Pie Palace

So what should we be looking for in the next leader of the Green Party? I would argue that we should be aiming for someone who can appeal to as broad a segment of Canadian society as possible. We can use Elizabeth May as a touchstone for this. The other candidates in the race are being pretty quiet right now, so we can’t comment on them. But their time will come.

When we’re considering Ms. May, we’ll use the posts by Darrell, and Martin as an itty bitty focus group. They’re both from Ottawa, middle class, male, young. They vote. Neither of them are environmentalists, but they recycle, turn the lights off, and do all the stuff that you’re supposed to do when you’re responsible. But most importantly, these are the people that we want to attract to the Green Party: they’re average, they’re mainstream, and they’re willing to vote Green.

Darrell contacted me out of the blue to vent about Elizabeth May’s latest blog post. She does a pretty good job at summing up the very generous tax incentives given to the folks strip mining the Athabasca Tar Sands out in Alberta, and then outlines the Green Party solution.

Here’s Darrell’s email¹:

But I just can’t listen to Elizabeth May anymore. I know, I should probably post something publicly instead of annoying you with my thoughts but I really don’t care enough about her anymore to warrant trying to reason with her or her brother.

I read through her latest blog post/rant about the tar sands and it just makes me want to ignore her. Right off the bat she starts off confrontational and using her favourite word it seems, “crime”. Then we have her go through her laundry list of who-done-it as she points the finger every which way. Yeah, she might have a point but after a few paragraphs of it I strongly considered not reading any further. I figured this was just a rant about who’s messed things up with no real talk of what she would do. Finally she gets to the pay off of the Green Party plan but after all the numbers and such she threw at me during the rant all of a sudden the plan actually doesn’t look that good. I don’t know enough about the details but when you spend so much time listing what’s wrong and throwing all these figures at me it seems odd that you can sum up your plan in a couple sentences all of which seem to focus entirely on “let’s save the environment”. A noble goal don’t get me wrong but I’d like a bit more details on the plan and how it will work for the community and the environment.²

Then we have her last line, “Anything else is a crime.” All of a sudden I feel so shut out. It just seems so all encompassing that any question of this plan or possible other ideas I might think of has me siding with the “criminals”. It’s not even “anything less” is a crime, it’s anything else. So her word is the law and that’s the end of it. You know, it kinda reminds me of someone… someone who seemingly refuses to listen to those who have different opinions… someone who has labelled himself the “decider”… I think his name is “Bush” or something (hey, if they can compare Bush to Hitler then I can compare her to Bush).

Maybe it’s just me but this is exactly the type of person I don’t want leading the Green Party. I haven’t heard too much about David Chernu…whatever, but from what I read on his website so far he seems like a better choice for me. Why I’m telling you this I don’t know.

From the content of Darrell and Martin’s postings, we see a pattern:

• They want to hear about solutions, and the politician’s ideas.
  
• They aren’t interested in the history of a problem, outside of the context of the solution.
  
• They get turned off by negative language, and by politicians blaming others for problems.
  
• They’re turned off by the claim that a politician has the solution for a problem.
  
• They want to evaluate a politician on the strength of his or her ideas and solutions.

The next leader of the Green Party must reach out beyond the traditional demographic of the Green Party. We can’t keep preaching to our own, then whine and cry when we don’t get included in the TV debates. We can’t keep talking like activists and then wonder why people think we don’t understand other issues. In essence, it’s time to grow up, and join the big leagues.

1. I’ve edited the post to add links, a footnote, and clean up some of my mailer’s cruftiness, but the text remains unchanged (back)
2. In EM’s defense, the Green Party has always been pretty weak on the specifics of our solutions. When we were a fringe party, that was par for the course, but now’s we’re playing in a different league. But that’s a topic for another post. -e (back)