Harper, McGuinty, working overtime to manage political expectations.
by Geoffrey Stevens
Politics and professional sports have several things in common, including the need to manage expectations.
Sports franchises build a fan base and box-office success by dangling a dream of victory — a winning record, a berth in playoffs, even a championship. The dream keeps fans coming back, renewing season tickets at ungodly prices, filling arenas and inflating television ratings.
Of course, the team has to deliver on the dream, occasionally, to keep the fan base warm. New York Yankees are particularly adept at this. Even in their down years, the Yanks manage to make their fans believe victory is within reach.
Toronto Maple Leafs are an aberration. They are terrible at managing expectations. They don't even try. Year after year, they allow expectations of glory to build, only to dash them before the snow flies.
The Leafs are the St Louis Browns of the frozen pond. The lovable Brownies managed a single World Series appearance (a losing one) in their pathetic 51-year history before packing their bats and gloves and moving to Baltimore. The Leafs — 45 years and counting since their last Stanley Cup — will have no difficulty breaking the Browns' record of futility.
Of course, with the Leafs there is a disconnect between fan expectations and box-office success. Toronto fans are gullible, the most easily seduced in professional sports. Dash their dream one year and these hockey fanatics will flock back in greater numbers the next year. Leafs fans are true believers.
Politics doesn't have many true believers, which is why political leaders have to work overtime to manage the expectations of their core supporters, swing voters and (if they have a minority government) even opposition members.
Both Dalton McGuinty and Stephen Harper have been busy managing expectations recently, as the provincial and federal budgets reveal. The two leaders have the same problem: they let politics take precedence over fiscal prudence; they allowed their deficits to get out of control; and now that their elections are over they have to persuade the public to overlook their prior rhetoric and hunker down for an era of austerity.
Being in a minority, McGuinty has to manage the expectations of supporters of the New Democrats who hold the balance of power. The NDP knows they are not going to be able to change the fundamentals of the budget, but they may be able to exert some influence on the margins.
If Andrea Horwath can negotiate a few incremental changes — as it appears she will — it will be enough to secure NDP support, to keep the Liberals alive, and to avoid another election that no one (except Tim Hudak's Tories) wants.
The two leaders have the same problem: they let politics take precedence over fiscal prudence.
Harper, in one sense, has an easier task than McGuinty. Because he won his majority, he doesn't have to worry about the opposition or its votes. But he does have to worry about the public as he sets about to recast government, reduce the public service, rein in spending and shrink the despised nanny state.
He has to reconcile the inflated expectations he created before he became prime minister in early 2006, with the lean expectations he is selling to the public today. Here is what he had to say in a campaign speech to seniors in Guelph on December 9, 2005: "My government will fully preserve the Old Age Security (OAS), the Guaranteed Income Supplement and the Canada Pension Plan, and all projected future increases to these programs. And we will build on those commitments."
That seems clear enough. It was, however, before his conversion on the road to Davos, where he announced his intention to cut OAS on January 26 this year: "One of the backdrops for my concerns is Canada's ageing population. If not addressed promptly this has the capacity to undermine Canada's economic position, and for that matter, that of all western nations well beyond the current economic crises."
From commitments to crises — even Leafs fans might find that a hard circle to square.
About Geoffrey Stevens
Cambridge resident Geoffrey Stevens, an author and former Ottawa columnist and managing editor of the Globe and Mail, teaches political science at Wilfrid Laurier University and the University of Guelph. He welcomes comments at the address below. This article appeared in the Waterloo Region Record and the Guelph Mercury.
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