Mike is the Message: Performing the Common Sense Revolution

This article concerns itself with the performance of politics. It is focused primarily on Mike Harris, the current premier of Ontario, and how in particular instances he has promoted and defended the Common Sense Revolution--the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party's own five-year plan of social and economic reform. In other words, it is my intention to examine how the revolution was and has been, on and at certain stages, performed. Specifically, how it had been enacted by Harris himself in order to promote a particular kind of 'confidence' which swept the Tories into office on June 8, 1995 and, despite such controversies as potentially detrimental cuts to education, health care and welfare, brought them into a second term on June 3, 1999. Through a close reading of his performances in a series of television advertisements aired in late 1996, I will contend that in these we witness the crux of an ongoing propaganda campaign which, through Harris, attempted to hail a specific segment of the population of Ontario by way of a carefully crafted and semiotically rich play of persuasion. This will lead to an examination of a televised interventionist performance by actor Mary Walsh of CBC Television's This Hour Has 22 Minutes. I will argue that through her own contesting semiotic play of confidence, she attempts to deconstruct and disrupt the cohesion the Harris Tories had up to then carefully established and maintained through the performances of their leader.