I live in Toronto, which means that for a relatively brief but very embarrassing period Rob Ford was my mayor. Or I should identify him by his formal title “Rob Ford, the Crack Smoking Mayor of Toronto.”
Sadly, Rob Ford died this week, having been diagnosed with cancer about a year and a half ago. He was 46 years old and leaves behind a wife and children, which is always sad whatever one might think of the character of the man.
I should add that I was a political staffer at Toronto City Hall when Rob was first elected as a lowly city councillor from Etobicoke in the early 2000s. I used to say hello to him in the hallways and he said hello back, which was the extent of our relationship.
I mention this only to illustrate that people who run for office and govern, the people we see on television and read about in the papers, are in fact real flesh-and-blood people, and even sometimes deeply troubled, incredibly dysfunctional souls.
The difference between Rob and his American twin Donald Trump is that these guys were/are not only incapable of keeping their failings hidden, but succeed because of that fact – the impossibility of them being and presenting themselves as anything other than what they are. Crazy as it sounds, it’s almost like the act of seeming to be ruthlesslessly honest about oneself, what one is and believes, is more important to voters than the content of what is being revealed.
Perhaps the projection of legitimate human qualities, even if those qualities are unattractive to many of us, is the key.
I don’t want to beat this drum too hard, but maybe that is what so many Torontonians mean when they look south and say they have seen this movie before. And for those who think they mean Donald Trump is electable in the general election because Rob Ford won the mayoralty of Toronto, well, they are simply wrong. Apples and oranges. I could go into the differences between pre-amalgamation Toronto vs. post-amalgamation but you couldn’t possibly care.
No, the point is that we may have seen first the political appeal of a poorly restrained id to the extent that it helps its owner connect with people in a way the more “discerning” among us never thought possible.
How else to explain Trump’s ability to gain support even though so many pundits at so many moments thought the content of his message, or the lack thereof, would be the end for him?
It’s never been about that.