The Cult of the Political Outsider Even the People in Power Think They Have None, Writes Andrew Potter

The cult of the political outsider Even the people in power think they have none, writes Andrew Potter

ANDREW POTTER, OTTAWA CITIZEN Published on: September 15, 2011

But the cult of the outsider that Samara has discovered among departing parliamentarians suggests that a large number of MPs see themselves as just too cool for school. One of the most belaboured themes of Canadian public discourse is that our political system is dysfunctional. If that is true, maybe it is because the people we send to Ottawa didn’t bother thinking about why they were going there in the first place.

Yet while the work that Samara is doing is valuable in all sorts of ways, there is an important qualification that has to be kept in mind. There are two ways to leave Parliament: you can quit, or you can be fired, and the 65 former MPs that Samara spoke to are all people whose political lives have ended in failure of some sort. Put a bit cruelly, everyone involved in the exit interview process is, in one form or another, a loser.

The simple fact of the selection bias that is built into the entire exit interview process probably goes a long way to explaining why so many departing members of Parliament feel like outsiders. It is because they are. It also suggests that we should be very wary of taking at face value the ideas these former MPs have for reform.

It is worth pointing out that, in contrast, the front benches of the current government are packed with men and women who have spent the bulk of their adult (and in many cases, teenage) lives focused on political careers. Jason Kenny, John Baird, Peter MacKay, Rona Ambrose, Tony Clement, Peter Van Loan, Marjory LeBreton . read down the roster of Stephen Harper’s cabinet, and what you encounter is a squadron of political lifers.

If there’s an ultimate lesson in Samara’s exit interviews, then, perhaps it is this: if you want to be successful in Canadian politics, you should probably start by taking Canadian politics seriously.