Tom’s take: Authenticity matters in politics

For decades now, there has been one golden rule for aspiring politicians: authenticity is everything, and if you can fake that, you’ve got it made.

The author got it half right. Authenticity is the key to electoral success, but faking it inevitably leads to the boneyard of broken ambition.

Think of Stephen Harper’s sweater vest. That weird attempt at creating an “authentic” nice guy was called out as a fake. No one bought it, not even his supporters. It was at that moment Harper started down the long, yellow brick road to political extinction. It took a while, but it was inevitable because he had lost the essential personal connection to voters that is the key to survival.

Until his last year, most voters liked what he did, but not who he was, whoever that was.

So when Justin Trudeau came along, exuding authenticity, Harper was left exposed, vulnerable, and ultimately, defeated.

I would suggest the same thing happened to NDP leader Tom Mulcair. After building a very authentic profile as the tough, no-nonsense prosecutor-in-chief in question period, he hit the campaign trail like a giggling guru, smiling and laughing as if seized by some other-worldly vision.

Most people who worked for Mulcair never saw that benign spirit behind closed doors. But his advisors knew that they had to keep “angry Tom” away from public view and replace it with “happy Tom.”

The problem was nobody bought it. In fact, at times, it was a bit creepy.

Authenticity also explains a lot of what is happening south of the border.

Donald Trump may be a buffoon, but he’s an authentic buffoon. His crowds don’t know that so much as they simply feel it.

When he yells at the person who installed his microphone because it makes him sound bad, the crowd eats it up because they believe he is that belligerent in all aspects of his life.

There’s nothing phoney about his boorishness.

The same applies to Bernie Saunders on the Democratic side.

He sounds like everyone’s perpetually grumpy Uncle Gerry, and who would fake that?

In fact it’s why it’s so easy for Larry David to imitate him. If there’s no artifice. Mimicking is simple.

The authenticity scales work the other way for Hillary Clinton. Every word she speaks seems to be the product of a committee. Her laugh is contrived and vetted by focus groups. Her positions are vague enough that they could mean just about anything.

People don’t like fakes and phoneys. There’s always the suspicion that they’re trying to pull a fast one, and they usually are.

Which brings us to the strange case of Kevin O’Leary.

Mr. O’Leary has never seen a camera that he doesn’t want to run to. He seems to love fame almost more than he loves money.

So he poses as a sneering, heartless jerk on reality shows in Canada and the United States, building a marketable and profitable, if not likeable, TV image.

Now, according to him, he is the subject of a growing public demand to run for politics. Not just any politics, mind you, but the top job in the Conservative Party.

The real question about O’Leary is whether he’s for real.

On one hand he comes across as the love child of Donald Trump and Doctor Evil (I will pay…one million dollars to get rid of Rachel Notley).

As a Trump mini-me, he’s almost convincing.

On the other hand, how much of his buffoonery is fake, put on as part of the continuing campaign to make himself famous and profitable.

The call of the people, that so far only he can hear, may turn to a mumble if that’s the case.

Being a cheap knock off of Trump is hardly being authentic.

But if he is a genuine jerk, not just someone who plays one on TV, he may have a shot.

If Conservatives believe that in the privacy of his own home, O’Leary sneers at his dog the same way he sneers at his game show participants, then he may meet the authenticity test.

And as we’ve seen, being authentic doesn’t make any politican smarter or better, but it does make them more electable.