Celebrity democracy

You can bet that neither the Conservatives nor the NDP are taking this Justin Trudeau business lying down. Plan A, of course, is to expose him as a well-coiffed puffball. Plan B is to turn on the charm of the existing players. But it’s plan C—going celebrity to celebrity—that really has my attention.

Plan A is no secret. So let’s move on and get Plan B out of the way quickly as well. I just can’t see how Stephen (“eyes of a mackerel, teeth of a shark”) Harper is going to be transformed by the image makeover people. It didn’t work for Vladimir Putin, despite the hang gliders and bare chest; and Stephen Harper is no Vladimir Putin. Nor can I see it working for Thomas Mulcair, unless your idea of a charismatic leader is the guy who always likes to win the argument at a department of sociology sherry party. And as for charismatic successors coming down the pipe, I don’t see any. Prime Minister Van Loan? Prime Minister Turmel? The names just don’t ring true. So we’re on to Plan C. And that plan is to say, “Well, if they’re leading trumps, we’ll trump their trumps.” In other words, both the Conservatives and the New Democrats should go the celebrity succession route.

The choice for the Conservatives is obvious— it’s Ben Mulroney. Check the checklist: handsome, quick witted, prime ministerial lineage, plus access to all the stars. He matches up with Trudeau line for line—he even attended Trudeau’s wedding. And, needless to say, he has already learned, and is therefore unlikely to repeat, a painful family political lesson: never be caught in an airport hotel room accepting brown envelopes of cash from German businessmen with an agenda.

The choice for the NDP is also pretty obvious. Remember who was voted the most important Canadian of all time? It just so happens that the late Tommy Douglas is the grandfather of the well known Hollywod actor Kiefer Sutherland. And he comes from Hollywood royalty as well: you can still hear the voice of his father, the actor Donald Sutherland, in about every commercial message that isn’t already narrated by Gordon Pinsent or Christopher Plummer. So there’s an action hero for you with a resume that’s triple the size of those of the two younger pretty boys.

So the Conservatives and the NDP are in position to put forward celebrity candidates of equal stature to Justin Trudeau. How then do we have it out among them to determine the best candidate? We can’t expect celebrities to be deep thinkers about what they call ‘policy’ so on what basis do we choose?

This is where new techniques and social media could really play a big role. For example, we could have a television show, streamed on to the Internet and to smart phones with a special ‘app,’ entitled “Battle of the Network Prime Ministers,” which sets the three leaders up against one another in a contest, the winner of which is determined by the public. Categories could include general and historical knowledge; best hairdressing secret; flattest abdomen; biggest celebrity known personally; most endearing trait; most egregious exploitation of celebrity status coupled with appropriate humility; and so on.

The winner would go on to be declared Prime Minister, and each would be entitled to choose a caucus based on the percentage of the popular vote he obtained. Each Prime Minister would then serve for two ratings seasons (so that short-term pandering would be avoided), at which time a fresh contest would be held.

By selecting a Prime Minister in this way, we would be spared the expense, inconvenience and shame of a general election. (Remember, the robo-calls investigation is not over and we still await the Supreme Court of Canada ruling, which may or may not overturn a lower court decision to set aside the election result in a Toronto riding over voter registration anomalies.)

And by the same token, what better way to engage the public than to have a companion program, a ‘celebrity recall’ event? If the Prime Minister took a totally unpopular and therefore obviously wrong decision (like trying to reduce the deficit on the backs of ordinary Canadians), or a challenger wanted to take on an incumbent party leader, he or she could be replaced in a “Battle of the Network Party Leaders.” To avoid frivolity, of course, you would have to establish a certain threshold level to signal consideration of a change was warranted. That threshold might be crossed, for example, if 50 per cent of the numbers a candidate won with had ‘unfriended’ him or her on Facebook. In that way, we could be assured of always having a celebrity as Prime Minister, because anyone who got enough votes to challenge the incumbent celebrity would be, well, a celebrity too.

And that’s just scratching the surface of the democratic reforms that could be undertaken with a Trudeau candidacy. So let’s bring him on; and may the most endearing performer win.

David Simmonds’s writing is also available at www.grubstreet.ca.