What the French Revolution can teach us about Rob Ford

Want to know what's going on in Toronto's bizarre mayoral race? Just look to history.

The initial reaction in the media to the candidacy of Rob “the Budget Slasher” Ford was to point out the personal flaws that would in any other election climate make him unelectable. These include a drunk driving arrest, a dubious handling of facts and figures, and a hair-trigger temper. Now that it’s apparent none of these things matter to voters, who are about to elect him, pundits have moved on to commenting on the “Rob Ford phenomenon.”

In the Globe and Mail Rick Salutin opens the history books and says that Ford’s imminent election is part of a pattern “set by the French Revolution.” Salutin says that there are two kinds of politics, those based on selling hope and those based on selling fear, and one follows the other. And so after the optimism of the French Revolution there was the terror of the guillotine, and after Barack Obama’s election there comes the Tea Party. Ford’s success “is a reaction to frustration with current Mayor David Miller’s hopeful rhetoric and the failure of visible change."

In The Mark, Mark Evans writes that he’s been “disappointed, uninspired, and disillusioned” by the mayoral campaign. Ford is winning because “(n)ot one of the hopefuls has proven to have a vision for Toronto’s future.” In such bland terrain, Ford’s message of cutting city spending has registered with voters, but the bigger issue is “whether Ford is willing to take on the unions to generate significant cost savings – an issue he is smart enough not to address.”

Meanwhile, the National Post continues to play games with the Toronto Star. The game goes like this: the Toronto Star writes an article on a variation of the theme “Some one save us from Rob Ford!” and then the Post makes fun of them for it. Today, Tasha Kheiriddin mocks a column by Bob Hepburn calling on trailing candidates to drop out and support second place George Smitherman. “Wow, talk about desperation,” she writes, “a pox on the Toronto Star and its pathetic attempt to thwart democracy.”