27 Jul Vandalizing the census – cont.

I have fallen behind posting reader submissions on the Conservatives’ inexplicable attack on the census. Here’s a start on the backlog, beginning (in the interests of equal time) with an email in which Ottawa PR guy Tim Powers, whom I slanged as a Harper sock-puppet, turns a cordial cheek:

Read your blog about today’s Current. I must say I don’t think I have never been called a sock-puppet before. A friendly bit of Cape Breton ribbing is good for the soul.

Liked the Dewey headline. I always enjoyed your wit when I was a student in Halifax. Keep stirring the pot!

My slightly sheepish reply:

Like your answers to Jim Brown, your gracious message attests to your skill in public relations. Having come to the field late, and only on parole following a 35-to-life term in journalism, I  may be temperamentally ill-suited, but this doesn’t lessen my admiration for those talents.

I know you had a job to do in that interview, but here’s what troubles me. You are a political consultant. You obviously understand the critical importance of a random sample in gathering data that will be used to inform important government and business decisions. Yet you cheerfully adopted as your own the false claim that increasing the sample size would compensate for its reduced randomness.

Doesn’t it degrade political discourse when, in pursuit of partisan advantage, people advance arguments they know to be false? Isn’t this a symptom of what’s wrong in Ottawa? Doesn’t it help explain why people are so turned off by politics and politicians today?

Last word to Mr. Powers:

Let me get to your questions but first note in reality I am not a political consultant. Like most Atlantic Canadians the politics is an addiction I feed voluntarily.

While certainly there was a degree of mischief, part and parcel of political theater, in the discussion on The Current the overall points I was trying to make which I think do serve the debate and don’t reduce the view of the utility of Ottawa:

• there is more the one way to gather meaningful data (something lost in the present uproar)
• this debate has become about polemics and both sides bare responsibility for that
• other than simply returning to the status quo calling for a compromise solution
• though in reality the government may not move for one I’d still like to hear some options
• context: a variety of countries are changing they way they do their own censuses

Part of what I wanted to do in the interview was break people out of the dialogue box we are in and have them ask more questions. That I think can be helpful. Put some more oxygen in our democracy.

There are so many problems with politics today and I try not to contribute to them. Rhetoric was birthed by the Greeks. Three will fight over it Plato, Aristotle and Cicero. I did use some on Friday but in a limited manner. Keep pushing for better! It is important.

Mount St. Vincent faculty may want to flag this exchange as an example of how to handle curmudgeonly bloggers.

More to come.