Despite the fact Canadians aren’t Americans and can’t vote for president this fall, the debate on Monday night between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton had a considerable viewership in this country.
The debate lived up to expectations. There was bombast and there was smugness. All we could ask was, “Is that the best you can do?”
For a country of 319 million people, it is nothing short of astounding that these are the two winners who rose to the top of their respective nomination processes. Both suffer from horrible unfavourabilty in the eyes of the electorate, and both have checkered pasts.
Some readers may wonder about us commenting on this race. After all, it is another country. But that is the precise point we want to make.
In recent months European elections have demonstrated all is not well for establishment candidates. The “Brexit” vote, mandating the eventual departure of Britain from the European Union, clearly demonstrates a passion for change, if not a willingness to throw caution to the wind on important decisions such as votes or even the future prosperity of an island.
Anemic economies, concerns about immigration and citizenry weary of over-regulation seem to be common threads in these recent elections around the globe. There is nothing to say that the American election results won’t follow a similar trend. Certainly, Trump the outsider is making these arguments as reasons to select him for president.
Closer to home, two national parties are hoping to select a leader and Ontario, home to an incredibly unpopular premier, has a Conservative leader in Patrick Brown waiting in the wings as a merchant of change. The three themes of poor economic times, the nurturing of wariness when it comes to immigration and the imposition of rules and regulations on every aspect of people’s lives, are present and accounted for.
We suppose exaggerated claims of being the change agent to finally solve the world’s problems have always been the case. It seems however the problems get worse as time goes on. If we hear one more time that “this election is the most important in our history” we may well scream, but one of these times it may in fact be a make or break proposition. Simply being a placeholder in history or quiet custodian of the public purse hasn’t cut it.
The absence of genuine, dogged interest on the part of the electorate remains cause for concern. This malady is not helped by the media tasked with keeping people informed because it too is presently fragmented to a point of discernible crisis. Broadcasters are certainly caught in a quagmire of entertaining versus informing. That confliction of duties was readily obvious in the recent presidential debate.
The winds of change are swirling around us, and those unprepared and uninformed may be blown away by the results of inattention.
