Donald Trump couldn’t deal with it. Andrea Horwath did just fine. What is it about politics and defeat?

Politics is a particular type of workplace, and one of its many less-than-ideal conditions is this whole business of defeat, Susan Delacourt writes.

Thestar.com
Oct. 31, 2022
Susan Delacourt
OPINION

Politicians don’t talk all that much in public about what it feels like to lose an election.

Mark Holland, the MP for Ajax and Government House Leader in Justin Trudeau’s cabinet, broke that silence this week when he decided to reveal the downward spiral his life took after he was defeated in the 2011 federal election.

“I was in a really desperate spot,” Holland told a Commons committee. “I was told that I was toxic, Conservatives hated me, no organization would want to hire me. My marriage failed my space with my children was not in a good place. And most particularly my passion, the thing that I had believed so ardently, and was the purpose of my life, was in ashes at my feet.”

Holland then stunned some listeners when he went on to disclose: “I’m not proud to say that I made an attempt on my life at that moment in time.”

Holland managed to crawl out of that hole eventually and has bounced back enough to win three elections since 2015. But he divulged this intensely personal tale this week as part of an ongoing conversation on whether Parliament should continue to allow MPs to participate virtually after the pandemic.

In Holland’s view, a hybrid Parliament, as it’s called, would help elected and not-elected people keep better control of a life that places many demands on its participants -- the constant travel, the many nights away from home, the whirlwind of round-the-clock meetings and appearances.

It’s the political version of the conversation going on in many workplaces right now, which also revolves around how to preserve better work-life balance in post-pandemic times. But politics is a particular type of workplace, and one of its many less-than-ideal conditions is this whole business of defeat.

Defeat of one kind or another is a constant possibility. In fact, simple arithmetic tells us there are far more losers than winners in every election. Losers, however, are often dispatched to the distant past, the land of “didn’t you used to be?” All across Ontario this week, many failed municipal candidates -- many more than winners -- are collecting up their signs and fading back to obscurity and non-elected life.

Holland at least had the clarity of mind to recognize he was defeated -- an option former U.S. president Donald Trump has rejected. Trump’s coping strategy, to be charitable, is a creative way of dealing with the election loss he suffered two years ago to Joe Biden -- just deny it happened.

Holland tried to destroy himself in defeat; Trump has decided to destroy democracy. Neither is an ideal outcome of election loss.

In those municipal elections in Ontario this week, there were three high-profile examples of comebacks from defeat.

Former Ontario New Democratic Party leader Andrea Horwath was elected mayor of her Hamilton hometown. Former Ontario Liberal leader Steven Del Duca narrowly won the mayor’s job in Vaughan. Both of these leaders resigned on election night in June when they failed to stop Doug Ford from winning a majority.

Meanwhile, in Brampton, Patrick Brown held onto his mayor’s job, which he had been prepared to leave if he won the federal Conservative leadership race. Brown was ejected from the race during the summer (and fined $100,0000 by the party this week for alleged campaign violations).

It says something about all three of these politicians that they were unable to walk away from the business -- that even as they were still licking the wounds of defeat, they decided to take another run at election.

Or does it say something about the business itself? As Holland testified during his committee appearance this week, it is very easy to plunge into elected life and put everything else on hold.

“Folks, we don’t have a problem here of people not working hard enough,” he said. “With all due respect, I want to stop hearing around this place (about how) people spend the entire week away from their families -- about how they did 14 or 15 events on the weekend.”

It’s not just the inability to deal with defeat, then, that can make political life toxic. It’s also its tendency to encourage, even reward workaholism.

That’s why you hear retiring politicians -- whether that’s happened voluntarily or involuntarily -- say they plan to spend time with their families when they’re done. And that’s only if they’ve been lucky enough to have families who stuck with them through the frenetic life of an elected politician.

Holland’s deeply personal admission this week was a glimpse into a workplace culture that often isn’t all that healthy. It also isn’t a culture that equips people to deal with defeat -- the most common occupational hazard in politics, but also apparently the most dreaded.