Ford and Ford Nation

 

 

                                   By Kenneth Bagnell

 

 

The issue of ethics seemed to  become a major matter to the private and public sectors about 30 years ago. Business schools introduced actual classes in it, and business leaders including back then William Dimma — an admirable man, who sat on many corporate boards, as did the late Peter Lougheed — would voluntarily speak to groups young and old on its crucial importance and  what it actually was. (One professor at U of T’s business school  used to say that corporate ethics comes down to this: ”moral reasoning” by which he meant the application of an ethical screen through which all business decisions were viewed: from hiring and firing to profit margins and corporate closures. In general, this burgeoning interest in ethics gave those of us who observed it as mere journalists a sense that something promising was underway, something that would touch, improve, maybe even inspire the broad social culture from business, to politics, and the public sphere in general. As they say, that was then.

            Today, if you live in Toronto and take an interest in political ethics and  local politics you almost have to pinch yourself to be sure you aren’t having a nightmare, one so bizarre it’s virtually unbelievable. The current mayor, Rob Ford, as almost all the world now knows, may well be one of the most  aberrant men to hold high office in the country’s history.[K1]  To his adversaries, he’s so ill-equipped for his responsibilities he evokes memory of the old cliché that the inmates are running the asylum. There’s no need to list his cartoonish behavior — from  public drunkenness to alleged drug use, if not actual pedalling, to administrative ineptitude. Things are so bad that an erudite woman, a councillor named Lindsay Luby, a moderate conservative in outlook actually has said she tries to avoid revealing she’s a city councillor when she takes trips abroad:  “When I travel I don’t tell people what I do. Last year I told someone and she brought up an embarassing article on the Mayor of Toronto that she’d read in The Economist.” That may be pathetic but having just returned from Europe myself I understand her problem:  some British papers were having the proverbial field day pedalling the bizarre conduct of Toronto’s mayor. TV comedians in the US and elsewhere are delighted to mimic him. I had some modest hope, as did others, that at  last he was on the eve of stepping down, about to do so on a weekly radio program he has with his brother. No such thing: The program was a filibuster, in which the mayor wandered from this to that but never ever to confront the major issues: did he as mayor of Toronto, ever use illegal drugs, deal with criminals, get so intoxicated he urinated in public and so on. Since everyone knows the sequence of his avoiding the main issue, it’s time to look at the larger culture out of which a man like Rob Ford would rise to high public office.

I’ve been asked,  here and there , from time to time, why Ford achieved what he did and then got away with such dreadful conduct. In large part, Mr. Ford became mayor through the support of a significant but very specific political base: one that’s deeply conservative but not nearly as broad as some would have you believe. It’s a mistake, for example, to think he had the backing of the sophisticated business community; the Toronto Board of Trade has castigated and dismissed him. But he had  a tough minded group of loyal admirers: for the most part they are anti-downtown Toronto people. Once, about a decade ago, they were suburbanites, say in the boroughs of Etobicoke or Scarborough, with their own councils and mayors. Then came amalgamation but it’s not been an especially cordial  amalgamation. Old attitudes prevail so that the suburbanites still harbor  cynical wariness of the so-called downtown upper crust with their historic theatres, symphony orchestras, art galleries, the opera house and many elite dining rooms. Ford appealed to this so-called blue collar culture because, though he’s affluent, he’s also one of them. That’s what’s called Ford Nation. (Many observers claim that rank and file police officers admire him, it’s just the chief and his deputies whom they see as problems.) And there’s something else:

In terms of moral sensitivity it’s a new world we live in, one in which, as some sociologists and ethicists say, lying while holding political office is becoming as commonplace and maybe as acceptable as honesty. Hence he got away with statements which, if not outright lies, were on the edge, saying in essence that he did not use drugs when he did. This attitudinal change is a far more dangerous development than we realize, one that has led to a cynical and harmful joke:  “How do you know when a politician is lying?” Answer: “When his lips are moving.” Not true and not good. Moreover in every political, business, sports and social culture, there is a segment of the population which admires, discreetly or publicly, the so-called bad guy. Years ago, for one example of many, a bank holdup took place on Prince Edward Island. (It was before today’s bridge over the waters to the mainland.) Despite the large body of water that surrounded PEI, the bandits beat the police and escaped to the mainland. In time they were caught but, between the time of the robbery and the eventual arrest, a surprising number of voices on the air  expressed admiration that, one way or the other, the bandits were achievers — they outsmarted the police. “You got to give them credit…..” was the all too familiar refrain. Why this? Because in segments of the populace there’s a subtle but enduring liking for the rogue  — in sports, in business, in politics –who outsmarts the good guy. Many of them are citizens of what’s called Ford Nation. I think of such people when I think of the questionable Toronto mayor, his questionable politics and even more questionable lifestyle.

 

All past blogs are archived on my website: your comments are welcome here: www.kennethbagnell.com.