Stop Wishing Carney Was Something He’s Not

Carney Needs To Lean In To Himself

I’m pretty sure The West Wing is a cancer to society, or at least a generation’s understanding of politics. The end of the Campaign Finance mini-arc at the end of Season 1 - where Bartlet gets the son of a bitch Senator to oppose his party’s leadership and approve his nominations with “the thanks of a grateful President” - is one of the worst things that has ever been put on TV, only made worse by the fact that the show does precisely fuck all with this one Jed gets shot the next episode. As TV, it’s well-written slop, Suits for people who dream of working on the Hill (Capitol or Parliament) as opposed to in Big Law. But it did get a couple of things right, if only by accident.

The re-election in Season 4 represents the show in so many ways at its worst - bloated with nonsense, suffering from previous decisions, and fundamentally lacking any stakes. You know Bartlet’s gonna win the whole time so it becomes about all of this other shit, like Toby and Josh being humbled by the guy who wants his kid to Notre Dame and the terrible Leo love plot and Stackhouse going full Nader (until he didn’t) so that the show could set up this big debate moment of being an academic elite asshole to the dumbass they had him run against, so that liberals could be convinced if they just show that George Bush is dumb they’d beat him in 2004. But in all that crap, there was a basic truth - that Bartlet was a better candidate leaning in to who he was than by pretending to be a different version of himself.

There was some criticism of Mark Carney’s performance yesterday that he was boring or not lively enough or didn’t mix it up enough, which he will have to be when he debates Poilievre. It’s a semi-coherent line of attack, because Poilievre is that kind of force. But I don’t think it’s clear at all that Carney needs to match the bombast and the punches. It’s not who he is, and the damage you do to Carney is worse than being a bit boring.

..

Mark Carney is a brilliant technocrat without ideological blinders or a rigid passion project that will get in the way of what is best for Canada. That’s the pitch the Liberals will be making to the country, framing his ideas as sensible solutions and using his time at the Department of Finance and as Bank Governors to show he’s the statesman for the hour. Given that, is it worth it to fight with Poilievre?

If the Election’s English debate is a slugfest, then Poilievre will win it. He’s more comfortable with it, he’s done it for decades in the House, and he is more willing to say truly outrageous shit for the fun of it. If Carney shows up to that debate looking to bait Poilievre like Poilievre is baiting him, it’ll make both of them look small and vindictive and not like statesmen. But in a circumstance where the economy’s shit, our ace card is statesmanship. That’s what balances this. If he draws on our turf, we’re fucked.

The better approach to Poilievre isn’t to fight him on that level, but to treat Poilievre as an irrelevance. What Carney needs to do is not lose his cool and get into the ring with Poilievre, but to treat Poilievre as an irrelevance, a bit player in this saga, a distraction that must be gotten through before Carney can get on to the real tasks of strengthening our economy, fighting Trump, and revitalizing our defence.

Pierre’s whole rise has been aided by the Liberals’ tragically bad media management of the last two years of Trudeau. The government was unable to keep control of the agenda, they couldn’t ever get sustained press attention on their issues, and they couldn’t coordinate a fucking picnic let alone an earned media blitz that could last a week. It was a PMO playing whack-a-mole with Poilievre’s preferred issues set, allowing Poilievre to control the narrative, what was talked about, and what the country focused on. The government was in office but out of power, at least when it came to their ability to make the political weather. And it sustained Poilievre in so many ways.

Now, the Conservatives are the ones desperately trying to break back into the conversation, and they’re doing so in dumb ways. The number of fake outrages in recent weeks alone - be it the Nate Lantsman shit, Carney’s verbal miscue in French, or calling O’Toole a fake Conservative - are signs of their strategic brilliance failing, but it’s more than that. Poilievre’s big Ottawa rally? Saturday afternoon of a three day weekend in Ontario. Not only were families doing things that weekend, you also held the rally when most everyone of consequence in the media had the weekend - and Monday - off. By Tuesday, it wasn’t the main story anymore, which means you wasted your big reset by not giving it the chance to disseminate in earned media like they should have. Oh, and the first Canada-USA game was that night too, so to the extent anybody cared about the speech it wasn’t even getting peak billing on online news sites.

Now, is that some world destroying mistake? No, but it’s a bad one because of how easily avoidable it was. If that speech was Tuesday it gets 3x the attention, and it’s a sloppy mistake to not have it be on a day when it could then lead P&P, Power Play, and the national nightly news broadcasts. It’s the kind of mistake you make when you feel the sand slipping between your fingers a bit, a desperation to get back into the news and start dictating terms again. The worst thing the Liberals could do is let him.

The old political adage is that between elections governments are compared to the almighty, but in elections they’re compared to the alternative, but fight now we don’t want the comparison. We don’t want to elevate Poilievre or sink to his level. What we need to do is treat him how he deserves to be treated. If you want the Canadian people to think he can’t meet the moment, the way to show that is to meet the moment yourselves.

Carney will never code as an Everyman or as a populist fighter, cause he’s not one. He’s an elite at a time when populism has a dirty name attached to it down south. When asked about whatever terrible but eye catching policy Poilievre drops once Carney wins. say that you haven’t had the chance to see it because you were too busy running the country to care what nonsense came out of his mouth. Is that arrogant? Sure, but it’s also probably what Carney thinks authentically. We can’t beat Poilievre with Carney doing an impression of what he thinks voters like about Poilievre. We can beat him by embracing Carney’s strengths and leaning in, not out of them.

We don’t need a Mark Carney that’s good for all time zones. We need the Mark Carney we have, and that means not letting fear of Skippy change our race.