Excitement? I don’t think so. Many commentators call this the most exciting election in a long time. But compare 1988, the brawl over free trade. Or 1993, when the Tories vaporized, the Liberals resurrected, the Bloc roared out of Quebec, and Reform exploded from the West. It was creative, destructive, chaotic and unpredictable.

Or 2000, with its sense of peril around Stockwell Day. This time, right-wingers have reunited and softened their edges; Paul Martin is a virtual conservative. And the NDP is back as social conscience. It feels like 1984, if anyone remembers that election. But I grant it’s competitive, like the Yankees playing the Braves again, yawn, in the World Series.

What about those buses? I don’t mean the leaders’ buses, I mean the media buses. No, not the ones that follow the leaders’ buses. The ones out there on their own for the first time, painted with network logos and criss-crossing the country as if they’re running, too. The CBC has one, so does CTV. It stops, maybe in your town, and out steps — hey, it’s that cute Mark Kelley, youthful, beaming. He looks a lot like host Ben Mulroney on Canadian Idol, or the similar guy in the U.S. version. This feels like — the first reality-TV election. It’s as if they are producing a show about people who are supposed to be running in an election, and they really are, but it is all being staged for TV. It helps explain why the CBC is not sponsoring polls this time — a noble decision I’m sure, so as not to overstress the “horse race” element — but actually, who wants to spoil the suspense of that final episode when “the voters” get to “decide”?

I admit I’m obsessed with reality TV as a model in our era. But I’m not alone; check the ratings, check the fall schedules. The problem with reality TV is not what it does to TV (by undermining drama, news, even sitcoms) but what it does to reality, by creating a sense that there is no such thing separate from the televising of it. Even if people are not on air, they start behaving as if they are, as if a camera might be hiding nearby, ready to jump them. You sense it in media panels of ordinary voters. They are self-conscious, they talk like pundits. (“Martin has played the health-care card.”) Or the young man The Globe is following as he decides whether or not to vote. I guess there’s doubt, the issues are real. But you feel as if it all might not exist — just like the schemes on the island or the bachelor’s courtship — if the network decides not to renew the show.

The Layton specific: Of all the party leaders, Jack Layton best exemplifies this realm, and gives the NDP a special place in the reality-TV election. I find it impossible to picture him having a private moment, or perhaps the word I’m looking for is solitude. Maybe that’s what reporters intend by incessantly calling him “media savvy.” They mean: hard to imagine outside a media context, what he would be like with no cameras around. As if he had been constructed on the premises of a video universe, like Max Headroom. This is, of course, completely separate from his policy views, which I find mild and constructive, e.g., an inheritance tax: You mean we don’t already have one, like everybody else in the civilized world?

Any old way back: I find it touching that people can view the current tepid electoral contest as exciting, and discuss it at the office with the verve they give to American Idol or Survivor. I take it as a sign that politics is on the way back. Politics and government have been through a rough patch. They were badmouthed by politicians themselves, from Ronald Reagan to Mike Harris. The individual was glorified while the collective was disparaged; and the free-market economy was praised as equal to every challenge. September 11 made the political realm seem inevitable again. And the failure of market solutions in areas like health and schooling has made government action seem necessary and potentially noble.

Politics in Canada has always been a form of entertainment. Perhaps it will eventually make its way back as a means of doing things together as well.

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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.