On Patronage and Senate Appointments

Last updated at 8:29 AM on 14/09/09

Cheers & Jeers
CHEERS & JEERS
The Telegram


Jeers: to the continuing effort to fight patronage - by stuffing more of your own party members into federal jobs. Fresh from packing the Senate with cronies of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the Tories have named a former Conservative cabinet minister to head the Federal Court of Appeal. And right on the heels of Harper being caught on videotape complaining about the Liberals appointing their own to the courts when they were in power. Apparently, it's not really hypocrisy when you're doing it yourself.


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dgb...

Ethics and integrity, transparency and accountability, congruence -- saying what you mean, and meaning what you say: all of these are 'election buzz words' that prospective leaders use all the time to try to seduce the public into giving them a shot at power.

Pessimism, cynicism, hyprocrisy, and narcissism often become the 'public sentiment and buzz words' after these former 'supposedly charging political idealists' actually take office for a year or less and start withering into complacency, entropy, and narcissistic consolidation.

In Canada -- and probably to a greater or lesser extent in America too -- ethics seems to be something that is largely left outside the Prime Minister's (President's) door as other more politically pragmatic characteristics seem to take priority.

Election promises are 'forgotten'. No more 'Senate Reform'. Just 'load the Senate with your own'.

As power increases, personal and party ethics tends to decrease while personal and party narcissism tends to increase. Such is the nature of politics and, indeed, seemingly any rise to more and more unbridled power.

Thus, the need for more and more journalist and philosophical candor -- to show how pre-election 'ethical idealism' changes to 'partisan righteous-narcissistic ideology' based solely on being either out of power, looking in, or in power, looking out.

-- dgb, Sept. 15th, 2009.

-- David Gordon Bain