By H. Grant Timms

With a Conservative party ad running over and over (ad nauseum) throughout the NHL playoffs (and since), I could not help but think about political marketing, packaging and image making. The ‘nice hair’ anti-Trudeau ad is fascinating. We are presented with a diverse panel actors in the guise of employers evaluating a Liberal pamphlet as if it were Justin Trudeau’s PM job application. They conclude that he is ‘just not ready’ (at least not yet), but that he has nice hair. Perhaps we’re supposed to understand that Trudeau will be ready to be PM when his hair is not so nice.

But the substance of the ad – which is the evaluation of Trudeau’s skills and experience – is a sideshow. The hope is that we will identify with at least one of the panel members, and so identify with their opinion. That the opinions were scripted and delivered by actors (who might be Liberal supporters) does not matter. The marketing ploy that underlies this ad, and most of the ones we will see during the upcoming campaign, are messages of identification. The political party is presented as a item of consumer choice, the branding of which includes an attempt to have the consumer identify the brand with his/her lifestyle, status, self-image or personality. Are you a PC or a Mac? Coke or Pepsi? Do you identify with Harper or Trudeau? Such ads exploit the fact that we increasingly believe that what we consume tells others about who we really are — and our consumption of politics is no different than any other commodity.

Indeed, neoliberal political scientists, inculcated by a belief in the Market as the arbiter of all things, regard elections and voting as the functional equivalent of choosing a cereal brand or a cell phone. The consumer choice model replaces the citizen participation model. The only role citizens have in creating policy is through their choices in the political marketplace.

For this theory to fly one has to accept the notion that ‘democracy’ and ‘market’ are interchangeable terms. The electorate is regarded as a cynical bunch, concerned only with the narrowest self-interests. This cynicism is featured in anti-Trudeau ad: at no point do Trudeau’s evaluators speak to any common, or community interests. Neoliberals defend their application of ‘consumer choice theory’ to politics, in part, by insisting that issues are far too complicated for ‘consumers’ to have a role in policy-making. The issues have to be left to ‘experts,’ (also known as lobbyists), who tell politicians how to make policy. When it comes to clothing, for example, consumers are purportedly concerned only with price; they are not concerned with where Joe Fresh clothing is made, who is making it, and under what conditions. The same goes for political parties. The substance of policies, the ideology or political philosophy that informs and underlies a party’s platform, is of no concern. The political party’s role is to sell the goods to the public. The best is marketing strategy wins.

The packaging and marketing of the new Conservative Party under Mr. Harper began with the merger of the Progressive Conservatives and the Canadian Alliance (formerly Reform) in 2004. The label on the package says ‘Conservative Party of Canada.’ To reinforce the image that they were to be more conservative than the PCs, the term “Progressive” was dropped.

As part of the marketing campaign and the ‘politics of identification’, Mr. Harper went to some lengths to convince people to identify with his brand, and to convince people that his political brand was in fact ‘brand Canada’. Shortly after the merger Mr. Harper remarked that Canadians were inherently, perhaps historically conservative. The Liberals, with NDP help, had taken Canada away from its roots and toward the more left-leaning ‘welfare state liberalism’ that had dominated the post-WWII era. However, the implication was that the PC party under people like Joe Clark had not done much to stop this drift; the party’s brand name, the Progressive Conservatives, was a dead give away was it not? The Harper party would govern in a way that kept faith with tradition. Canadians should, then, identify Mr. Harper’s party with traditional Canadian conservatism, thereby restoring the Conservatives to their place as the ‘natural’ governing party of the country, replacing the Liberals.

The PM’s suggestion that Canada was historically, if not innately ‘conservative’ was not without grounds. Indeed, that Canada remained too conservative, not only in the early 19th century but afterwards, has been one of the chief complaints of ‘liberal’ or ‘progressive’ historians. The charge is made that our conservatism greatly hindered our economic development – compared to the United States. We might note as well that we are still surrounded by ‘conservative’ symbols. Quebec’s flag is based on the pre-revolutionary flag of France. The other provincial flags are based on English, Scottish or United Kingdom royalist flags. The territorial flags contain aboriginal symbols making them traditional and so can be considered conservative as well. The PM had a point then.

Yet if there was a foundational or (to use the PM’s term) ‘natural’ conservatism in Canada, it was not Mr. Harper’s version, but what Canadian political philosophers like George Grant, Gad Horowitz and Eugene Forsey called ‘Red Toryism.’ What marked them as ‘red’, more than anything, was a commitment to a communitarian ethic — one which held that the ‘upper echelons’ of the society had an obligation to those who were less fortunate. While the policies and mechanisms used to express this ethos evolved or changed, it usually included the view that limits or controls were required on capitalism and the market to ensure the economic security of citizens. According to liberal theory there is no such thing as community, or society; there is only an aggregate of individuals. Controls on the Market are anathema. Among neoliberals in the United States, Red Toryism is indistinguishable from ‘socialism.’ Apparently, it is the same for Mr. Harper who, back in 2003 referred to a Red Tory opponent as a “prairie socialist.”

Mr. Harper and his party can of course put any label they like on the party’s package, including “Conservative”. But what’s inside the box, the party’s political philosophy, is not. It is certainly not the traditional Canadian conservatism. Indeed, the philosophy of Mr. Harper’s party is not regarded as ‘conservative’ anywhere except in that fish-bowl of ‘exceptionalism’ that is the United States. In that inherently liberal society there are two liberal parties divided chiefly by differences on ‘social’ or ‘moral’ issues. There, ‘conservative’ indicates an appeal to pre-welfare state, or pre-Keynesian liberal principles and an appeal to the Puritanism that gave birth to political liberalism.

And what is inside Mr. Harper’s Conservative package is precisely that.

I will return to this topic in a follow-up column.