Beer test can help you decide who to vote for

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 06/08/2015 (3745 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

As a crusading journalist and guardian of democracy, I frequently sit down to pick my buddy Bob’s brains to see if he has any ideas worth stealing.

Along with being my buddy, Bob is my boss and he’s also the smartest guy I know.

I thought it would be wise to sit down with him because — and somebody should definitely look into this — some genius decided we should hold another federal election, even though it is still summer and most of us are too busy binge-watching old episodes of The Walking Dead on Netflix to pay attention.

I explained to Bob that, like most Canadians, I was having trouble picking which party leader I prefer, and suggested we could narrow the field by holding a Survivor-style contest wherein we abandoned them on a tropical island and forced them to handle poisonous snakes. (For safety reasons, we should test this idea on members of the Senate.)

Anyway, Bob said he had a much better idea for selecting our next prime minister. “It’s called the beer test,” Bob explained to me over coffee.

“I like the sound of that,” I said. “How does it work?”

Bob smiled. “You just look at each leader’s personality and then decide whether this is the sort of person you would enjoy sitting down with over a cold beer,” he said.

Before you scoff at this genius idea, let me point out that back in 2009 U.S. President Barack Obama famously hosted a “beer summit,” wherein a black Harvard professor and the white police officer who arrested him tried to calm a nationwide uproar by sitting down to sort things out over cold brews. And I think we all know how much better race relations are in the U.S. since that dramatic moment.

So with a clink of the glass to my buddy Bob and President Obama, here’s a look at how our national party leaders rank in my own personal beer test: (For the record, if you are a lawyer for any of the political parties and thinking about suing me, let me point out I am just kidding. Also, this was mostly Bob’s idea.)

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1. Conservative Leader Stephen Harper — The prime minister’s handlers should consider the benefits of having Harper consume beer in a public place with a typical voter, such as myself. It would be a better way to make him appear human than just slapping a cowboy hat and faux-leather vest on him when he visits the Calgary Stampede. Given his passion for hockey, it seems likely Harper would enjoy swapping stories over a cold one. But there would be a catch — considering the fiscal climate, he’d insist you pick up the tab, and worst of all he’d spend the entire time warning you scary imported beers lead to terrorism.
2. NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair — Sure, he’d sit down for a beer with you, but, as anyone who has ever seen him in question period can tell you, he would probably yell at you the entire time. Also, the leather-lunged front-runner would not be able to tell the waitress what kind of beer he wanted until Forum Research had conducted a poll of 1,399 beer drinkers in key ridings.
3. Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau — We hate to make generalizations, but we strongly suspect Justin is not a hardcore beer drinker, and he would insist on getting to know us while sipping a glass of white wine. Out of fairness, I should point out my wife thinks that would be a swell thing to do. Also, if you did sit down for drinks with the leader with the best hair on the campaign trail, chances are you’d end up “discussing” his support for legalizing marijuana, which would lead to getting the munchies, which would lead to ordering chicken wings and nachos, which probably do not go well with a nice B.C. chardonnay.
4. Green party Leader Elizabeth May — It would have to be one of those fancy organic beers. Also — and we mean this in a non-litigious way — we find ourselves fretting whether the perky May might embrace the idea too firmly and end up making awkward jokes about the other leaders until you felt compelled to call Transport Minister Lisa Raitt to haul her away.

We hope the scientific results of today’s beer test make it easier for you to decide which brand of party leader suits your democratic needs. Better yet, we should sit down with the leaders and talk about it in person. Seeing as how Bob and I came up with the idea, you can bring the beer.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca