Obama-mania may have lost some of its lustre, but politics can still be resurrected from the blogosphere and reality TV

by Jim Meek

It's late January, a day after Barack Obama delivered a dispiriting State of the Union speech in the U.S. Congress. It isn't as if the president has lost grip of his stunning oratorical skills or his ability to lean gamely into the face of a fierce headwind. What has gone missing, in the first 12 months of his presidency, is our conviction that he has the stuff of great leadership. We still want it from him, even expect it. But all we know, with certainty, is that the man is a superb actor and formidable campaigner.

We also sense that he has started to sound a lot like George Bush on terrorism; that he has largely failed to translate "Yes, we can!" into "Yes, we did!"; and that his defining ambition (health care reform) eluded his grasp as his self-imposed deadline for achieving it (in 2009) slipped past.

Obama's modest proposal for extending health care insurance to all Americans foundered late last fall, before crashing spectacularly on the rocks of Massachusetts politics in early 2010. The Democrats managed to lose Ted Kennedy's old Senate seat to an upstart Republican, and along with it the leverage to safely usher medicare reform through the Upper House of Congress.

It is temping to write that the dream died with Teddy. But something more troubling is taking place: Over the last 20 years or so, politics in North America has been transformed into a new game—it now feels like the "art of the impossible." Inside Canada, we haven't witnessed a landmark achievement since the 1980s, when Pierre Trudeau repatriated the Constitution while entrenching a Charter of Rights and Brian Mulroney persuaded Canadians to endorse a Free Trade Agreement with the United States.

Closer to home, New Brunswick's Frank McKenna forged an astounding attitudinal change based on his conviction that the province really could achieve an "economic miracle." McKenna wanted us to think and act big, but woe has befallen New Brunswick premiers who have since tried to emulate his success. In 2006, a month after he was elected, I interviewed Premier Shawn Graham for Progress in his Fredericton office. I was struck by his idealism, energy, and determination to set the province on a course to self-sufficiency. Three years later, he found himself sinking beneath the weight of his laudable ambition.

I can't really comment on the agreement to sell part of NB Power to Hydro-Québec. But I will risk saying this: The merits of the deal aside, the debate surrounding it was more accusatory than informed, more personal than perceptive. It's as if our cultural preference for character assassination and conspiracy theory—the former fed by reality TV, the latter by the blogosphere—has hijacked honest political debate, and along with it fair-minded journalism.

Unless you're Danny Williams, then, the only kind of government to run is a safe one, a caretaker administration on the Jean Chrétien model. (Here's wishing Danny a quick recovery from his recent heart surgery.) The late John Savage ran an activist government in Nova Scotia in the mid-1990s, when he tried to reform health care, introduce municipal government reform, and eliminate party patronage. The Liberal premier scored his successes, but his party hounded him out of office before the voters got a chance to do it themselves.

This would all be amusing enough, in its way, except for the fact that we now seem to face the kind of issues—climate change, an aging demographic, the emergence of China and India as economic superpowers—that require both informed debate and bold policy action. And as we cast about for relief, it might be wise to avoid the usual anodyne prescriptions—more booze, citizen indifference, and channel surfing.

We still hope, of course, that Obama can revive politics as the art of the possible. And I also found myself taking some courage, early this year, from Prime Minister Stephen Harper's surprise plea (at the Davos summit) for global politics based on "enlightened sovereignty."

Writ large, the idea seems to be that the world's nations should act together in their common self-interest. This is pretty vague stuff, I admit. But at least the prime minister has offered the world an intriguing, even necessary, idea. That's a start, and we badly need to put one foot forward right about now.

Jim Meek is a freelance writer and consultant with Bristol. He can be reached at jmeek@bristolgroup.ca.