TEARS ARE NOT ENOUGH
Kathleen Wynne
There has been a lot of ink spilled on the subject of politicians and their tears. According to historian, Thomas Dixon, as early as 1657 a pamphlet advocating the assassination of Oliver Cromwell described his tears as an insincere pretence of piety and zeal.
The public and private tears of Margaret Thatcher and Winston Churchill are analysed and catalogued. The frequency and nature of Barack Obama’s tears are examined for authenticity and political benefit.
The underlying question is always whether tears weaken or strengthen the political leader in the eyes of his or her public.
If the tears are for us, for the public, then they can strengthen the image of the leader. But if the politician is crying for him or herself, that’s not a good look.
One of Dixon’s conclusions is that:
If political leaders were to start shedding tears as expressions of their political, rather than merely their personal feelings then we really would be entering a new emotional era—one where tears revealed public passion rather than private sentiment.
In my experience as a woman in leadership, this was a particularly touchy subject. Tears come to us all for different reasons. Tears are loaded for women.
I laugh until I cry (a different kind of tears) every time I watch Jimmy Dugan ream out Evelyn in ‘A League of Their Own’. Tom Hanks as Coach Jimmy nails the sociology of crying in his sputtering attack on the bewildered young woman:
Are you crying? Are you crying? There’s no crying! There’s no crying in baseball!!
Men play baseball. Baseball is serious. There is no room for crying when we’re doing something serious that men do. The only reason you are crying is that you are a girl and you don’t understand the rules. There’s no crying in baseball!!
So although as we grow up as young girls, there is actually no shame in crying—most of us get some sympathy from the adults around us if we fall or hurt ourselves as kids—by the time we hit our professional years, we learn to unlearn that lesson.
The new rule is that crying is to be avoided in all but the most extraordinary professional situations. There’s no crying in baseball and none in the boardroom, none in public if it can at all be avoided.
All of that is about leaving behind weak, feminine behaviour to always demonstrate control of a situation.
In my political life, I worked hard at controlling my emotions in public. Anger was the trigger for me. As a parent activist early in my political journey, the undermining and defunding of the public education system in Ontario by Premier Mike Harris enraged me to the point of tears many times in press conferences. As an MPP and a Minister, countering the barbs of an Opposition member or defending our actions in the midst of an Education negotiation, there were countless times when tears threatened.
As Premier, apologizing for actions our government or the previous government had taken, standing in the Legislature to apologize on behalf of governments long gone for abuses of people with disabilities, cruelly institutionalized or apologizing for the ravages of residential schools that ruined Indigenous lives and families—I can barely write these things without weeping.
So, over the past 25 years, I learned tricks to avoid letting tears stop me mid-sentence. I learned to breathe deeply into my belly if I felt strong emotion welling up. I learned to take 30 seconds alone before walking into the glare of journalists’ questions. In those 30 or sometimes 60 seconds I would know whether I was going to cry. I needed to ‘get it out of my system’ as my mom would say. I would cry briefly but deeply and then move out into the glare.
Sometimes, the tears were not about my rage or my exhaustion because of my rage. Sometimes tears would be shared with the tears of the people in the room.
When we rolled out our improved sexual violence policy when I was Premier, I remember being in a room of mostly women who provided services to women who had been assaulted or raped. One of the male journalists in the room asked me whether I had ever been a victim of assault. Of course, it was a deeply personal question and I had to decide how to answer—which truth to tell. Because I was in a room of survivors and women who worked with survivors I told the difficult truth of a near miss at the age of about 21 when I had been protected from abuse at the hands of my boss by two men my own age. I was visibly emotional but I had made a decision that I would take the risk because we were all in the same boat.
On that day, I had just announced millions of dollars of support for women who had been assaulted. I was introducing a policy that had been developed with and by the women in the room. Our government was proposing real solutions and my personal experience was way less significant than those solutions.
What was wrong, then, with the tears shed by Premier Doug Ford at the press conference he held on the Friday after he went into quarantine at one of his family homes after being exposed to a staffer with COVID? Why am I making such a big deal about this?
Because I believe that usually tears are self-indulgent. While they are healthy and necessary, for leaders, they should basically be a private indulgence—especially if they do not accompany any attempt at a solution. As a leader, I should expect absolutely no sympathy for a completely preventable or self-inflicted problem. When I apologized for the gas plant or the Sudbury fiasco when I was first Premier, I was fully aware that I deserved no sympathy and no matter my contrition, I knew full well that we had made mistakes and I was being held responsible.
Doug Ford was obviously overcome with emotion and exhaustion at that press conference. Fair enough. I don’t even believe the tears were an act. They were genuine. But they were not enough. He apologized for his mistakes of a few days before, but he brought no solutions. We all expected that he would immediately follow the tears with an announcement of a paid sick leave program but that didn’t happen. Nothing.
He has a hard job, made harder by the COVID pandemic. I get that. But there are smart people who have been telling him with one voice what needs to be done to turn this situation around. He has not listened and so the situation has gotten worse. It’s not just about paid sick days, it’s about a decision-making process that has produced bad policy because the voices of the front line experts who are supposed to be guiding those decisions have been repeatedly ignored.
If that makes the Premier cry, that’s his problem. If he is exhausted and overwhelmed, that’s his problem too. He will not have the sympathy of the people of Ontario until he actually listens to the people who have the answers to the mess he has created.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Kathleen Wynne - Kathleen Wynne was first elected to the Ontario legislature in 2003 as the MPP for Don Valley West. She was Ontario’s 25th Premier and leader of the Ontario Liberal Party from January 2013 to June 2018. Kathleen has dedicated her professional life to building a better province for the people of Ontario. She is guided by the values and principles that knit the province of Ontario together: fairness, diversity, collaboration and creativity.
The views and opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Air Quotes media. Read more opinion contributions via QUOTES from Air Quotes Media.