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FREE MARKET ENTHUSIASMS Lost in the Suburbs: A Political Travelogue * * * Those accustomed to a provincial politics comprised of equal parts slapstick comedy and blustering self-service can be forgiven for not having paid much notice to Ontario’s Common Sense Revolution. From this coast, the squad of Moore’s suits who formed Mike Harris’ Tory government in 1995 seemed familiar enough: politicos eager to share their free-market enthusiasms and zest for fiscal responsibility and low taxation. Nothing new about buying votes. Thing was, over time much of the promises made during the Tories’ tightly scripted campaign were kept, and it became clear they quite literally meant business. Massive spending cuts and the dismantling of social programs served to put the province’s financial house in order, and new and menacing enemies were found in the phalanxes of welfare recipients, civil servants and schoolteachers standing in the way of common sense. If there is a template for the kind of tough love with which the Harris government sold itself to voters, it won’t be found in the campaigns of Brian Mulroney or even Ralph Klein. In sheer form, the Harris platform borrowed heavily from a campaign that swept New Jersey Republican governor Christine Todd Whitman to victory in 1993. In spirit, however, the style of politics that brought Harris to power was forged three decades ago in Orange County, California, where a new kind of voter was first identified amid its sprawling suburbs. In Lost in the Suburbs, Ottawa reporter Stephen Dale contends that, to 1960s politicians such as governor Ronald Reagan, Orange County’s densely populated instant communities served up a ripe new demographic of middle class voters, to whom small government, low taxes and toughness on crime hit home. These citizens, living the newly discovered American dream of automobile commutes and crippling mortgage payments, had no difficulty being sold a new and brutal brand of common sense. As industries and jobs began to flee urban centres and spring up in so-called edge cities, the lives of middle class Southern Californians became increasingly more insular, tough-guy Republican governors were elected again and again on the strength of the suburban vote, and quality of life for those falling below the new demographic suffered ever more. Dale spent months in suburban Southern California and in the areas around Toronto, sifting through the artefacts of long- and short-term common sense, and what he digs up with will be fascinating to those interested in the fate of North America’s beleaguered cities. It will also be illuminating, and perhaps a little chilling, to those baffled by the continuing success of the Harris government. |
