John Robson: Party Platforms Are Meaningless Without Concrete Plans to Deliver on Promises

Commentary

This article was written before the election on Monday, so I can’t comment on who the winner or winners might be. However, I can confidently say that to anticipate their future policies, you might as well toss their platform directly into your recycle bin. This raises an interesting question: why do politicians create these platforms, and why do we allow them to?

If you want to test their predictive value, take a look at platforms from years past—so outdated they could have been used to wrap fish—and observe how little of what was promised was actually implemented. While I acknowledge that one issue with party platforms is that they are often overtaken by real-world events, it seems disingenuous to create them fully aware of this problem. And it gets even worse.

The primary issue with platforms is that they are aspirational rather than analytical. They outline what a party plans to do, but not how they intend to do it, essentially stating what they believe will attract your vote. Their main aspiration is to garner votes, not to present a realistic and perhaps unsettling series of concrete actions they would take if elected. Ironically, as politicians become better at crafting these platforms, often the outcomes worsen.

Back in the early 1990s, when Bob Rae’s NDP unexpectedly won the provincial election in Ontario, they hurriedly confiscated their paper platform from senior bureaucrats, claiming they had only presented it because they never thought they would win. As you can imagine, their subsequent term in office highlighted the inherent pitfalls. This is a common theme among many parties that aren’t as, shall we say, visionary, only to find that their lofty goals turn into embarrassing failures.

While these documents do make a pretense of being analytical—promising to achieve certain results in specific ways—they also suggest a quaint view that the public can somehow become wealthy and happy with minimal effort. It’s troubling to think they genuinely believe this, just as it’s troubling to consider they are merely pretending to.

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As I consider potential alternatives to this unproductive trend, which relies heavily on voters holding politicians to a higher standard of honesty and clarity than we typically do, I initially thought we should demand that they explain how they plan to implement their proposals. However, such a requirement might only escalate the misleading presentation of pseudo-practicalities.

The current method, for one thing, places significant emphasis on achieving miraculous outcomes by vanquishing their detestable adversaries. To be fair, many partisans genuinely believe that the ignorance, malicious intent, or both of their political opponents are the main barriers to swift and inexpensive progress.

They’re not lying, but they’re also not thinking very hard. This lack of foresight becomes evident when they win, if they do. So, how do we improve this situation? Asking politicians to outline how they will accomplish all the incredible feats they claim can only lead to self-deception—and yours as well—about how these goals can be achieved. This would leave us stuck where we currently find ourselves, only worse.

Thus, I’ve rethought my initial suggestion into a new, refined, and more practical version. This also hinges on our collective unwillingness to accept mediocrity from “our” side or any other party. My revised idea is to insist that their primary campaign document must detail the challenges and obstacles they foresee in executing their plans.

If they genuinely want to convince us that the malice of their opposition is the sole issue, so be it. If you choose to vote for them, you won’t be able to claim ignorance. Likewise, if they assert there are no real obstacles, the same applies. However, if they provide a reasonable explanation of their intentions, the difficulties they expect, examples from other regions where similar measures faced delays, costs, or drawbacks, then you’ll gain much more insight into their proposals.

You’ll also learn significantly more about the people proposing these initiatives, including whether they possess any understanding of the real-world trade-offs, disappointments, and limitations involved. I would boldly predict that this approach would yield better results than our current situation, where the winning party is often based on a set of promises that aren’t worth the paper they’re no longer printed on.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.