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It struck me over the weekend that when I look back on this four-year hallucination known as the Ford administration, I will be summoning up a composite image that has the physical presence of Rob, but the voice of Doug.<\/p>\n
Doug \u2014 he of the tedious Fox News-style cliches (\u201csocial engineering!\u201d), the rhetoric tinged with glares and threats of violence (\u201c\u2026every time you guys [the media] go after Rob, I’m going after you\u2026\u201d), the inanities (\u201call taxes are evil\u201d), and, of course, the vulgarities (\u201c\u2026in my opinion, the TTC needs a complete enema\u201d).<\/p>\n
(For a more comprehensive list, please consult @shitdougfordsay<\/a> on Twitter.)<\/p>\n His dexterity with the language came to mind again recently when, after announcing that he would not be seeking re-election in Ward 2, Ford offered up this curiously constructed chestnut for The Toronto Sun\u2019s Don Peat, on the question of whether he and his brother would try to re-open the casino debate.<\/p>\n “When are we going to stop at this city \u2014 this nanny state?” Ford told Peat. “I can’t stand when other people tell the public<\/em> what they can do or can’t do. You can’t buy bottled water, you can’t do this, you can’t do that. Why? Because we’re smarter than the public.” (emphasis added).<\/p>\n Doug, like his brother, has the distinctly creepy tick of segregating his critics (or ordinary people who disagree with him) from \u201cthe public.\u201d They are the \u201cother.\u201d<\/p>\n I\u2019d bet a ride on the London Eye<\/a> that Doug would be hard pressed to explain why, in a British-style parliamentary democracy, we use the phrase, \u201cHer Majesty\u2019s Loyal Opposition.\u201d Today\u2019s media shorthand drops that crucial adjective \u201cloyal,\u201d which, I think, does a disservice to not just the institution but the underlying principle. Questioning, debating, criticizing \u2014 these verbal gestures are, by definition, loyal acts. It means that those who peacefully challenge the government and its spokespersons and programs are serving their country, region, city, etc. Political dissent and political leadership exist on the same moral plain, lest we ever forget.<\/p>\n Of course, politicians of all stripe love to accuse one another of pursuing policies that will destroy [insert jurisdiction here]. Such language, perhaps paradoxically, is privileged by the principle of loyal opposition, and is arguably important in debates where crucial or defining policy decisions are being made.<\/p>\n Yet Doug\u2019s own rhetoric never rises above the level of veiled threats and content-free sloganeering. His approach to his political opponents brings to mind Ralph Klein\u2019s infamous taunt \u2014 made during the 1980s National Energy Program fight between Pierre Trudeau and Alberta premier Peter Lougheed when he was mayor of Calgary \u2014 that the \u201ceastern bastards\u201d should \u201cfreeze in the dark.\u201d<\/p>\n Mostly, though, Doug comes across as one of those guys who has spent way too much time soaking up the pugilistic nature of American politics and punditry. War, according to von Clausewitz\u2019s famous construction, is \u201cpolitics\u2026by other means.\u201d But the extraordinary gridlock in American politics frequently suggests the reverse \u2014 the glowing embers of a not-quite-extinguished civil war, fanned to life by contemporary neo-conservative rhetoric about liberty, freedom, and other Enlightenment absolutes that don\u2019t actually exist in the real world.<\/p>\n Is that the psychic place that Doug wants to take this city, with his endless harping (he\u2019s not alone in this, of course) about the honest \u201cfolks\u201d in the suburbs and the self-serving \u201celites\u201d in the downtown? Are they really fierce enemies of one another? The North and the South? The coasts and the fly-over states? Us and them?<\/p>\n The soundtrack of Doug\u2019s journey through this term of council isn\u2019t just about self-serving partisanship. It also contains many other percussive noises \u2014 the chronic lying (e.g., his insistence, which I debunked in The Globe and Mail, that he didn\u2019t spend a cent on his office budget); the Freudian compulsion to upstage and undermine his younger brother; and the mindless slogans about government as a \u201cnanny state\u201d fueled by \u201cevil\u201d taxes.<\/p>\n I\u2019ll bet Calgarians in the past few days have been grateful for the emergency services funded by the aforementioned \u201cevil\u201d taxes.<\/p>\n Beyond the verbiage and the media profile he so obviously craved, it\u2019s difficult to know what Doug has accomplished since he arrived at City Hall in late 2010,(something Spacing has tried to figure out without much success)<\/a>. The mayor\u2019s subway promise didn\u2019t materialize, at least partly because the first sustained target of Doug\u2019s bullying was ally-turned adversary Karen Stintz. His meddling with Waterfront Toronto begat his brother\u2019s first resounding council loss. Much more recently, the Woodbine race track\/slot facility, which is part of his ward, lost out on a chance for a significant expansion because the brothers didn\u2019t have the common sense to work out a compromise during the casino fight.<\/p>\n What\u2019s in the wins column? The garbage out-sourcing deal, the bag fees, a small army of intimidated civil servants (if that\u2019s how you measure success).<\/p>\n When the mayor finally leaves office \u2014 in a manner that has yet to be determined, but is unlikely to be gracious \u2014 I predict that his most immediate legacy will be that his successor \u2014 left, right or centre \u2014 will bend over backwards to project a calmer, duller, and more conspicuously professional approach to the job.<\/p>\n Doug\u2019s own legacy is more complicated to assess. On one hand, he\u2019s done more to energize the left than any progressive organizing movement I\u2019ve ever encountered. On the other, he\u2019s filled Torontonians with the kind of loose, toxic speech that not only brings about legislative gridlock, but encourages the politics of polarization in a city that desperately needs more bridges and fewer fences.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t want fewer conservatives on council; balance is important. What I want are more conservatives who recognize the centrality of vigorous, fact-based policy debate; who value and practice civility in politics; and who understand both the mechanics and the role of consensus-building in local government.<\/p>\n Doug \u2014 allegedly the smarter brother, but not really \u2014 was absolutely tone-deaf on all three counts, and his absence, at least in this space, will not be missed.<\/p>\n photo by Andrew Louis<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"