Politics is always about perception. It’s the one thing that gets people elected and governments defeated. There is no more powerful agent of change.
The problem for politicians is that how they are perceived isn’t always within their control. It’s easier, in fact, to alter the public’s perception of opponents than it is to create a bulletproof persona for yourself.
Two of the most unlikely people to be found together on this ground are the recently dismissed Conservative MP Dean Del Mastro, and the recently surfaced former Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff. Neither would ever imagine themselves in the same room without there being duelling weapons available, but both know the sting of political perception.
Del Mastro has been charged with offences that could land him in jail. But they are at this point just charges. He will have his date with justice, and will plead his innocence. He may or may not win. That’s how the system works.
But that’s not how perception operates.
His mocking, derisive, insulting, posturing against the opposition parties in question period was greeted with howls of approval from his conservative colleagues and groans of annoyance from the opposition.
By his own doing, he became a caricature of himself and happily became the biggest target on the Hill. This, he thought, would surely gain him entry to the cabinet.
But even before the cheering died down, before the charges were laid, everyone on Parliament Hill knew he was in trouble.
He lost his role in question period as the Conservative attack dog on the robocall allegations, because everyone knew his problems included his use of, well, robocalls.
But he stayed on as the parliamentary secretary to the prime minister.
Two weeks ago, while he was moved away from the prime minister, he was given three positions as parliamentary secretary.
But the moment the charges were laid that all disappeared. The political verdict was read. His former leader, the prime minister, immediately drummed him out of the Conservative party.
There were no comforting words of support from the Conservative spin machine as there were for Peter Penashue, the last conservative MP who fell afoul of the election laws. There was no ringing defence from the prime minister as there was for Conservative Senator Pamela Wallin, when he declared that he had looked at her expenses and found them to be perfectly reasonable.
Now it may turn out that Elections Canada has him nailed dead to rights, and then of course resignation and disgrace would be a suitable sentence. But political perception never waits. His political career and aspirations are already in tatters before the first bang of the judge’s gavel.
Ignatieff isn’t charged with anything more serious than poltical naiveté, but his sentence by the court of political perception was as swift and decisive as Del Mastro’s. By the time he won his party’s leadership, he didn’t stand a chance.
In his new book, “Fire and Ashes,” Ignatieff tries to understand what happened to him and places almost the entire blame on those infamous Conservative attack ads that portrayed him as an out of touch American intellectual.
The problem for Ignatieff, and what made the perception stick, was that the charges were essentially true. By his own admission, Ignatieff says when he returned, he was shocked and appalled at how the country had changed since he had left more than three decades ago.
He writes that he had no idea just how dysfunctional the Liberal party had become. The professor hadn’t done his assigned homework.
He was like Dorothy landing in Oz, and immediately campaigning to become the wizard, only to be captured by the flying monkeys of the PMO.
But the perception had set and he couldn’t fight back, not because the Liberals were broke and couldn’t afford the ads, but because he had little defence. If an attack has the added benefit of being true, it’s a powerful mover of opinion.
So two political careers fell off the rails, not because of proven wrongdoing, or political chicanery, but because perception trumped all else. They both have found out there is no appeal of the sentence.
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