Please Advise! Is It OK for Politicians to Party?

[Editor’s note: Steve Burgess is an accredited spin doctor with a PhD in Centrifugal Rhetoric from the University of SASE, situated on the lovely campus of PO Box 7650, Cayman Islands. In this space he dispenses PR advice to politicians, the rich and famous, the troubled and well-heeled, the wealthy and gullible.]

Dear Dr. Steve,

Pierre Poilievre just released a video criticizing Justin Trudeau for vacationing in Costa Rica while food prices soar. Meanwhile in the U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson is being attacked for taking his second vacation of the summer, and in Finland a video of the prime minister dancing at a party has caused an international fuss.

Do you think political leaders deserve down time?

Signed,

Tanner

Dear Tanner,

There's a strange dichotomy at work here. People are always complaining about what those damn politicians are up to, but then the same people complain when the politicians stop doing it. It's like the old joke, “The food here is terrible!” “Yes, and the portions are so small!”

If politicians are truly as inept and bungling as they are portrayed, shouldn't they be exiled to Costa Rica or Playa del Carmen full time? Maybe brought back for the occasional ribbon-cutting? It's true that former president Donald Trump spent every weekend golfing at Mar-a-Lago, but that sure beat the alternative. They should have changed the White House locks every Sunday.

Poilievre's Twitter video shows him having breakfast, just a regular breakfast-having fellah like you, while sorrowfully detailing all the price increases that have run rampant while Justin was romping in Central America. (To his credit, the Conservative leadership candidate did not attempt to make his point by assembling a plate of supermarket crudites, a la Dr. Oz. That recent video effort came off about as well as Marie Antoinette visiting a peasant bake sale.)

Once upon a time Poilievre might have said that you could beat the high price of eggs and bacon by paying with crypto but that was before. His new message is tireless vigilance. Presumably a Prime Minister Poilievre would not allow those grocery prices to scurry upwards like ants climbing a picnic table — he'd be right there with the fiscal Raid. Perhaps Poilievre could also take care of inflation in the U.K., where the same political dynamic is playing out over Prime Minister Boris Johnson's vigorous vacation schedule. Our leaders make sand castles while waves of inflation erode our spending power! Throw the suntanned bums out!

Meanwhile in Italy the situation is reversed. It's the voters who are trying to relax on beach towels while the politicians disturb their holiday idylls. August is near-sacred as the Italian vacation month but an inconvenient election has meant Italian candidates are forced to spend the dog days cadging votes, pouncing on hapless citizens like so many hawkers peddling plastic gladiator swords outside the Colosseum. In this case Italians would be happier if the politicians would take a summer break — perhaps in Costa Rica? There's no pleasing some people. Still, it's a reminder to be careful what you wish for. Full-time politicians mean full-time politics. The path to your Adirondack chair could become an obstacle course of glad-handers, funding announcements and lawn signs.

Take time off and you're lazy; don't take time off and you're annoying. All this comes with the territory. The weird duality of politics is that its practitioners must learn to project public images as ordinary, relatable people, while at the same time remembering they are not allowed to take publicized vacations, make jokes, dance or wear funny hats.

Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin was seen partying in a leaked video and subsequently took a drug test to prove she had only been pretending to have a wild time. Now women around the world are dancing in solidarity against Marin’s sexist treatment. Still, she demonstrates another of those lessons in political duality — a politician must be friendly, but can't have friends. No friends with TikTok accounts, at least.

Poilievre has an advantage in this particular game since behaving as a normal, non-political guy does not seem to be an option with him anyway. At the best of times his folksy videos seem to show him trying to make the right human noises come out of his ill-fitting person suit. Still, by criticizing Trudeau's vacation time Poilievre has set the bar quite high. As a future prime minister he will not be able to take so much as a bathroom break lest he be tagged as a hypocrite. He will be forced to pee into a bottle like a long-haul trucker or an Amazon warehouse employee.

But then, Trump used to criticize former president Barack Obama for taking too much time off. So perhaps it's pointless to pay too much attention to these summertime political video games. Prime Minister Poilievre will surely take vacations when the time comes. Once in a while you simply have to get out of that buttoned-up suit and be — whatever.

Remember, we're all just human. Probably.