Thursday, April 25, 2013

The Liberal Ads

No one likes a prick.

And from a political standpoint the Conservatives have been just that.  For years they have made politics personal.  In any other environment if Stephen Harper would have orchestrated the negative, personal campaigns against colleagues that he did against Mr. Dion and Mr. Ignatieff he would have been in trouble.  He would have faced consequences at his job, he would have faced legal consequences and he might even have had to use his body to cash all of the cheques his mouth wrote.

However, politics is not the real world.  While it seemed counter-intuitive that these negative, personal attacks would be effective they were and the reason for that was the targets of these campaigns never effectively responded to them.  Both Mr. Dion and Mr. Ignatieff waited weeks and months before responding to Conservative attacks on them and with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight that was perceived as weakness, which is a killer in politics.

I do not know of anyone who voted for the Conservatives because they liked them or Mr. Harper.  But they voted for them anyway.  The reason is evident.  In politics being seen as a prick is better than being seen as weak.

Unfortunately, that has a built in trap.  If very few people actually like you it does come back to bite you on the ass eventually.

That is the reason why I find the Liberal English ad rather clever.  The first few seconds of the ad reminds the viewer of why they do not like the Conservatives.  They are pricks.  Then the ad tries to demonstrate that Mr. Trudeau is much more likeable or to put it another way, he is not a prick.

It is an interesting strategy and I would think a good one at this stage of the game.  If, in the next few months, they can keep reminding Canadians of why they do not like the Conservatives in general and Mr. Harper in particular while showing Mr. Trudeau as being a likeable and affable kind of guy they could go a long way towards making the next election very interesting and competitive.

Only the fullness of time will tell us how effective the Liberal ads are but they are a rather clever opening salvo.

7 comments:

Michael said...

"For years they have made politics personal."

===============

The Liberals have been making politics "personal" for years right up until the time the Tories became the government. So NOW the Tories have made it personal?

Oh please.

ottlib said...

Yabut, yabut, yabut, the big bad Liberals did it first. *sniff*

Pathetic.

ottlib said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

Guns on the street. How soon we forget.

kitt said...

And how true.... guns on the street

Gene Rayburn said...

Yes Prairie Kid how soon we forget

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PikszBkfTHM

rockfish said...

'guns on the street' never ran. no taxpayers money was used to stuff it through canadians' mailboxes.
just because the G8 summit ended up with 'guns on the streets' doesn't justify such an ad, lying and stooping to character assassinations because one weak leader refuses to talk with canadians is no justification for all the crap that's been shovelled out the past 6 years. But don't take my word for it. A lot of Canadians will deliver it soon enough.