By: Jim Taylor

An exercise in vicarious bragging


Strange things, throne speeches. On Tuesday, Canadians were treated to their first-ever live broadcast of a throne speech on prime time television.

        I watched part of it. My major impression was that Governor-General Michaelle Jean had little or no interest in what she was reading. She’s a broadcaster, for heaven’s sake. She’s supposed to be able to make dry-as-death news items about unpronounceable generals in countries no one has ever heard of sound fresh and intriguing.

        She certainly didn’t with the throne speech.

        Perhaps it was her way of expressing distaste for the policies she had to proclaim.

        Both she and Prime Minister Stephen Harper find themselves in the same bind. She can’t refuse to read the speech, whatever her own political positions may be. And Harper can’t ask anyone else to read the throne speech. Throne speeches must be read by the head of state—in Canada, either the Queen’s official representative or the Queen herself.

        Nor can Harper fire the governor-general (even assuming he wanted to).

        In fact, it’s the other way around. The governor-general could legally fire the prime minister. It happened in Australia, in 1975. The governor-general there solved a parliamentary deadlock by removing the prime minister and appointing the opposition leader instead.

        The governor-general normally appoints the leader of the winning party as prime minister. But not necessarily, as constitutional authority Anthony Westell has noted. In a close outcome or a tie, the governor-general can appoint whoever has the best chance of forming a government.



Mouthing someone else’s words

Although the governor-general reads the throne speech, she has no role in shaping its content. That task falls to government spin-doctors, who massage every word and phrase to make sure it conveys no unintended implications.

        Stephen Harper’s speechwriters put more bite into this throne speech than others have in the past. Most throne speeches do their best to be both self-glorifying and innocuous at the same time. The government wants to puff up its chest, of course. But it also wants to make sure it doesn’t alienate enough members of parliament to bring the government crashing down before it has had time to put its lofty plans into practice.

        Political pundits speculated that Harper deliberately dared the opposition parties to force an election on a reluctant electorate. Indeed, most of the commentary I have seen deals less with the content of this throne speech than with the dilemma it presents the opposition parties.

        Should Liberal party leader Stephane Dion—a man who has so far displayed the charisma of a cowpie—gang up with the Bloc Quebecois and the New Democrats to topple Harper’s Conservatives?

        The Liberals currently trail the Conservatives by eight percentage points in public opinion polls taken this month. Should Dion risk an election now, before his ratings plunge further? Or should he prop up the government for the moment, hoping that what goes down must come up again?

        It’s a problem particularly applicable to countries that base their model of governance on the British parliament in Westminster. In other systems—the U.S., for example—a Democratic-dominated Congress can block the President’s initiatives over and over, without forcing the Administration to resign.

        In the U.S., the president’s State of the Union address corresponds, roughly, to our throne speech. It differs mainly in being given by the person who plans to put those promises in practice.

        Not in Canada, you say?. Pity, perhaps.



Lack of reflection

When did the throne speech become an occasion for vicarious braggadocio? Somehow, I can’t imagine King John, after the Magna Carta, boasting to his recalcitrant nobles about his plans. Rather, he would keep his royal prerogatives as close to his chest as a poker player keeps aces.

        Fortunately for my ego, I have never run for political office. The closest is the presidency or chair of a few community organizations. In none of them have I been called upon to make the equivalent of a throne speech, laying out my platform for coming years.

        I have had to do reports for annual general meetings, though. Perhaps it’s my personality, but those reports have more often discussed what didn’t get done in the past than promoting wish-lists for the future.

        Directors and board members generally know what’s been achieved, after all. They did the work to make it happen.

        In the flush of self-congratulation about having survived another year, however, they conveniently forget the fund-raisers that failed, the work parties that didn’t take place, the membership drives that never got off the ground…

        I’d love to hear some of that kind of honest self-analysis from our political leaders, too.

        What goals did we set for ourselves in the last throne speech, that we did not achieve? Why not? What factors in our society, or in the world, got in the way?

        Jean Chretien’s government made grand promises in 2001. But he could not have foreseen September 11, which dramatically changed the industrial world’s priorities.

        Perhaps most importantly, what have we learned from looking back?



Misplaced values

Granted, a throne speech is supposed to be a time for looking ahead. But when—if ever—does a parliament reflect on its past performance?

        Political parties do analyze their errors. They fire campaign directors; they disembowel themselves in leadership reviews.

        But the sole purpose of those recriminations is to gain, or retain, power. Not to govern more efficiently, more equitably, more beneficially for all concerned.

        Philosopher George Santayana remarked, more than half a century ago, “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

        Throne speeches suggest, at least to me, that our political leaders believe that we value promises more than learning, and intentions more than results.

        We would not accept those excuses from children in schools, or from employees in businesses. Why, I wonder, do we encourage them in political leaders?

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Copyright © 2007 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
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