Matt Todd's Pursuit of Idyll Minds

It seems to me, one of the things that helps a new candidate win an election is that they be outspoken. Being outspoken is usually fuelled by opinions. Voters want to see a potential elected representative as being familiar with the issues and willing to take a stand for their ideas.

What’s interesting is that citizens seem to prefer candidates who don’t shy away from sharing their opinions, but yet get very aggravated, even outraged, when an elected representative disagrees with them. It makes for an awkward and confusing learning curve for a newly elected politicians.

In doing a bit of research preparing for this week’s Social Committee meeting, someone explained to me that many people only feel listened to if you agree with them. After being conditioned to worry about inciting an obstructionist, this creates the need to temporize with ambiguity and vague commitments.

Sometimes I look at the way I’m dealing with issues, and I don’t like what I see. I’m learning to be a politician. I didn’t want to be a politician. I wanted to be the anti-politics politician. Unfortunately it often feels like I’m having that beat out of me.

It has become obvious that the reason politicians act like politicians is because that’s what they have to do in order to achieve goals. It’s something learned through trial and error after being elected – learning by what people in the community accept and what they reject.

Though people complain about politics, it really is an animal of their own creation.

Many people say that “perception is reality”. I have often heard that it is most important for elected people to appear to be effective.

The obvious problem with this, of course, is that councillors make choices everyday in how to spend their time. Given the choice of working on something with long-term and dramatic impacts or appearing in public, someone who is more concerned about their reputation than actually achieving meaningful results would abandon the lower profile or non-public meeting in order to be seen as effective. It’s an interesting contradiction.

This does little to build teamwork among councillors as the more important tasks end up being completed by the remaining councillors, but those who abandoned the effort actually end up looking good in the public eye. Voters reward self-promoters.

I personally hope that politicians would choose to focus on making improvements to the community over building their public image.

It’s disappointing, but the reality is that voters tend to see only a flashes of the work of an elected person. And perception is reality, so what they see in that fleeting glimpse is what they have to base their judgment upon.

So, for political survival and success, I suppose it is more important to be seen as effective than it is to be effective. I’m just not sure it supports effective governance.

Vancouver is often called the most livable city in the world. After visiting Montreal, I wonder about the criteria.

What I saw was a city where decent rental housing was available for a couple hundred a month. Ownership is still possible under $200,000. The streets were very safe. The neighbourhoods are compact and walkable. The people are diverse and accommodating. Road rage is relatively non-existent. I saw very few panhandlers, none who would follow you with their story about running out of gas and needing to get back to Abbotsford. Though built out, it is green. Trees everywhere. They don’t seem infested with the kind of view-mania that nags BC trees to death. There are neighbourhood parks throughout. There is public art everywhere. Public festivals fill the calendar.

Montreal is a mature and confident city from which Vancouver cities have a lot to learn.

My, my how quickly the tables turn when someone in the room has millions of dollars in their pocket. It’s surprising to see who in this community seems to find it so easy to spend other people’s money. It’s become a room full of righteous pick-pockets. Attempted extorion justified by the oft-repeated statement that Bosa should be “giving back to the community”. Greed is greed.

A lot of people seem to have a lot to say about how much money Bosa will make from their Town Centre development amendment. And as the figures fly, I wonder, so what?

It’s amazing how fast communist rhetoric shoots from the mouths of the most conservative conservatives as the community salivates over Bosa’s potential profits. I always thought I was a socialist, but here I am asking the question, why shouldn’t they make a lot of money?

I hope they do. If they make a lot of money, then hopefully other developments will follow. Those redevelopments bring opportunity.

In the meantime, all those who think that scanning the real estate listing makes them a pro forma expert should put down the calculator and think about the principles of a healthy community that need to be maintained and strengthened. Let’s stay focused on those, shall we?

It’s a bit depressing to see so many examples where being nice and attractive is apparently more important to voters than being intelligent and constructive. Unfortunately, I’ve learned that an amiable personality and agreeable appearance are not reliable indicators of a person’s ability to make good decisions. Since elections are all about choosing people to make decisions on our behalf, it’s really too bad that manners and physical attractiveness so often trump competence.

After writing my post from this morning I was wondering, why do some people get so upset when it is revealed that they weren’t paying attention to something that maybe they ought to have? I wonder if this is another example of a culture that avoids taking personal responsibility for our choices. To blame government communications is to try to deflect taking responsibility for the fact that they didn’t think the information interesting enough to catch their attention until it had some obvious relevance to their personal lives. ie: “the City didn’t do enough to tell residents about plans to redevelop the town centre!” But yet those plans had been on the books and the subject of public meetings and newspaper articles since 1966. It has been a very active subject since 1987. There was a brief denial of logic for several years (“I don’t want it to make sense because then I would have to accept something I don’t think I will like”), but the body of evidence and principles only grew stronger.

There should be more to “communicating” than trying to convince someone to agree with you. What is the purpose of communicating if you’re not trying to get someone to agree with you? There is so much value in simply sharing perspectives. I hope we, as a community, can foster open communications – sharing of stories.

I find it interesting how often it seems people complaining that I’m not listening are actually just upset that I don’t agree with them. The way they see it, if I were listening, obviously I would agree with them.

I see the complaint that the city is not communicating very well much the same way. Certainly in White Rock we have a lot of work to do for improving how we communicate in the community. But that criticism is too often used as a cover-up for the fact that people find political issues boring or the human reality that we don’t usually pay much attention to things that don’t seem relevant to our lives at the time.

Is this a point of pride? Is there a reason people don’t want to simply say, “I wasn’t listening” or “I never really paid attention to that because it didn’t seem interesting at the time.” Why should there be shame in that?

Why blame government communications for your lack of interest? Government shouldn’t have to market citizenship and democratic responsibilities like toothpaste or beer.

I often hear complaints that start with “If government were run like a business…”. The rant is usually about the time it takes for decision-making or the cost of conducting government affairs. It is also used in criticising the use of tax dollars, often with something similar to “if this was your own money, you’d be more careful with how you spent it.”

Unfortunately, those are competing arguments – act faster, be more careful. It’s a similar contradiction to the oft offered ‘be more creative, take less risk’ advice. Then followed by the angst-laden criticism of wasted tax dollars if an experiment fails.

Government is not business. Government has to be more careful than business. Government has to be much more open and transparent than business.

Openness and transparency is expensive, invites criticism needing a response, and creates an environment of fear and culture of risk aversion.

The expectation that government not make mistakes causes a decision-making system that has many layers of scrutiny built in. All that time, all those reports, and all those procedures – it all costs money. They are all staff intensive. More staff time = more of your tax dollars.

Business doesn’t have to jump through those public hoops. That’s why it takes so much longer for government to get anything done. And perhaps that’s why it’s so rare for a government to go bankrupt, but quite normal for businesses to close shop.

Is this another case of being careful of what you ask for? Will demanding faster decision-making create more risk? Will demanding more careful spending actually cause an increase in administrative spending?

I am increasingly finding myself frustrated with this responsibility, working within this structure, with these personalities. Hypocrisy has always been a big red button for me. I know it’s unavoidable. But I have an expectation that people at least try to not be hypocrites. Is that really an unfair expectation?

I’ve always been totally intolerant of people who demonstrate a lack of respect for others. And I interpret blatant hypocrisy (lack of any attempt to act as you expect of others) as a lack of respect for others. I see it as an issue of fairness and honesty.

When people point out a difference between what I say and what I do, my reaction depends on the context. If the message is delivered within an attempt to dismiss or discredit my perceptions, I find myself getting defensive and turning to the offensive in response. But if they are asking a question – truly interested in finding more about an apparent contradiction – I actually appreciate that. I see it as a learning opportunity, either to better communicate/demonstrate/project my ideas, or to work on weaknesses in my ideas. It can help me strengthen my arguments, or help me see that what I’m working on might not meet the goals I’m hoping for.

I find many people take offense when they’ve told me what they think of me or one of my idea and I follow-up with questions. Somehow my questions are interpreted as argumentative. But I really want to know. I really want to explore what it is they are presenting. I believe there is a difference between arguing and debating, and again with discussing. When someone offers an opinion about me or an idea I am pursuing, I usually want to explore that opinion. How did you arrive at that opinion? What facts were considered? What are the underlying assumptions? What were the perceptions that support those assumptions?

I enjoy those kinds of discussions. I makes my brain feel like it’s getting a good workout. Unfortunately it’s rare to find someone who is willing to engage. It seems most people want to just cast their judgment then run away. Don’t want to talk about it, don’t want to defend it. Just tell me their conclusion but not want to help me understand what it means or how it was arrived at. And certainly don’t want to test it with any of my questions.

I think it’s sad. Sad for democracy that so many seem incapable or unwilling to fully engage in sharing and exploring ideas.

I find a lot of politicians disappointing for the same reason. They act as if they were elected to render judgments, so how they arrive at those conclusions is nobody else’s business.

I think that’s why I have such disdain for populist politics. It seems so often that they follow this concept of “common sense” by working backwards to justify what the community is saying it wants, rather than identifying the problems that is causing them concern, then determining what it is the best course of action. I’m sure the conclusion is often the same, but shouldn’t we make sure first?

I really really dislike reactive politics. And I have a really big difficulty respecting reactive politicians. They seem more concerned about looking like they’re solving a problem than actually solving the problem. And I think that’s pathetic.