Quote:
Originally Posted by ByeByeBaby
Ford is planning to destroy infrastructure; he's actually proposed digging up the streetcar network because streetcars interfere with cars.
Main pet peeves:
- paying taxes
- liberals
- cyclists
- festivals
- gay people
- "Orientals" (his word)
- immigrants
As near as I can tell, he's a caricature of what people think of when they think of a typical Calgary politician crossed with a Tea Bagger.
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Byebye baby - not sure of how much you know about Ford, but your depiction of him is somewhat off. His main platform - in fact his ONLY platform - was that the municipal gov't of Toronto was being run for special interest groups resulting is mis-use of taxes. Contrary to what some of the media liked to portray about him, he is not against gays, orientals, immigrants, festivals, etc. They weren't really pet-peeves, rather very simplistic attempts on his part to convey angst.
His views on urban planning and provisioning, however, are diametrically opposed to what Toronot had seen the past 8 years under Miller - and there is an important lesson here for all politicians, including Nenshi:
Ford won due to a principal known as pendulum politics. For the most part, Toronto has had good government under Miller however Miller was seen as governing too much for select special interest groups (E.g. unions, artists, DT developers, “black turtle-neck wearing, latte sipping elites, etc) and not enough for “joe six pack” taxpayer (who may actually be a mint tea sipping Tamil!!). He was seen as catering too much to one segment of the population (the so called DT elite) and not enough to others (the suburbanit barbarians). While not really true, perception is reality. And Ford was able to tap into this angst and funnel it into a victory since the population was convinced (by Ford, the media, other politicos) that this was a bad direction. When you couple this local message to the global recession/slow down, Ford was pitching the pablum people wanted to hear (Woo woo, there goes the gravy train!!)
Personally I am so sick of his single issue platform (gov’t waste will save up ka-jillions in dollars!!), that I would have voted for a rock rather than him –
why is it that I always thought of this when Ford complained about the “gravy train’???
Anyway, the lesson here – basic politics 101 really – is that Nenshi must reach out to everyone to ensure that all feel like they are represented in the process. My guess is that he is fully aware of this and while his platform did include a lot of pro-urban messages, not eveyone wanted that and going forward he must ensure that the overall message is that you may not have voted for me, but I still hear you … otherwise Calgary could see it’s own version of Ford in 3 or 6 years. He can't please everyone (que breaking eggs to make omlets analogy here) but he does have to satisfy enough of the populace to prevent a pendulum swing away from him.
FULL DISCLOSURE: due to a quirk in our political systems, I can vote in both Calgary’s and Toronto’s municipal elections – while I was excited to vote in Calgary due to our choices, I was trully saddened to vote in Toronto as I had to vote for a lesser of two evils rather than someone with good ideas. Sigh …..
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