Conservatism and me, part three: Foreign policy and war

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The continuing disaster of Rob Ford

Some of my snarkier commenters like to remind me that I predicted that Rob Ford would lose the 2010 mayor's race, which I spent the better part of a year doing. In large part, I do so because Toronto is a fundamentally liberal city and, even during the last weekend of the campaign, the polls were showing upwards of 25% of the vote being undecided, which is unheard of. But I do cop to being wrong.

What those commenters don't like to admit is that everything else I predicted has actually come to pass. Candidate Ford's fantastical notion that half of City Council would vote itself out of existence was never again mentioned after election night. The central plank of his electoral platform, building tens of billions of dollars of subways with no plausible way of paying for them, has led to repeated humiliations at the hands of both Council and Queen's Park.

I also said that, if elected, Ford would do unspeakable damage to conservatism in this city. You have to remember that Etobicoke Slim is a guy who inherited wealth and a political machine and all he ever did on Council was flout that wealth and vote "no" a lot. These are things that pretty much anyone could do, if given the opportunity.

Unlike Mel Lastman, who also drove me nuts for the better part of my life, Ford never had a set of ideas or a philosophy with which he could govern. Instead, he harnessed populist outrage at the foibles of the far left during the Miller years. But his platform was every bit as implausible as the Left's was, promising to take cuts to things like gardening at City Hall and magically turn it into untold billions in new spending, which turned out to be an almost majestic lie. When Hizzoner subsequently tried taking an axe to popular social services, he was defeated by Council and his approval went into the toilet.

Since then, both Prime Minister Harper and Ontario Conservative leader Tim Hudak have given the mayor and his ridiculous "Ford Nation" a wide berth, fearing that his unpopularity might actually be contagious. Despite very promising early polls, the provincial Tories were shut out in Toronto, in part because Hudak is the dumbest motherfucker on earth, but also in reaction to Ford's drag on the party.

If the Left can get their shit together enough to run a single candidate against Ford in the next election, I believe that he'll lose in a pretty impressive way. Worse, he'll be an albatross around the neck of the conservative movement for a generation. And don't believe for a second that I'm the only one saying that. It's becoming a pretty regular (albeit off the record) refrain from the serious players in the conservative establishment here. Not only are Harper and Hudak keeping their distance, so are the heavy hitters from the Harris, Mulroney and Davis years.

Then there's the not inconsiderable matter of the mayor's personality. At best, he's a blowhard. At worst, he's a potentially violent retard. Neither of these traits were a secret from the electorate before the campaign, and neither have been mitigated by power and responsibility. Toronto police have been dispatched to his home on several occasions, often - but not always - due to his inability to get along with his wife.

Which brings me to what happened Wednesday night. Just when you think that Rob Ford's life and mayoralty can't get more bizarre, he surprises you. You've got to at least give him that. It's a gift.

Against my better instincts, I try to give folks the benefit of the doubt. However, I'm also of the conservative opinion that your credibility diminishes with each visit you make to the back of a police cruiser. And my mayor has had more adverse contact with the constabulary than even Paul Bernardo, who was only placed in custody once. As it is, he's a few music lessons shy of qualifying for the original lineup of Guns N' Roses. If you ever wondered what it would be like to be governed by Axl Rose, look no further than Toronto.

Furthermore, Ford's story keeps changing. He now says that he wants to buy the land so his children have a (considerably) larger play area, but his application to the city focuses on the need for a security fence. So far as I know, no previous mayor has requested public land for either. Ford initially denied that he approached Dale with a raised fist, bit now says that he wasn't sure whether he was going to hit him or not. He also now concedes that his fist "could have" been cocked and ready to strike.

Both the mayor and his public relations disaster of a brother say that they have home security footage of the incident, but won't release it to the public. This begs the question, "Why not?" If that footage completely exonerates the mayor, why not release it, especially since it would have the added benefit of deeply embarrassing his mortal enemies at The Toronto Star? The Ford family's refusal to put the video out there can lead a reasonable person to conclude that they're telling less than the whole truth.

The tape is going to come out anyway. Ford didn't make many friends on the force when he tried to strongarm their budget last year, and embarrassing things do tend to leak from police headquarters when that happens. Unfortunately, the mayor no longer has the opportunity to ask Jack Layton how that works.

Ford's supporters are having a field day pretending that Daniel Dale is a paparazzo at best, and a pervert at worst. Of course, they ignore entirely that he won a National Newspaper Award just last week, which tends to suggest that he's neither. Dale has no history of publicly immolating himself, yet Rob Ford does. Ford Nation also seems to think that Hizzoner's request of public land for private use isn't something worthy of consideration, although I suspect they'd feel differently if a dirty hippie like David Miller tried it.

On the other hand, this latest fiasco allows the Fords to do what modern conservatives love doing most, running against the media and whining about their own supposed victimhood.

Conservatives have been running against the Star for at least a generation, and it actually has a pretty good success rate, provided you don't actually live in Toronto. But the mayor is taking this to a new, silly and potentially ruinous level. Ford went to work yesterday demanding that the Star remove Dale from City Hall, which he knows they can't do while maintaining any self-respect. Now he's gone even further, saying that he won't talk to the media at all if anyone from the Star is in the vicinity.

That goes a long way in proving my long-held contention that Mayor Rob Ford might actually be retarded or suffered one football-related head injury too many. He obviously wasn't paying attention to how well it worked out when the Obama administration tried to cut Fox News out a couple of years ago. The White House Press Corps rallied around Fox and the Obama people had to relent in a truly humiliating way.

There's no reason to believe that the Toronto media won't do exactly the same thing on behalf of the Star. Even Ford-supporting outlets like the Sun know that a future lefty mayor might try to blackball them and the support of the commies at the Star could come in handy if that comes to pass. What Rob and Doug Ford are too deranged and dumb to understand is that the media has interests that transcend ideology or partisanship. For supposed businessmen, they don't seem to understand business very well.

Here's one of life's dirty little secrets, teenagers. Politicians need the press a whole lot more than the press needs politicians. The media can just as easily chase Lindsay Lohan around, all the while having more fun and probably making more money. But without the mass media, politicians have no way of getting their message out beyond their own true believers. Ford's is a piddling little piss-puddle of a childish threat, and precisely what this city has come to expect from him.

Rob Ford's entire agenda is now being regularly shithammered into hell by City Council and he seemingly can't leave the office without finding some new and novel way of embarrassing both himself and the city. The best part? We're barely 18 months into his term.

The sad thing is that it's going to be almost impossible to elect a halfway serious conservative in this city in his disastrous wake.