FFWD Weekly
Copyright © 1997. All Rights Reserved.
By Nick DevlinPolitics and the weather have a lot in common. People bitch about both and do nothing about either. They give us something to talk about on the long LRT ride to work and control almost every aspect of our lives, from whether we pack an umbrella in the morning to whether we have a job to return from that night.
At times, politics and meteorology can converge in strange ways. Just when it seemed that the landscape was already crowded with two political animals of every imaginable stripe, the central Prairies are anticipating a spring run-off big enough to bring along Noah and the Arc Party. All in time for a federal election.
So while the residents of southern Manitoba wait for the Red River, swollen with the snow from a record winter, to inflict its tortuous damage, the rest of us wait for the writ to drop. If the two coincide, the effects of the anticipated flooding may be felt in far-away Ottawa long after Winnipeggers have finished swabbing out their mud-filled basements and rebuilding their water-logged lives.
Harsh as it may seem, it's a law of modern politics that natural disasters are good for incumbent candidates. They allow prime ministers and presidents to look prime ministerial or presidential - all in a conveniently non-partisan forum. Who, after all, would be heartless enough to play politics with a human tragedy?
For the same reason, disaster areas are a death trap for opposition politicians out on the stump. The risk of looking like vulturous opportunists, advancing their own political fortunes on the suffering of innocent victims, is more of a gamble than most politicos can swallow.
Just as the opposition will stay away, the media will descend. Like wild dogs to a fresh kill, packs of camera crews and journalists feast on images of epic disaster, destruction and the valiant struggle of man against nature. A few tears don't hurt either.
But all this attention will come at the price of reduced regard to the federal campaign, a prospect that must send chills of fear through the ranks of Tories and Reformers alike. With election advertising rules still stilted to favor the governing party, the challengers need every drop of media coverage to close the sizeable lead the Liberals enjoy in the polls.
On the other hand, Jean and his friends must delight in the prospect of a healthy diversion from saturation coverage. Less press means fewer questions about their record. Questions like: "Why haven't you done anything for three years," and "Where the hell are all the jobs?"
Only the NDP stand to come out unscathed if the Flood of '97 materializes. What they lose in coverage, the last party of the left will likely make up in the increased consciousness of our occasional dependence upon government which a calamity of this magnitude invokes. Scared and battered people like feel-good government.
Ultimately, whether the weather will make a real difference in the end is hard to say. However, in a climate of intense multi-party competition where the outcome in many ridings will turn on only a handful of votes, the geological fact that landslides often follow floods might just be translated into political reality.
Back To Main Contents
Back To This Issue Table of Contents