Nichol's Third Reason Says It All

Monday, May 05, 2008

Anatomy of a scandal

The latest polls seem to indicate the Conservative Party has not been hurt too much by the Elections Canada "scandal."

On the surface, this might surprise a lot of people considering the shellacking the Tories have been taking from the media and from the Opposition parties over this matter.

Yet there are three reasons why we shouldn't be surprised.

First, the allegations against the Conservatives are convoluted, involving as they do a scheme whereby the national headquarters gave money to local ridings who then gave it back to the national headquarters who used it to pay for national ads, but the local ridings also received reimbursements for running local ads etc, etc, etc. A certified accountant may be able to follow all this stuff but it will give everyone else a headache.

A real scandal is one you can communicate in one sentence, ie "The governor hired a hooker."

Second, real scandals are the ones where people feel they are being personally ripped off. For instance, the "adscam scandal" hurt the Liberals because it looked like they were robbing our tax dollars to make their buddies rich. By contrast, the Tories are accused of violating some arcane election law. That might bother Canadians, but it won't infuriate them.

Third and lastly, thanks to all the government scandals we have been exposed to over the past few years, we are probably becoming used to them. It's getting harder and harder to shock an increasingly cynical population.

Still even though the Elections Canada issue won't necessarily kill the Tories, it will still hurt their image.