MATT WOLF SPEAKS FOR JASON KENNEY IN WAYS THAT SUGGEST HIS BOSS IS A CHILDISH BULLY
Matt Wolf earns $194,253 a year of taxpayers’ money to serve as executive director of Issues Management for Jason Kenney. The long-time political associate of the premier is expected to put the government’s position on issues forward in ways that will win over the public and to respond to the arguments that opponents of the government on those issues make.
Instead Wolf has a disturbing tendency to attack the critics rather than their arguments. His use of Twitter for character assassination follows the Donald Trump script. But it also replicates the premier’s disturbing McCarthyism which tends more to blanket smears of opponents as opposed to careful refutation of their arguments. When people resort to such tactics, one is right to be suspicious that they expect that their refutations would not be as powerful as the initial criticisms, and so the seek to shoot the messenger rather than deal with the message.
Wolf is not acting out of character. His role in the kamikaze campaign of Jeff Callaway demonstrated that he is a wolf in wolf’s clothing. Leaked documents to the media earlier this year showed that Wolf worked closely with Callaway campaign manager Cameron Davies to coordinate a character assassination of Brian Jean as opposed to a takedown of his policies (there wasn’t that much, in a policy sense, that divided Jean and Kenney). Wolf and Jean, supposedly coordinating separate campaigns, wrote to each other regarding strategy, speeches, and advertisements. Wolf even e-mailed a resignation speech to Callaway the day he dropped out of the leadership race and endorsed Kenney for the leadership.
Jason Kenney claimed that there was nothing unusual about one campaign determining the strategy for a supposedly opposing campaign. But political commentators made the obvious point that it was not only unusual but suspect when one campaign was writing the lines for another campaign and one candidate (Kenney) was allowed to look statesmanlike by never directly attacking his main opponent while another campaign seemed to exist only to scorch Brian Jean’s name and reputation.
Matt Wolf is unlikely to become a sheep. Nor is he likely to develop the analytical and communication skills needed to defend the government’s policies in more than shallow tweets. But he and Kenney deserve to be called out for monitoring the behaviour of government opponents as opposed to their arguments. They are both paid on the public dime and need to show respect for all taxpayers since we have to pay their salaries whether we like their policies or not. In turn, we expect them to respect our right to disagree with those policies, in whole or in part, and to get answers from them about those policies that are thoughtful and researched. We do not expect and will not abide by non-answers that simply amount to “Your mother wears army boots.”
No comments:
Post a Comment