There’s too much election talk around. Every issue can’t be reduced to speculation about the timing of the call and horse-race coverage. It’s unhealthy. Take âe¦

Pakistan: George Jonas wrote in the National Post that democracy may not be right for Pakistan. What, elections are like differential calculus? You need to pass all the required courses first? He says “Western-style democracy” might work “at some future date, in the fullness of time” — which sounds like never — but it doesn’t fit “an Eastern-style culture.”

Just what is so complicated and Western about Western democracy? Marking an X beside a name you’ve been saturated with through lawn signs or TV ads?

Voters lining up in Iraq and Palestine seem to get it without special ed. There’s been lots of clucking about “dynastic” backwardness in Pakistan. The Christian Science Monitor said naming another Bhutto as leader was “quintessential South Asia,” where parties are “fiefdoms structured to uphold a family dynasty.” As if the U.S. isn’t engaged in a process likely to lead to a Clinton following a Bush following a Clinton following a Bush.

There was an unnerving moment in South Africa in 1990, when the CBC’s Barbara Frum interviewed Nelson Mandela after 27 years in prison as a result of fighting for his people’s liberty. She fretted that the black majority might be “emotionally unprepared âe¦ they aren’t intellectually connected to the democratic process.” But these are people, in Pakistan or South Africa, highly connected to the harsh and intricate ways of power and resistance to it. Maybe their problem with Western-style democracy has more to do with its frequently smug, shallow avoidance of those realities.

The Iowa caucuses: Talk about avoidance. All the Democratic candidates emoted about change but never said what it meant. You could tell, because there was one exception: John Edwards.

He said he’d aim at a health system like Canada’s that eventually leaves out the mighty insurance companies; and he’d withdraw all troops from Iraq, not just from the cities but those at the huge regional bases meant to “fight terrorism,” i.e. secure the oil. He also named corporate greed as the main enemy of public good. Fringe candidates often express such views and get duly marginalized. He seemed to find a way to make them part of a real bid for power.

I have one soft spot for the Iowa caucuses. It’s when people at the meetings who support “non-viable” candidates (i.e. big losers) are visited by a rep from the viables, and urged to come to their corner of the living room or gym. Wow. Voters actually talking with each other about politics. Don’t worry, it vanishes right after the caucuses, long before the actual election.

Canada: What will our overheralded 2008 campaign be about: global warming, environmental degradation, health, trade, war, death? Citizens will strive to turn an election into a true political event but, due to the compulsively trivializing nature of Western-style democracy, it is likely to turn on one conflict: Stephen Harper’s meanness v. Stéphane Dion’s English.

“I do think the last couple of months âe¦ making allegations with literally no evidence at all, that really is beyond the pale,” said the PM in a year-end interview, clearly meaning a false NDP charge that a Conservative MP had watched porn on his laptop, but blind to the way his words apply perfectly to his own record of impugning Liberal motives for policy on Afghan detainees and the shutdown of the Chalk River reactor. Ideological arrogance is the core of the “unmistakable mean streak” noted in a Globe and Mail editorial.

As for Stéphane Dion, it’s richly ironic that federalism’s chief apologist in Quebec appears unable to learn to sound as if he can think in the other official language. Someone who knows the place well says this has always been Quebec’s dream: You don’t need to know English.

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Rick Salutin

Rick Salutin is a Canadian novelist, playwright and critic. He is a strong advocate of left wing causes and writes a regular column in the Toronto Star.