On misguided attacks

There's been little room for doubt that the Sask Party is attempting to mirror the strategies of its federal cousins. As early as this fall, they started running boilerplate radio ads trying to tie Dwain Lingenfelter to a theme of "backwards", and presumably with some money burning a hole in their pocket they've put up billboards to try to highlight the fact that they were in office nearly a year and a half before they blew through the surplus left to them by the NDP.

But I have to wonder whether the Sask Party has completely missed the point of what Harper's ads have sought to do. And the latest TV ad (which I saw for the first time Friday night and will describe as best possible since it doesn't seem to be online yet) may be the most counterproductive piece of political advertising I've ever seen.

From my memory, the ad consists basically of the following:
- Picture of Dwain Lingenfelter with voice-over introducing him
- Picture of Lingenfelter next to words "boom or bust"; voice-over criticizing Lingenfelter for using those words in the Legislature
- Picture of Lingenfelter next to the word "grumpy"; voice-over criticizing Lingenfelter for describing the province's mood with that term
- Picture of Lingenfelter next to words about an economic downturn; again, voice-over criticizing Lingenfelter for using the words in the Legislature
- Clip of Lingenfelter saying "that's what losers do" in reference to Wall; voice-over criticizing the use of the word "loser"
- Picture of Lingenfelter with text about "no new ideas"
- Image and voice-over saying the ad is presented by the Saskatchewan Party.

So what's wrong with the ad? Let's start with the bizarre choice of a first scene based on the text "boom or bust" which actually repeats the NDP's critique of the Sask Party's economic mismanagement.

By way of analogy, consider how much sense it would make for the Libs to open an ad with a brief, obviously out-of-context excerpt of the Cons' "tough on crime" rhetoric - say, the text "coddling criminals" next to Harper's picture.

One can say that the image might seem damaging to Harper on its own. But the choice of targets actually addresses an issue of brand strength for Harper, creating a disconnect even in the minds of relatively uninformed viewers. And perhaps more importantly, that type of glaringly dishonest juxtaposition would positively demand a fact-check response from the Cons and the media alike which would point out that Harper wouldn't use the phrase except to describe an ill to be avoided.

Now, the voiceover in the Sask Party's ad makes it clear that its criticism is that Lingenfelter shouldn't use a phrase like "boom or bust" to describe their economic mismanagement. But that too seems to reflect the Sask Party buying far too much of its own spin. It's highly doubtful that viewers will share the view that Lingenfelter is unreasonable for using the phrase, particularly when concerns about the Wall government's handling of unpredictable resource issues have been voiced by the province's mainstream media commentators. And to the extent the province's political discussion revolves around the question of whether the Sask Party is indeed pushing an economic theory which leads to "boom or bust", it's surely the NDP that stands to benefit.

So the Sask Party starts off by using its own ad time to spread an NDP critique of its government, with little apparent reason other than the seemingly misplaced hope that viewers will share their view that any criticism of their performance in office is unreasonable. And matters don't improve from there.

Based on the "boom or bust" message, it takes about three scenes for the viewer to even figure out whether the ad is pro-Lingenfelter or anti-Lingenfelter. On my first look (with the commercial muted), it could equally plausibly have been a poorly-thought-out Sask Party production or a poorly-thought-out NDP ad until the "grumpy" talking point came out. And someone not familiar with the exchanges between the parties in the Legislature might not be able to associate that spin with its source either.

Which goes doubly since the "grumpy" line is a downright bizarre line of attack. In a year which has seen a recession, a potash collapse and a Grey Cup heartbreak (which probably did at least as much to shape the provincial mood as the first two), the suggestion that a few Saskatchewanians might have been in a bad mood at some point hardly seems like reason to take out TV ads against a political opponent. And the ad is being released in the midst of the province's winter blahs, with a bad news budget to follow in early 2010 - meaning that viewers may have every reason to share in grumpiness even if they link the word to Lingenfelter.

From there, it's back to criticizing Lingenfelter for pointing out reality with a reference to a downturn. Yes, the Sask Party denied the recession as long as it could, and would probably have avoided ever admitting it if the evidence hadn't grown too strong. But the fact that the NDP was right in recognizing it all along - and the Sask Party patently wrong in denying it - isn't exactly the most sound basis for criticism, and again put the Sask Party on the wrong side of the facts and the province's media as well as the NDP.

That leads into the one portion of the ad which actually presents Lingenfelter speaking. But the clip of Lingenfelter saying "that's what losers do" positively cries out for explanation as to what it is that he's referring to. And that means that the Sask Party's ad may in fact lead to more Saskatchewan residents learning about Wall's woeful business history than might have found out about it otherwise.

To close out the ad, there's an obvious play from the Harper playbook in the form of a "no ideas" attack on Lingenfelter. But here's where the context is particularly important.

It's true that aside from his proposal to get SaskEnergy back into the natural gas production business, Lingenfelter hasn't proposed a lot of new policy yet. But there's an awfully good reason for that: as the Sask Party should be fully aware, the NDP is in the middle of a province-wide policy development process.

And that's a serious problem for the Sask Party's message. However plausible any viewer might see the attack as being for now (and Lingenfelter and others have been publicly pointing out the policy development process since the early stages of the leadership campaign), surely the Sask Party can't be operating under any illusion that the line will have any force left by the time it counts. And by setting up an attack line which they know will be completely false once people particularly start paying attention, they're actively undermining their own credibility in everything else they have to say about the NDP.

Again, I'd think the Sask Party's mistakes in the ad can be traced back to a failure to understand why the pattern that's played out federally might not apply in Saskatchewan. Tom Flanagan recently explained the Harper Cons' propensity for attacking early and often in the following terms:

But tacking back and forth among the opposition parties, forming tactical alliances as required to keep power, cannot work long if those parties are spoiling for an election. Hence arises the third principle of Conservative political management: Always keep at least one of the three opposition parties afraid of an election, so that you don't have to wage a campaign except at a time of your own choosing.

So far, the Conservatives have been successful in this. Remarkably, in almost four years of Tory power, the three opposition parties have never voted together to deny confidence and force an election. Someone's always been afraid.

Implementing this principle has meant adopting the strategic doctrine of “permanent campaign,” the most visible manifestation of which has been the waves of paid advertising directed at Liberal leaders and policies. Traditionally in Canadian politics, advertising has been a campaign weapon, but it has proved just as effective in avoiding campaigns as in winning them.

Yet paid advertising is only the most visible manifestation of the Conservative doctrine of permanent campaign. There is much, much more behind the scenes: a campaign manager always on duty and reporting directly to the Prime Minister; contracts for planes, buses and war-room facilities; grassroots fundraising and voter identification 363 days a year (no calls on Christmas and Easter). Indeed, the fundraising makes it possible to maintain all the other aspects of the expensive model of permanent campaign.

In other words, the attack ads have formed part of the federal Cons' strategy to keep the Libs under their thumb in a minority Parliament. If the Cons had the security of knowing exactly when an election would arise, they'd likely plan things differently. But in light of the possibility of an election at any time, the Cons have hit each Lib leader early and hard in order to keep control of the House of Commons - using whatever theme looks most likely to affect numbers in the short term, and counting on the constant threat of an immediate election to keep the Libs from doing anything to negate the message in the longer term.

It would seem obvious however that different principles apply in a majority Legislature where the election date is known in advance. With the next Saskatchewan election nearly two years away, there's little apparent value in driving down an opponent's polling numbers for the moment - and every reason to plan messages now which can be built up in the time leading up to the election.

Instead, the Sask Party looks to have done just the opposite. Yes, for now their ad ties Lingenfelter to a series of negative themes which might drive down NDP support for a short period of time. But it also sets a ridiculously low expectation level for Lingenfelter over the next two years: so long as the NDP's policy process comes up with anything at all by way of new ideas, the Sask Party is actually helping to build the message that Lingenfelter has more to offer than people currently expect.

And all of the above avoids the most remarkable achievement of the ad. In effect, the Sask Party has presented an absolute self-contradiction: a relentlessly negative ad which criticizes nothing more than...going negative. So the ad actually undermines its own core message - while also allowing the NDP to justify any degree of negative advertising later by pointing out that the Sask Party did it first.

In sum, then, one could hardly have come up with a better 30-second Sask Party ad - for the NDP's purposes. Which takes it past mere ineffectiveness to the realm of the genuinely counterproductive - and earns it the title of Worst Political Ad I've Ever Seen.

Of course, Wall does start with a substantial lead in the polls, and presumably has time to revise his party's messaging if he starts to realize just how boneheaded the latest ad looks to anybody who doesn't consume a regular diet of "you can't criticize the government!" Kool-Aid. But Wall did manage to go from the most favourable financial situation the province has ever enjoyed to a fiscal panic in just two years - and if the latest ad is any indication, the Sask Party may be on track to do exactly the same thing on the electoral front.