National themes, party affiliation and broad issues will influence the choice of a given local candidate. But the most significant element is that local candidate’s appeal, expressed through door-to-door meetings and campaign rallies. We achieve national results through local choices.
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As something of an intellectual (so they say), Ignatieff must also be suffering plenty of disconnect from the Liberal Party itself by now, so perhaps Stephen Harper should coax him across the floor with an irresistible offer to become Minister of Dull and Boring Academic Books Nobody Ever Really Reads, poach all his more right leaning supporters when they follow, killing off the old Liberal Party in the process, before firing Ignatieff for being redundant (honestly, who really reads dull and boring academic books anyway?).