BetterVille
...Is write stuff like this:
...(T)hrough it all, the response of the Conservative party has been either spin (in the case of in and out), stubborn support (Del Mastro, Penashue), silence combined with juvenile deflection (robocalls) and even, a judge found, outright “trench warfare” to prevent the courts from looking into allegations of electoral fraud.
In short, every election since Stephen Harper became prime minister has been associated with some Conservative battle with Elections Canada, some scandal over broken rules.
It is hard not to wonder whether Harper’s Conservative government has a problem with Elections Canada...
Now.
The above passage was written by Kate Heartfield, the current editorial pages editor of the Ottawa Citizen.
And it came just below her lede, which consisted of a concise short re-cap of the various and assorted sundry 'difficulties' that Mr. Harper and colleagues have had with Elections Canada over the years (although Ms. Heartfield did miss this one).
More importantly, Ms. Heartfield then provides a detailed, data-backed analysis of the 'difficulties' (and more) before she finishes with the following bit of 'anti-false equivalency' conclusion making:
...Stephen Harper is not a corrupt politician in the old sense, and he does not run a corrupt government. Compared to his predecessors, there is little of the cronyism, featherbedding, influence peddling and so on that has been the hallmark of traditional political corruption in Canada. This helps explain Harper’s substantial appeal to the middle class.
Yet Harper’s Conservatives have shown themselves willing to twist the rules into whatever shape is necessary to win. To spin. To control information. To push all possible boundaries, from prorogation to questions of privilege to manipulation of electoral law.
Combine that with enormous stubbornness and unwillingness to retreat, and you have what is starting to look like an unsettling disdain not just for the “jackasses” in the electoral bureaucracy, but for the democratic process itself...
This really is editorial page writing of the finest kind.
And it deserves to be lauded as such because it both informs the public and puts public officials on notice that they will be held accountable for any and all fast ones they try to pull based on the actual evidence at hand.
And that's we need a whole lot more of around here.
OK?
.
2 comments:
...Stephen Harper is not a corrupt politician in the old sense, and he does not run a corrupt government. Compared to his predecessors, there is little of the cronyism, featherbedding, influence peddling and so on that has been the hallmark of traditional political corruption in Canada.
If only that were true.
Could be newspapers have something in common with horse racing in that they throw a dog a bone just often enough to keep the dog expecting another one soon.
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