The bar has been lowered for politicians in the last year or so. In the good old days, we looked for such noble traits as a grasp of the issues, good hair and the ability look sincere whilst lying.
Now, thanks to a certain spray-tanned potato sack filled with ketchup and confusion, it feels like a victory if we can just find a political leader who can form a complete sentence, keep the sexual assault allegations in single digits and refrain from handing the keys to the kingdom to Commie Nazis.
We’ve got a crossroads moment coming up here in Canada as the federal Conservative party is choosing a leader to fight Justin Trudeau’s broken promises and sexy eyes.
Right-wing politicians around the world have found success in recent years pitching hyper-nationalism and xenophobia — many seem less interested in fiscal responsibility, balanced budgets and job creation and more interested in policing what women are wearing and where kids are peeing. But so far we’ve mostly avoided that type of fear-based, exclusionary politics here in Canada. Stephen Harper tried to make it the focus of the last election and now he’s locked in a barn on a ranch somewhere in central Alberta trying to convince the animals that they all need to be suspicious of the brown cows.
Last week offered a close-up look at most of the Conservative contenders as they met for a debate in Edmonton. I watched a solid 30 minutes to get a feel for these would-be PMs and grade them on a simple TNT scale: Can they form one complete sentence, avoid pinning all of life’s problems on immigrants and stop themselves from grabbing genitals while on stage? If they can do those things, then they get a certified TNT rating: Totally Not Trump.
First up was Lisa Raitt, who started with a joke that was pretty good (for a politician) and followed it by not sounding too insane. “I will hammer on Justin Trudeau every single day,” she said. Standard political fare and delivered with competence. Easy TNT for her.
Next up was Kellie Leitch. “Freedom! Prosperity! A unified Canadian identity!” Leitch shouted to begin her opening remarks. She seemed ready to keep on shouting random things for her entire 90-second statement. “Churches! Zippers! Rough sex with Gordon Lightfoot!” She did stop shouting things long enough to start talking about… immigrants!
“I think we should interview each immigrant, refugee and visitor to Canada!” Interview, huh? Like, Strombo? “I have a video,” she said. “Go and take a look at it on my website.” I did. No TNT for her.
Next came a bunch of people who are certified TNT because none of them said the word “bigly.”
Of course, the elephant in the room was actually a shark. A reality TV celebrity who likes to say shocking things? An ass grab caught on camera? An American resident? That’s a few too many Trump marks to declare Kevin O’Leary of Shark Tank fame as certified TNT.
His political leanings seem to be much more, well, liberal than those of President Twitter Troll but he does seem to have some of that “I’ll burn your house down and you’ll like it” charm to him. He is, however, leading the race, according to the polls, so he’ll need to be taken seriously whenever he decides to visit our country.
Whoever is chosen as the winner of this contest will say a lot about where Canada ranks on the TNT scale right now. Here’s hoping we aren’t poised to blow our lovely country up. That would be SAD!
Andy Prest is the sports editor for the North Shore News.
@Sports_Andy
