Spin Gone Wild

It is the job of campaign strategists for any party to "spin" the daily news in their candidates favour. This activity often involves feats of informational contortion that yield a product barely recognizable from the original story. Normally I wouldn't even bother commenting on it, since every party does it, and the spin is often so obvious and cheesy that it doesn't warrant the attention.

But every so often you see a real whopper of a press release that wades a bit too far over the fine line between plausible truth and outright falsehoods. Today the Ontario Liberal Party has issued such a specimen.

In one of their daily press releases they discuss Conservative leader John Tory's meeting with the editorial board of the Globe and Mail. During the interview Mr. Tory commented on where "blame" for the apparent unpopularity of the faith-based schools issue lies. According to the Liberal press release, "In a meeting with the Globeand Mail's editorial board, the Conservative leader said the blame lies with, well, you. You, Ontario.".

Now let's look at the actual Globe interview, which reads:

Progressive Conservative Leader John Tory says he blames strong resistance to his religious-schools policy on his own failure to explain it better ... He said he has not done a good enough job convincing Ontarians that it is better to have all schools part of the public system rather than operate without scrutiny. He also said his message that it is unfair to fund Catholic schools without extending the same privileges to Jewish, Muslim and other religious institutions is not resonating with Ontarians.

It seems abundently clear that if Tory is putting "blame" anywhere it's with himself. Insofar as the buck tends to stop with the leader of a party for unsuccessful policies during an election this is a rather unremarkable statement. Furthermore, if there is such a thing as "honour" in the game of political strategy, you'd think it a bit distasteful to try to suggest your opponent is blaming other people for the campaign's shortcomings when he is trying to do the honourable thing in accepting the blame himself.

I don't blame Liberal strategists for trying to do their job, but if you push the limits of believability too far you end up looking at best silly, and at worst outright dishonest.