Jabs—professional or childish?

By Laura Bohnert

Politics have taken an interesting turn over the past few years. No one can deny that this is true of the past year in the US, but even in Canada, there seems to have been an interesting shift in the way political campaigns are conducted. Instead of political leaders focusing on developing strong campaigns, they seem to be primarily focusing on taking cheap shots at the opposition—but is this an effective way of managing the political conundrum of votership?

Trudeau, as usual, is the focus of today’s jabs after getting called out by other party leaders for leaving Alberta out of his Canada Day speech. It was a pricy mistake for Trudeau, especially since Alberta’s industries and workforce represent some of those struggling the most with government policy changes that have been implemented on top of a struggling economy.

Trudeau’s mistake manifests Alberta’s current anxieties about a government that is enforcing change without taking into consideration Alberta’s unique circumstances. But how productive is it for the opposition to use mistakes like this as fodder for their own campaigns? There’s identifying a need within the populous and building a campaign to address that need and spark change, and then there’s taking advantage of an apparent weakness to take cheap shots that tend to provoke controversy and polarize voters.

Who do we have to blame for this new and potentially unproductive political tactic? Is this shift connected to our fascination with social media plots—are we turning into a click-baited world where the only news that’s interesting enough for the majority to follow either falls under the category of polarizing clickbait or deep tragedy? Is it because we watch too many action films and play too many video games that train our attention spans to be captivated only by fast cuts and quick-witted comedy one-liners? These may sound ridiculous, but the human mind learns and adapts to the way it responds to stimulus, and if those are the types of stimulus we are continuously drawn to, then it goes without saying that we are going to expect the same draw from different platforms of our lives as well.

And Trump is, as usual, a good example of the harm that can result when this is taken to the extreme. Trump represents a compilation of business strategy and reality TV show prowess—his political tactics, almost entirely composed of taking shots at the apparent “failures” of other political leaders (mostly Obama now that Hillary Clinton is out of his way, but also, dangerously, Kim Jong Un), are destruction-based rather than progress-based. The height of his activity includes undoing motions former leaders have put into place. His actions—right down to his Twitter feed—are designed to be divisive, polarizing, controversial, and extreme: they are designed to garner ratings rather than voters.

Trump is running the country like it’s a reality TV series, and our expectations, driven by the mass popularity of those reality programs that have shaped our inability to distinguish that line between real and “realism,” have allowed that to happen.

Political campaigns have always had their own rhetoric; now, however, they seem to be donning the cloak of tabloid technique to go alongside the celebrity star power that continues to take office. It’s another vulnerability of the blurring between real and reality TV that we equate the popularity of the celebrity persona with the potential benefit of their campaign promises, but how far is it going to go before we realize the perversion of forms? Hulk for office, 2020?