TRIAL
BY FOOLSCAP
"Make em write." That's a friend’s prescription for
determining if officials running for office have the right
stuff or not. "Sit them down with a pen and paper alone in
a room. No handlers, no advisors. They have two hours to
write an essay on their political vision."
Trial by foolscap. A brilliant suggestion.
No high school student graduates without an essay question
in the finals. Why, my friend asks, shouldn't we hold
politicians aiming for office to a standard at least as
high?
Certainly effective essay-writing is not the only skill
that should, or would, make an effective politician. But if
you're going to be crowned leader of anything bigger than a
beer run, shouldn't you be able to write out your schemes
and dreams in a legible way? Shouldn’t you be able to
structure a reasoned argument for more than a paragraph,
sticking with the same tense all the way through? Shouldn’t
you be able to spell?
Here's how it would work. The essay question, chosen by
random selection from contributions by the electorate, is
presented to the would-be leader, who sits at a desk with a
pen and paper. He is monitored by videocamera to make sure
he isn't cheating, and after two hours he is summarily
dismissed. The essay, typos and all, appears the next day
in the newspapers.
As far as our neighbours to the south go, I can see how an
essay requirement way back in the 1980 federal election
could have potentially short-circuited Iran-Contra, the
gutting of the EPA, and other Republican mischief then and
since. Certainly, Ronald Reagan talked the talk, but it was
never evident that the Gipper’s shimmering words were ever
disturbed by so much as a ripple of thought. But I do
remember the time his TelePrompTer went, during a national
address in the mid-eighties. The Prez came to a crashing
halt. He fumbled, sputtered, and then fell silent for what
seemed like an eternity. Eventually Reagan lurched to life
again, like one of the animatronic robots from the Pirates
of the Caribbean.
What was alarming in this instance was that during the time
during which the TelePrompTer failed, the "Great
Communicator" couldn't recover the thread, or even the
context, of his speech. He quite literally didn't have a
clue what he was talking about. The Emperor’s clothes
vapourized in front of millions, yet this telling moment
passed unmentioned by television commentators afterward,
including George F. Will , who happened to have written the
speech in question.
In retrospect, Reagan's moment of duress could have been an
early indication of the Alzheimer’s that sadly claimed his
final years. But the point still holds: an essay would have
exposed his intellectual limitations, whatever their
source. As for George W. Bush, well, here’s a man who
apparently can't even read a stop sign after a few beers. A
blank sheet of paper could have stopped him cold well
before Florida.
The United States of Amnesia is one thing, but what of the
Great White North? Preston Manning, Bob Rae, Sheila Copps,
and John Crosbie have all penned books, so unless any or
all were ghosted efforts, we can assume these four Canadian
politicians can at least dictate. (But I'm suspicious about
Jean Chretien and his effort, Straight From the Heart. A
friend from Montreal assures me the prime monster’s French
is as every bit as mangled as his English.)
If we rounded up the usual suspects, and sat them all down
together in class to defend their belief systems, what
revelations would we find? Would Ralph Klein write a
stirring defense of industrial civilization’s rise through
oil? Would Gordon Campbell surprise us with learned
references to mercantilism and Ayn Rand? Would Jenny Kwan
work quotes from Proudhon and anarcho-syndicalists into a
fable about painted daisies on urban walls? Probably not. I
suppose the most we could hope for is that Christy Clark
doesn't put smiley faces over her i’s, and that Svend
Robinson doesn't stab himself with his pencil in protest at
having to sit next to Deborah Grey.
So in conclusion, Id like to say that when election time
rolls around, I don't want to see another glad-handing
baby-kisser lurching toward me wearing a baboon-like grin
of aggression, and clutching a handful of glossy campaign
literature. I want to see someone who can present me with a
Xerox of their in-class essay, and say: "I wrote this. Read
it, it proves I have a mind and a heart. I intend to use
both in office."
Geoff Olson
