Why Martin Can't Win (and What He Could Do About It)

Why Martin Can't Win (and What He Could Do About It)

"In the last election, Stephen Harper lost because people "filled in the blanks" about what a Harper government might mean to our "Canadian values." In other words, the Liberal Party ran a cool campaign, betting on the ambiguity to save the day. Which it did. Sort of. In fact, for the last nearly forty years - ever since the master of political cool, Pierre Elliot Trudeau - the Liberal Party has run nothing but cool campaigns. That's all they know. Chrétien, a devoted student of PET, was as well a master of cool politics."

"Harper creates a hot environment - fragmentation among constituencies, intense, simplistic, repeated tropes that induce hypnotic effects, an explicitness that precludes active awareness of contextual consequences. And he is very effectively using today's primary hot medium - television - to deliver a hot message, and Canadians cannot turn away. Paul Martin, quite literally, is cooked. "


What is the (Next) Message?