"Direct democracy" key to Day's appeal

Political writer Stephen Dale takes issue with Larry Solway's analysis

  Do people vote for tax-cuts while telling pollsters what they really cherish is health care and a clean environment? Sometimes. That's apparently what happened back in 1995 when Mike Harris vaulted out of third place and into the Premier's chair in Ontario. His handlers had even predicted that the early polls would be wrong, based on their cunning surmise that middle class Ontarians would be too embarrassed to confess to a nice, warm voice on the phone that they'd rather have a new big-screen TV in the den than pay to keep the social safety net intact.
  But there's also plenty of evidence to suggest that, once the price of those tax cuts becomes known-and once it becomes felt in daily life-the sound of a little extra change jangling in your pockets loses some of its appeal. While researching my book Lost in the Suburbs: A Political Travelogue, I saw some of this disillusionment take hold in suburban southern California, the cradle of the Reagan Revolution and the launch-pad for the famous Proposition 13 tax revolt, a state which in the 1998 elections made a decisive lurch towards a moderately liberal Democratic party under now-governor Gray Davis. (Around that time, I also witnessed Al Gore harangue a large suburban California crowd about the need for a strengthened role for federal government; a pitch which, judging from the solid support Gore received last week in California, may have struck a lasting chord).
 

Given time and experience, voters may indeed come to view their own self-interest more broadly

  Why did Californians turn away from the politics of tax-cuts-at-all-costs? Partly because the people who rely most upon functional and safe public schools, public transit, and community investment (i.e. poorer Blacks and Hispanics) came out to vote in larger numbers than before. But even the comfortable, mostly white middle class had ample reason to question tax cut fever.
  Decades of slash-and-burn politics have created the deep social divisions which once prompted a group of civic officials to envision a Blade Runner scenario -- some future eruption of ethnic civil war fanning out from Los Angeles - and which has created palpable anxiety in the present. The middle class has also had plenty of experience dealing with private HMOs which often dole out health care with a view to the bottom line more rather than the needs of the patient. Then there are the chilling lessons of the Orange County Bankruptcy of 1996 (created after a county official funneled tax money into a high-risk derivatives investment scheme, losing the county's shirt in the process), a landmark event which is commonly seen as a consequence of government struggling to meet its obligations without the adequate tax revenue to do so.
 
  It's entirely possible that Canadians, as well, will develop a preference for services over tax rebates. Here in Ontario, for instance, we have Walkerton - a much more dreadful occurrence than the Orange County bankruptcy, and a threat that's far more real than the Blade Runner scenario. Would suburban commuters be prepared to vote for a government that would invest in public transit if it meant their kids had less chance of being felled by an asthma attack a muggy summer day? Is a stroll in the park worth a few dollars off your paycheque? Given time and experience, voters may indeed come to view their own self-interest more broadly. Environmental issues, for instance, far from being "motherhood" questions, have a tangible impact on daily life.
  And so I disagree with Larry's statement that deeper, meaner tax cuts are the ace up Stockwell Day's sleeve. What Day really has going for him, I believe, are all those policies about "direct democracy." I went to an Alliance nomination meeting a few weeks ago and was astonished to find nobody talking about the economy - instead, issues like MP recall, citizen-initiatied referenda, even the power of the Supreme Court, were lighting fires under party stallwarts. This isn't a major part of the party's appeal to its broader constitutency, but if the economy suddenly turns sour, a rising sense of alienation and anger may indeed make Canadians more receptive to this populist pitch.
  Of course, the American experience with ballot propositions (the citizen-initiated referenda that Stockwell Day is pushing) is that they hand more power not to individual citizens but to the powerful corporations that can pump big bucks into referendum campaigns to buy signatures and sponsor confusing TV ad campaigns. (Consider, for instance, that the insurance industry and trial lawyers spend more money on a California referendum question in 1988 than George Bush Sr. spent on his presidential campaign).
  Originally introduced in the U.S. as a way of undermining the power of politicians who had been bought by corporations, the ballot intiative has had the opposite effect. But that, as they say, is a whole other story...

Stephen Dale is the author of Lost in the Suburbs: A Political Travelogue (Stoddart Publishing) which has just been re-issued in paperback.

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