After general elections in Canada, at every level from municipal to national, thousands of people who ran for councils and school boards and parliament have to cope with either their win, or their loss.
Winning, it is supposed, will be the easier thing to handle, though the victors, especially the newcomers, probably don’t fully appreciate what it is that is about to hit them, and maybe it’s best that they don’t.
Helping make decisions on behalf of their fellow citizens will take a lot of hard work and will, in many cases, leave them a lot less popular than before they put their names forward for election.
They can look forward to agonizing over choices they’ll have to make, criticism from every quarter and even the loss of “friends” who don’t like what they do or say now that they’re a big shot.
And all of this is only to describe some of their better days ahead.
Some of the new politicians can even expect to see their business revenues take a hit as people stay out of their stores or stop using their services because they’re mad that the person they used to patronize voted against putting a sidewalk on their side of the street – or that they did vote to put one there.
So the winners will sometimes feel like they actually lost the elections.
Looking on at what sometimes befalls those who come out on top at the polls, some of the losers will begin to think of themselves as the winners.
But not for a while.
If the winners have longterm problems ahead (which many of them will rightly come to see as challenges and opportunities), the losers, at least in the short term, will have their bruised egos to try to heal.
It isn’t much fun to lose at any time, but in most contests, losing depends entirely on your abilities and whether or not you can use them to better an opponent. Whether it’s golf, hockey, chess or checkers, you have a very good chance of controlling the outcome of the match.
In politics, on the other hand, your chance of success is based on so many factors, most of them out of your control, and all of them having to do with whether or not your neighbours believe you would be a good candidate to sit around a table making decisions about their everyday lives.
Finding out that most of the people in the community don’t want you making fancy speeches and voting on stop signs and sidewalks, recreation centres and new schools, is a bit of a letdown, not to mention a humbling experience.
I can’t say I can sympathize with those who didn’t get elected Monday from any vast experience I’ve had as a candidate myself, save for one instance, which I will get to.
But for 30 years, I’ve been witness to dozens and dozens of people who’ve been left out in the cold by their fellow citizens on election nights. Some of the losers take their drubbing gracefully, even with humour. Some are philosophical, if a bit sad.
And others become angry and self-pitying (proving the voters were right not to elect them).
But those who feel the loss most deeply, it seems to me, are people who are voted out of office. Having held the job, then losing it, feels like getting fired – only 10 times worse as it was, in many cases, thousands of your fellow humans who gave you the pink slip.
Depending on the circumstances, losing office can be so devastating for some, it can have serious effects on their lives, ranging from divorce to even death. Within a year of resigning his presidency, former U.S. President Richard Nixon almost died of a blood clot. Some people blamed it on the depression he suffered after being banished from his “territory.”
As for me, the memory is an old one, but still fresh if I want it to be. It was 35 years ago, and I was running for student council at university. I have no idea why I ran.
But I do remember standing in a lounge, delivering what might have been one of the best student council speeches ever written.
It was so good, and I left such an impression with my fellow students, that I came in dead last out of a long list of contenders. I don’t remember whether or not I even voted for myself.
I do remember, however, not smiling for at least a week afterwards.
My only consolation, and one that I didn’t benefit from until many years later, was the fact that one of the candidates I lost to went on to become the deputy prime minister of Canada.
So, you know, pretty tough competition.
But dead last?
Really?
©2006 Jim Hagarty
