Where's the gaffe?

Wednesday: "Look, I think when the other guys are complaining we're turning people away, and they can't get people, I think that tells you how this campaign is going, I want to get our message out to as many people as are interested in hearing it... I think it's better when you’re turning people away than when you can't get people to come out."

Thursday: "If anybody is kept out of any of our events that is there to hear our message, we obviously apologize to them."

Making people who are interested in attending the Tory Leader's tour events register was not a gaffe, it was a plan, so that doesn't score. Keeping out or removing anyone suspected of showing less than full-throated support for the Prime Minister was part of that same plan (the term "bubble boy" has begun to spread in the media), so that doesn't score either. But, in the face of criticism, Wednesday's lame attempt to pivot served only to give the story more oxygen. Prom 3 x Sig 2 = 6.

I leave Thursday's quote here as well, because to my way of thinking, this was no apology at all. There are very few in the media agreeing with me. Perhaps they understand this is as close as we'll ever get to hearing a real apology, so like an exhausted parent, reporters decide to say "close enough" and let it slide. I'm prepared to add more points if the narrative changes, but for now, it seems these words, letting a few unregistered students into last night's event, and releasing the platform this morning has finally ended this story. Total, six for the CPC.

Liberals on the board

John Reilly might be a star candidate in some ways - a prominent judge, published author, and expert in the field of restorative justice. But he's running in Wild Rose, where the Liberal Party hasn't cracked 15% in at least 25 years. Prom = 1

Reilly argued against mandatory minimum sentencing on Dave Rutherford's radio show, arguing that a charge like Sexual Assault covers a wide spectrum of actions, and that mandatory minimums take away a judge's opportunity to differentiate along that spectrum. Agree with this or not, this argument appears to me to be well within reasonable political discourse. Mark your calendars - Tom Flanagan and I agree.

But no - wait! The Conservatives pointed this out to the media, who dutifully went crazy, and both Reilly and Ignatieff apologised unreservedly, so now it's a gaffe. And the timing couldn't have been worse for the Liberals (and gosh, do you think this is why the Tories were scouring the hustings for anything that could be trotted out this way?), producing a story that would run side-by-side with Harper's non-apology for the rally vetting. The timing is what pushes this to a Sig = 2. Total, 2 points.

Scorecard now, explanations in the morning.

Decisions have been made, but I'll spare you the details until coffee is involved. Cons 10, Grit 2, Bloc 3, NDP's shutout continues. They must have with Luongo in goal.

LOOOUUUUU!!!!!!!

But does he have any promises for the 41st Parliament?

Stephen Harper promises another tax break, this one an extension of TFSAs, to be applied just as soon as the budget is balanced. Of course, even by the government's own budget projections, that won't happen until 2016, by which time even Harper's wished-for majority is going to have to call an election.  I suppose that's unless that government has suspended elections, in order to protect us from the anti-democratic possibility of a coalition.

It's worth remembering also that the Conservatives reduced corporate taxes last year, making it harder to balance the budget. I'm sure they were relieved to find out that they didn't have to wait for a balanced budget to get their cut.

On a gaffe-ier note, the Prime Minister mumbled his way through a not-apology ("If anyone was removed from a meeting who was there to listen, behave, and cheer wildly at each pronouncement, then I'd feel kinda bad about that..." I don't have the precise quote, but it was mealy-mouthed) for the rally ejections, and I'm definitely scoring something for the whole debacle. Tonight I'll attempt some precision.

Score?

I heard it on the radio this morning, but I can't find a link, and no one seems to have noticed or cared, so my initial instinct to score this was perhaps wrong.

I'm talking about Harper joking about vetting rally attendees, saying it was better to have to turn people away than it is to have to beg people to come. Really? How are people not pointing at this as evidence of the Prime Minister's arrogance?

Comments encouraged.

Edited to add: found a link, anyway.

Preemption

Dated racist mutterings or memberships, even discovered during the writ period, is not a gaffe in the current campaign.

Dear Bill Mah, Edmonton Journal:

Here's some other stories you could do:

Salespeople at Goldline say it's a fantastic time to invest in precious metals.

A car salesman at a car show says it's an exciting time to be a car buyer.

Here's someone in the business of selling private islands. He gives tips to help you determine if a private island is right for your portfolio. (Spoiler alert - it is!) The story is a bit outdated, but certainly as of October of 2009 there was never a better time to buy a private island. You know, you should give Chris Krolow a call, because I bet he'd confirm there's still no better time to buy a private island.

Look. I'm not saying Real Estate will go up, I'm not saying it will go down. I'm just saying that writing a real estate projections story, using only the predictions of someone who makes his living convincing people to buy real estate, is just short of churnalism.

Mock the vote

The CBC reports on young people who won't cast ballots opening with the following:

University of Toronto linguistics student Filip Tisma voted in the last federal election, but has no intention of casting a ballot this time.

"I'd rather just not vote and send a message that way that I'm unpleased with how the voting system is turning out in this country," said Tisma, 22.

Bad news, Filip - the few people who notice you missing from the polls on May 2 will assume you're just another disengaged twenty-something among legion. Political parties will continue to prefer the issues of concern to older voters, safe in the knowledge that post-secondary funding and addressing youth unemployment are not vote winners. The more Filips out there who are not casting ballots, the more the choice falls to people like me - married white men in our forties and in comfortable financial circumstances. More power to me! Nuts and gum, together at last!

(Filip seems to be complaining about the system - the constituency-based first-past-the-post system. No doubt advocates of proportional representation will use the low turnout and quotes like this as evidence of the need for change. I'll save my own thoughts on that for another post, but in this case I think Filip might be making an excuse.)

Helping to discourage young voter engagement is the Conservative Party of Canada, screening event attendees for radical affiliations, like being a Liberal. I'm certain the Conservative Party will say that they're only trying to avoid hecklers, or people who would make a scene. And why not? That's for CPC MPs themselves to do.

I've been asked if kicking people out of their events is a gaffe by the Conservatives for scoring purposes. I think the only gaffe is that they got caught. It's unbelievably stupid, and I hope it continues to blow up in their faces, but keeping the crowds friendly through screening was premeditated as part of their communications strategy, and therefore not a gaffe.

FWIW, QOTD goes to Michael Ignatieff: "We are in a very bad place when you have got a prime minister who does a background check on his audience at a democratic crowd and doesn't seem to do a background check on the people he hires in his Prime Minister's Office, like Mr. Carson." FTW.

Thanks goodness for readers (Cons 4 BQ 3)

Another alert follower of the Gaffeometer has let me know about BQ incumbent Yvon Levesque's racist nonsense. Actually, he was only saying that his constituents are racist, but let's not split hairs:

Yvon Levesque, the incumbent MP for the riding of Abitibi-Baie James-Nunavik-Eeyou, had to apologize Friday after he said "certain voters won’t choose the NDP anymore because they are fielding a First Nations candidate."

Wow! That's pretty stupid, especially in a riding that contains much of Quebec's north. It's pretty stupid, from a party that represents themselves as left-wing, but appeals to a certain pure laine cohort whose Quebec nationalism doesn't include immigrants or Quebec's first peoples. It's pretty stupid.

Actually, I will split hairs. Levesque is probably right, in that some of his constituents are precisely the sorts of ethnic nationalists Mordecai Richler wrote about nearly twenty years ago. But unless the context of his remarks (which I haven't really found) was "They won't vote for the NDP candidate because he's Cree, and that's a terrible reason to vote against someone," it doesn't get a pass.

I'm uncertain how prominent Leveque is around Quebec, but he seems from here like a bit of an invisible backbencher, so I'm going to tentatively say (Prom)1 x (Sig)2 = 2 more for the BQ.

Leftover gaffes (Cons 4, BQ 1, Liberal and NDP no score)

This is the last time I'm going backward, I sincerely hope.

Commentors point out that I've ignored a couple more minor gaffes. First, right on day one a Conservative incumbent tweeted the name of the Liberal leader as "Igaffi". Then she apologised, again via tweet. Honest to God, if I start reading every candidate's Twitter feed to keep track of boneheadedness, then Dan will be proven wrong here - parties will only be able to dream they can hold a score to 33. 1x1 for Cheryl Gagaffey Gallant.

BQ candidates won't talk to Maclean's, except that they will. I'm not sure I can chalk this up to anything more than one staffperson, albeit one who is consistently identified as a "BQ spokesperson", feeling pissy that afternoon. But she does seem senior enough, and as I keep mentioning, apologies are usually deciders for me, and one was issued here. 1x1 for the BQ, already surpassing their 2008 blank card.

As for a French-language Liberal ad, which included an audience shot of a former NDP candidate and presumably current NDP supporter, they dropped her from the ad as soon as she objected. As far as I'm concerned, she was in the crowd, so the Liberal party can hardly be blamed for having her in crowd shots. As for their use of stock photos, so what? Common practice. No score.

Working backwards

I've been asked to pass judgement on a few more gaffes, some dating back to the opening weekend. Let's get to them:

Stephen Harper has some trouble putting on a pair of gloves. A Google News search for "Stephen Harper work gloves" produces the story I linked, and only that. This, plus a single tweet from one reporter, even repeated by Kinsella, does not a gaffe make. No score.

John McCallum discussed the Liberal plan to roll back the most recent corporate tax cut, acknowledging under direct question that "minor job loss" may occur. He went on to argue that there would be a net job gain as that tax money was redistributed toward the middle class who would create jobs by spending it. One blogging Conservative have tried to make some hay of this through a tightly edited youtube audio post (we can't hear McCallum's follow-up answer? And this is supposed to prove something?), but I refuse to punish candidates for spelling out policy. It was close call, but no points.

Finally, when campaigning in Montreal, Michael Ignatieff messed around with some guy's lute (? I'm going with "lute"), and as he returned it, the lutist (loutist? I'm in pretty deep water here) acknowledged that he'd be voting for Thomas Mulcair, the NDP candidate. That's what you get in a democracy - voters can tell candidates to their faces that they're voting for the other guy. So what? Better that than the sort of super-tight controls a campaign would need to make sure this never happens. No gaffe.

Did I get them all? The score remains unchanged: 3-0-0-0.

You people (Cons 3, all others zero)



Mrs. Revmod and I were watching the news on Sunday night when we first heard the "you people" from Harper, speaking in front of an audience of South Asians. And when I say "in front of", what I mean is that every brown face in the room seemed to be sitting behind him, playing the role of wallpaper to his speech. When the broadcast took a wider shot of the room, the crowd facing the other way seemed to be entirely white.

Now, the Tories can make legitimate claims at diversity. I'm sure they're falling short in several ways that opponents could itemize, but they're diverse enough to deflect most criticism. Still, they're making specific efforts, some of them questionable, to appeal to recent immigrants. That's why the "you people" was so tone-deaf.

I wanted to find an escape route for Harper. I wanted to find him using "you people" commonly in non-racial contexts. I wanted to prove to myself that I'm just being lefty-sensitive. I failed. I'm tentatively awarding prom3 x sig1 depending on the legs this story has (so far, to my surprise, none). The scoreboard has to wait until the end of my work day.

The early gaffes

I'll save the obvious one for the next post. Let me start with the reader tips.

Shelly Glover, a Winnipeg Conservative incumbent described a neighbouring 68-year-old Liberal incumbent as "past her expiry date." Cue the (false?) outrage from seniors. But here's the thing - it's clear to me from the context of the comment that she wasn't saying Anita Neville was too old for the job, she was saying Ms Nevelle has been doing it for too long.

Speaking of doing it for too long, I have a precedent for scoring this one. In 2006, Peter McKay told Alexa McDonough to "stick to your knitting." There was much (false) hue and cry about sexism. And McKay issued an apology. I scored it then only because of the apology. That precedent stands. Right now, Glover's campaign has issued a clarification, but not an apology. If she sticks to her guns, no score.

The next reader suggestion notes that the Prime Minister stumbled over the word "election" and mentioned "unnecessary erections" instead. Sorry. No score for Mumbly Joeisms.

Finally, Liberals have produced audio of a Tory candidate claiming his office staff has been helping him "process immigration files or anything else." I'm withholding judgement on this one. Until the candidate or the staff clarify what they've actually been doing, I don't think we can judge if the candidate was overselling what they actually do (giving out phone numbers of the appropriate channels, perhaps), or conversely if the campaign office was overstepping its authority with the active participation of the Minister of Immigration (which is what the Liberals seem to be implying).

So, so far, no score, though two of these might turn into a score yet. But I'm skipping the big one for the next post. You people will just have to wait.

Deadline

I already have a couple of suggestions for early scores to go up on the big board. Because entries don't close for a couple of hours yet, I'll be deferring any scoring until then. Once entries close, the gaffeometer AT gmail address will serve as an excellent contact point to keep me up-to-date about the latest jackassery. The comments sections serve almost as well, but slower.

Start your error-prone candidates!

Gaffeometer deadline

Between the weekend writ-drop and the lack of gaffes over this opening weekend, I'm deferring the prediction deadline to Monday midnight. Tell me at gaffeometer AT gmail the scores each party will generate over the campaign for a chance at a donation made to your favourite local candidate. And, no - just because I've excluded the Greens from the gaffeometer doesn't mean you can't make me send money that way. It will taste like acid, but I'll do it. I'm that committed.

I digress. Monday, midnight.

May 2

Wow - short campaign. It suggests to me that Harper sees some downside potential over the course of the campaign, and not so much upside. I guess when you've spent millions of dollars and a couple of years defining your opponent, you don't want to give very much time for Ignatieff to break out of that box.

The short campaign might explain why everyone seems to have started throwing swings.

An ounce of prevention

It's becoming obvious from the action in the House of Commons today that the Conservatives will say "It's us, or it's an antidemocratic coalition of socialists and separatists" every time they get in range of a microphone for the next six weeks.

Do you know when would have been a good time to talk about the great tradition of coalition governments in Westminster-style Parliaments? Constantly, and for the last two-and-a-half years. Unfortunately, the opportunity is past, and the argument won't work as well during the campaign, because the Liberals won't admit until the last possible moment that they might do anything other than win overwhelmingly. Nice work, Liberals.

Before it all gets going:

It's not a gaffe, per se, but the NDP may have found the dumbest doorstep issue of all time to treat as a marquee issue: a promise to exempt home heating from the GST.

Let me get this straight: Canada's left-wing party is proposing a tax break which will give the greatest benefit to the rich owners of huge houses and those who are the most wasteful with hydrocarbons. The energy-efficient and those who live more simply will see less, and renters who have baseboard heating rolled into the price of their accommodations will probably see none of the money, because their landlords will pocket it. Genius! It's like the opposite of a carbon tax, because we all know how unpopular that was last election.

Seriously, am I going to have to vote Liberal this time around?

Edited to add: Calgary Grit was on this months ago.

Reminder

Previous final scores:

2004:


2006 included six points for the Liberals, earned by Scott Reid. (I believe that prompted the only time I tried to explain the scoring to a media outlet.):


and the remarkably low-gaffe election of 2008:

It's that time again

Unless Canada's punditocracy is wildly off-base (and when has that ever happened?), this week should see the beginning of Gaffe-o-meter 2011, and to a lesser extent, an election campaign. Does everyone remember the rules for scoring?

1) The scoring will begin on the day the writ is dropped for the Federal election - entries will be cut off midnight the next day. Entries will include the predicted total score for each party.

2) Two numbers determine the score - the quality of the gaffe ("sig") and the rank of the gaffemaker ("prom"). Both scales will score on a range from one to three. GaffePoints ("GP") for an individual gaffe will be calculated by multiplying "sig" by "prom". Party scores will accumulate by adding the GPs of each gaffe.

3) Contest entries will be scored by measuring the distance (plus or minus) between the prediction and the score for each party - lowest total difference wins.

4) I am the final and only arbiter of the quality of the gaffe ("sig") and the rank of the gaffemaker ("prom"). Debate, however, is encouraged in the attached comments section - Good or entertaining arguments have made me rethink before.

5) Scoring will close at 0800 MST on the day following election day. SPECIAL PARIZEAU RULE: Scoring will double for gaffes made on election day, including acceptance and concession speeches.

6) For the purpose of the contest, "gaffe" is defined as an unplanned error in fact or judgment. It might be a mistake for the NDP to release a platform paper advocating gender segregation of schools, to the derision of the Canadian electorate, but it's not a "gaffe". On the other hand, if Jack Layton explains the policy by making an aside about high-school boys being distracted by the firm and supple bodies of women in the full bloom of their hot, hot youth, that would be a "gaffe".

The prize: the reader who guesses closest to the actual final result will win a $20 donation to the local candidate of their choice next time around, if only you tell me who that candidate is. I've offers to each of my winners, but I haven't had to issue one donation yet. Third time a charm?

Send your predictions for total gaffe scores, by party, to gaffeometer AT gmail. Meanwhile, I have a graphic to produce.