Now that we’ve discussed the heck out of whether there will be a cabinet shuffle, when, who’s hot, not or forgot, and the optics of what actually did happen, can we talk about something else? Like the cabinet? No, really. I read the speculation (it’s my job). And I read the stories about who went up, down or sideways, plus insider commentary on key issues like Tory prospects in Quebec, their ability to sell the Afghan mission to voters and who introduced the prime minister to his wife. It’s like reality TV we have an excuse for watching. Without, fortunately, having to see Gordon O’Connor throw a fit wrapped in a towel.

Now we’re tired of it and ready to watch a sitcom — say, the zany antics of the New Ministers and their wacky neighbours, the Oppositions. Still, some high-end digital channel might air a nerdy show on the irrelevant question of what, exactly, qualifies various people for their cabinet posts.

Take Peter MacKay. Please. As you know, he was recently our foreign minister because he’d led the pre-merger Progressive Conservatives, remains a potential leadership contender and was not conspicuously prone to public gaffes, unless you count his recent slip on the Arctic ice when he warned Russia the North Pole was Canadian, a ringing declaration sadly not based in fact.

Maybe as defence minister he’ll do something about the Russian bombers now test-firing cruise missiles over this “Canadian” territory. Or not. But I digress. My point is that nothing in his C.V. would, in any other business, justify giving him such important, difficult and specialized posts. How many books on defence or diplomacy has he read in his life? (Not counting The North Pole: Mine Mine Mine by Johnny Canuck.)

The National Post editorial board liked him in defence because: “That ministry needs a high-profile minister who can talk about our Afghan mission in the broader context of its importance to the international community and how Canadians are improving the lives of ordinary Afghans….” I’m more concerned about whether he can run the mission. But I’m the sort of nebbish who thinks a grandmaster should be able to play the Benoni counter-gambit not just spin it, and understand its prospects on the board as well as in Quebec.

To be sure, the guy formally best qualified for his cabinet job was Gordon O’Connor, and he was just dumped from defence into national revenue to avoid conceding the obvious to the juvenile hecklers across the aisle. (The prime minister said of the 68-year-old former brigadier-general and military lobbyist: “It’s time for him to have some other experiences.” Like being fired sardonically.) But if he was not up to defence, what possible reason is there for thinking he’s ready for national revenue? Does the PM value his views on consumption taxes, the Ricardian equivalence theorem or the appropriate deduction for truckers’ lunches? Pshaw.

This being Canada, you might be reluctant to start down a road that leads to asking if this country should have a heritage minister who struggles with English. But this is picking nits. The real question is what qualifications any of these people bring to such jobs in this or any cabinet.

In this week’s “Monday Morning” column, Donna Jacobs profiled incoming Canadian Chamber of Commerce president and CEO Perrin Beatty, in cabinet at 29 and, under Brian Mulroney, minister of national revenue, solicitor general, minister of defence, health and welfare then communications, and Kim Campbell’s secretary of state for external affairs. He’s no fool, and I daresay he’s a quick study. But would even Mr. Beatty claim he was given these jobs because of how much he knew coming in, or that he held any of them long enough to figure out when his bureaucrats were feeding him a line? We wouldn’t hire bricklayers this way.

Let me not seem unkind to the prime minister. Especially with so many Senate vacancies going begging. Our system places severe constraints on his freedom of choice, from regional politics to internal party dynamics to a drastic shortage of MPs capable of doing any cabinet job at all, never mind well. Most ministers, caught between the pincers of the bureaucracy and the Prime Minister’s Office, have little impact on policy or administration, and usually it’s just as well. As Sir John A. Macdonald once responded to criticism of his ministers: “If you want a better cabinet, send me better wood.”

Voters ultimately control timber quality. But the routine failure of our system to produce candidates for ministerial office with anything resembling relevant professional qualifications is, I submit, a subject not yet exhausted by press coverage of this shuffle.

[First published in the Ottawa Citizen]

They say it’s better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness. It’s not as much fun. Still, let me seek to dispel a bit of murk today with a list of 10 books on government that aspiring Canadian politicians should read.

Sixty years ago Joseph Schumpeter called it a “well-known argument” that “the democratic method creates professional politicians whom it then turns into amateur administrators and ‘statesmen.’” I fear that we have since forgotten the argument despite living daily with the result. But to avoid an ill-tempered digression, let me simply note that the vast majority of people who run for office genuinely intend to put public interest ahead of partisanship, raise the tone of debate and make their country a better place. Given the generally pitiful results, it is fair to conclude that there are important things about government most of them don’t even realize they don’t know.

Last Friday, CFRA radio host Stephanie Egan challenged me to offer help on this point. Okay. I can’t make people read and understand this stuff before they go into politics, let alone take time out of their hectic schedules for some reflective reading once elected. On the other hand, with three weeks of summer left, what better use to make of the comparative calm?

To avoid the proverbial drink from a fire hydrant, I determined to list books not on specific issues but on how public affairs work generally, and only ones any person of good will and sound mind could get through quickly, profitably and pleasurably.

1. Henry Hazlitt, Economics In One Lesson. Sixty years ago, Hazlitt himself complained that “a mere recital of the economic policies of governments all over the world is calculated to cause any serious student of economics to throw up his hands in despair.” It still is, because people who seek office still haven’t read this wonderfully clear little volume.

2. Paul Johnson, Modern Times: The World From The Twenties to the Nineties. Theory, my father used to say, is just practice with the hard bits left out. It would be comforting to know that those who aspire to influence the course of events had some knowledge of actual events.

3. John Stuart Mill, On Liberty. The classic, and still unsurpassed, defence of free political institutions.

4. Jonathan Lynn and Antony Jay, eds, The Complete Yes Minister. Government has its own particular rules, rhythms and reasons. While economists drone on about “public choice theory,” this hilarious British satire still explains it better, faster and far more enjoyably.

5. Jack Granatstein, Who Killed the Canadian Military? Defence of the nation is the first duty of any government. Yet in Canada it has been tragically neglected by every government ... and we citizens elected them all.

6. George Orwell, 1984. Government is not a toy. People who dabble in politics need to understand just how badly public affairs can go wrong, and be instinctively averse to the sort of language and thought that take us in that direction.

7. Darrell Huff, How to Lie with Statistics. I want everyone in public life to read a book on science as an adult, if only to prove that they can. But this classic is still the best inoculation against error and flummery with numbers.

8. A.V. Dicey, Introduction to the Study of The Law of the Constitution. Unless you know how parliamentary self-government is meant to work, and why, you’re liable to reduce it to the mess we see today. Read Dicey on Westminster in its heyday and you’ll never look at a parliamentary committee the same way again.

9. Friedrich Hayek, The Road to Serfdom. The Teutonic prose style makes it the most difficult read on the list. But it explains why comprehensive economic planning is not just undesirable but impossible. Do not approach Canadian health care without it.

10. Thomas Sowell, A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles. Nothing turns public debate into ill-tempered bickering faster than mistaking a philosophical difference about how the world works for a specific policy disagreement. Sowell’s book can’t make the arguing stop but it can improve its intellectual and rhetorical tone.

It’s best to read the books on this list before entering politics because, as Henry Kissinger once observed, people do not generally “grow in office” (unless by that you mean “become more left wing” or refer to the probable consequences of too little exercise and too much fast food). Lurching from crisis to crisis more often exhausts whatever intellectual capital politicians dragged in with them. But, hey, better late than never.

If these 10 books give off even a faint glow it will, I trust, be worth the candle.

[First published in the Ottawa Citizen]