One of the cardinal rules of political marketing is that one does not wilfully let an opponent frame a major debate. As top-notch partisan operators, the Conservatives usually need lessons on that score from no one. Yet for the better part of a week, they have been allowing the Liberals and the NDP to turn a nascent national conversation on pensions into an aggressive opposition soliloquy.
That would suggest (a) the government’s spin doctors have gone on strike for better wages—an unlikely proposition in a non-union shop—or (b) the opposition parties are being enticed to lay siege to a mountain that will turn out to be a molehill.
By comparison to opposition suggestions that elderly Canadians are about to be reduced to lining up in soup kitchens by an uncaring government, it is hard to think of an actual policy that will not come across as benevolent.
Tactically there is something to be said for allowing one’s critics to overshoot their target. The latest episode of the debate over medicare funding has demonstrated just that.
The government has so far kept the upper hand in the public relations war on its hands-off approach to medicare because the disconnect between the billions of dollars it is willing to continue to expend on health care and the doomsday scenarios drawn up by its critics is too big.
That a majority of the electorate is inclined to believe the worst about Conservative intentions is by now a given.
The flash flood of criticism that recently followed the news that the same-sex marriages of non-Canadians might not be valid provided ample illustration of that.
If the Liberals or the New Democrats had been in power, many of those who jumped to the conclusion that a stealth attack on same-sex marriage was underway would have paused to consider the possibility that an overlooked legal loophole was at issue.
It may be that an effective way to turn a glaring confidence deficit into an asset is to allow the opposition to whip up fears to a rhetorical level that no government in its right mind could ever live up to.
That being said, if previous budgets are any indication, opposition expectations that the upcoming one will include moves designed to keep the Conservative base happy will be fulfilled.
That will tailor in nicely with the larger opposition narrative that the Conservatives are using the cover of austerity to gut the federal government.
But many of the upcoming budget moves will also have undergone a political stress test of another kind.
Some programs will be spared the knife because of their political sensitivity or, more simply, because of their potential to provide cover for other cuts.
In that spirit, health transfers will continue to grow by six per cent a year for the current mandate.
The Quebec furor over the appointment of unilingual candidates to the Supreme Court of Canada and to the post of auditor general last fall could buy official languages programs a pass.
In the days after the budget, expect ministers to make much of the programs they have preserved whenever they are on the hot seat for those that they cut.
Internally, they will be judged in equal measures on their private willingness to cut deep in their budgets and their public success in making a case that the essential missions of their departments are intact.
Senior government insiders say that ministerial careers could be made or broken over the marketing of the 2012 budget.
The suggestion is that the Prime Minister’s Office is approaching the exercise with zero tolerance for ministers messing up the government’s message.
Given that some of them have yet to demonstrate a capacity to think on their feet for a few minutes in Question Period, the budget might eventually set off the biggest cabinet overhaul in years.
Original Article
Source: Hill Times
Author: Chantal Hébert
No comments:
Post a Comment