So, Justin raised 25 large at
that unplugged event last night. He also fielded questions. One was:
Q. Which country’s government does the “future prime minister” most admire?
A. You know, there’s a level of of admiration I actually have for China because their basic dictatorship is allowing them to actually turn their economy around on a dime and say ‘we need to go green fastest…we need to start investing in solar.’ I mean there is a flexibility that I know Stephen Harper must dream about of having a dictatorship that he can do everything he wanted that I find quite interesting.
But if I were to reach out and say which…which kind of administration I most admire, I think there’s something to be said right here in Canada for the way our territories are run. Nunavut, Northwest Territories, and the Yukon are done without political parties around consensus. And are much more like a municipal government. And I think there’s a lot to be said for people pulling together to try and solve issues rather than to score points off of each other. And I think we need a little more of that.
A fairly coherent argument can be pulled from this 1) China, being a dictatorship, can move quickly to tackle issues of national importance, like growing their economy or becoming a leader in green tech. And there is nothing remotely controversial about such views. People on both left and right have expressed admiration for this aspect of the Chinese state. But then 2) While the ability to move the state along faster to good ends would be "quite interesting", someone like Stephen Harper dreams of having such powers, and would only use them for Evil. Again, nothing controversial. While the temptation is there,
checks and balances are needed, etc. etc.
That's the first paragraph. Paragraph two is lovey talk about building consensus, which according to Justin is what we really should have more of, and yada yada. I find it uninteresting, so I'll ignore it.
In any case, paragraph one is what has sent the twittersphere into a rage this morning. The eye rolling is particular unfortunate in the case of Dan Gardner:
Because Dan is constantly lamenting the state of political discourse in the country, and then when he sees something that strives to be a little better than moronic, he shits.
Because after all, the argument we're talking about is pitched at about the couple-beers-in-a-college-pub after-poli sci-class level. I got drunk and argued the limits of democracy thing many times, back in the day.. But apparently, even
that kind of argument is too hard for twitter. Again, Dan's response is representative in its weird two-sideness. On the one hand, he says Justin is being dumb because he is allowing the dumb people who watch Sun News to cry commie!, on the other hand, its dumb because its positively
Friedmanesque:
...and Dan's disagrees (strongly!!) with Friedman on such issues.
But wait! A Justin Trudeau answer at a
ladies night event makes Friedman momentarily relevant to Canadian politics. Just the kind of thing Deep Dan has been crying for from politicians. And then he sees it, and retreats into the kind of glib one-liners that Twitter encourages. (It apparently makes people dumb the same way powerpoint does.) Not that he's the only offender. @acoyne has spent the morning cracking what I'm sure he thinks are very clever jokes rather than actually talk some policy talk when given the opportunity by a Canadian politician. But, as far as I'm concerned, the punditocracy cannot ask for intelligence from their politicians if they are only going to turn around and, en masse, play silly bugger when they hear some.
