Pulling the Wool Over Your Own Eyes

While many other parties are now eating humble pie in the wake of last Saturday's elections, it's amazing to see some of the acrobatics politicians are willing to go through in order to make their dismal situation look like a day at Disneyworld.

The Progressives are comically guilty of this right now. Pretty much wiped out in the capital region altogether, with only one councilperson in Kópavogur and another in Álftanes, Progressive MP Guðmundur Steingrímsson recently very correctly asserted that party chairman Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson ought to shoulder at least some of the blame for the party's appalling numbers. And naturally, Sigmundur showed the type of classiness he's famous for.

First, he told reporters that the only explanation for Guðmundur's remarks is that "it must have been some kind of performance on his part", because he can't imagine what would possess him to say such a thing. Oh, certainly. Why should the party chairman himself bear any blame for the party's poor showings in the polls? There's got to be some other explanation.

And Sigmundur had one: the Best Party is to blame, everyone. In an e-mail he sent to party members, Sigmundur said that "the results in Reykjavík disappointed everyone, but when a new campaign upsets the history of elections in the city, other campaigns don't get a chance to be a part of it." Which is pretty weak. Yes, every party in Reykjavík lost support, but Sigmundur acts as though his party's low numbers began with the Best Party. In fact, the Progressives were projected way back in February to lose their one and only seat in Reykjavík city hall - at that time, the Best Party was polling at about, oh, nothing.

Sigmundur then engaged in some mathematical acrobatics, contending that "the Progressives aren't exactly unpopular in the capital area", citing a recent Gallup poll that showed that 25% of residents of one neighborhood in Reykjavík, Grafarvogur, said that they could conceivably see themselves voting for the Progressives. You know, when I was in high school, plenty of girls said they could conceivably see themselves going on a date with me. It almost never happened, which depressed me some, but Sigmundur has shown me that I was actually a very popular guy.

The cherry on top was him saying that plenty of people in the capital area that Progressive staffers spoke to expressed a willingness to vote for the party, but - once again - that darned Best Party got in the way, and they ended up not voting for them.

If Sigmundur saved the energy he spends on making excuses for failure, and used it instead to actually stop using empty populist rhetoric and start actually improving his party, they might get somewhere. I know a number of fine people in the Progressive Party, believe it or not. They have convictions, and a good head on their shoulders. Sigmundur would do well to listen to those who disagree with him, instead of dismissing them as "performers".