Don't think for a second political opportunism started with Ryan Cleary
Before we go any further, we must give Ryan Cleary full credit for creating the opportunity to discuss the topic of opportunism in the first place.
Whatever flak Cleary has taken over his decision to cross to the provincial Conservatives from the federal NDP, it took considerable chutzpah. Other politicians have changed sides in the past, but rarely as brazenly as he did.
Free agency may be a growing trend in today's world of unabashed careerism; in the stuffy antiquity of party politics, it's still considered a breach of faith and loyalty.
In that sense, party politics resembles religion. It directs participants into sets of belief. Shame and sin on whoever comes to the conclusion that some things, including obvious self-interest, might be more important.
Let's recap.
The first time Cleary crossed sides was when the doggedly snarling newspaper he ran, The Independent, closed and forced him to look for another job.
He carped the diem
The opportunity to run for the federal NDP came up. He carped the diem. And voila! The journalistic cop, who'd kept such close tabs on the political robbers, had crossed to the other side.
And why not?
People often get to know the other side better than they ever get to know their own. A smart robber might arguably make an even smarter detective.
Former journalists turn politicians all the time.
Besides, once you step outside party politics into real life, people are moving to and fro like never before.
In his book Voltaire's Bastards, Canadian author, essayist, and social philosopher John Ralston Saul describes how the most successful technocrats spend their entire careers crisscrossing the land of opportunity, running private corporations here, spending time as government deputy ministers there, heading up Crown corporations everywhere, all while sitting on every conceivable corporate board.
Round and round they go.
The mantra: mutual opportunity
It's the modern way, the role model for our times. Shag loyalty to any particular organization or social system. Whatever you have to offer is only as valuable as the demand for it, or the interest you can generate in it.
Today's young people are fed this line every day.
Don't expect a long career with any one organization. Be prepared to keep moving, to keep crossing into other territories in pursuit of that conjunction where, for a short time anyway, you are as much of a boon to the organization you're interested in as the organization is to you.
Mutual opportunity is the mantra.
Now, one would expect the word opportunism to reflect some of that. Not so.
Wikipedia defines opportunism as "the conscious policy and practice of taking selfish advantage of circumstances — with little regard for principles, or ... what the consequences are for others."
In other words, when Cleary's critics call him an opportunist, they don't mean to praise him as a practitioner of the new way; they mean to put him down as someone who has no principles, someone who can skip so easily from one position to another that he makes you wonder whether any position means anything at all.
To which Cleary might quite reasonably reply, what gives any position any more weight than any other in this day and age?
Permanent positions demanding permanent loyalty have a long history of doing incalculable damage in times when change is needed. Temporary positions, on the other hand, are notorious for losing sight of the very principles they stand for when the time has come to go permanent.
From that perspective, positions are speed bumps at best, downright obstacles at worst.
Shelter, ideological and otherwise
Of course, there's an entire universe of perfectly good arguments to support the view that without positions and permanence, and the loyalties they demand, human affairs not only descend into chaos, they're impossible.
Political parties give the democratic process structure. They provide ideological shelter. They confine potentially destructive dissent. They filter out opportunistic interlopers.
They form the choirs that sing harmonious and productive consent in the service of the common good.
Who, the question follows, does Cleary think he is to thumb his nose at the conventions put in place so we are assured that politics does, indeed, serve the larger interest?
And here things get complicated, because what serves the larger interest better — that everybody follow the rules until we all fall asleep; or that, once in a while, someone come along, break the rules for whatever selfish or boorish reasons, and wake us up so we can at least have a debate.
And then let's have a good look at what the debate is really all about.
Not Cleary's naughty political behaviour, but the whole double standard with which we cultivate a society based on radical self-interest on the one hand, and the piously ceremonious principles and pretensions of our political system on the other.
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