Martin Regg Cohn: Doug Ford says he’ll do democracy differently from Donald Trump. Let’s hold him to it

The webcam in the premier’s office caught doing a mock gag reflex — tongue out — before he recovered with a defensive chuckle. At our , carried live on thestar.com, he’d just lambasted the American president — so it hurt to be lumped in with (even in the past tense).

Ford doesn’t ordinarily do 45-minute sit-downs with university students, hosted by a Toronto Star columnist who is not his preferred reading material. But — and deserves credit for sitting in the hot seat, keeping his cool and listening up.

has turned our world upside down. And the pandemic has changed the way Ontario’s premier does politics.

The question — both from me and a followup from a student named Suzanne — was forward-looking: How long can Ford stay on his best behaviour without reverting, post-pandemic, to the pugnacious politics of his past — and dragging the province down with him?

“This is the way I’m going to be,” Ford insisted. “I’m going to be this way moving forward. I’m not going to roll back.”

But how do we know, Suzanne wanted to know.

The premier vows that he now understands Ontarians prefer the new, more modulated Doug Ford 2.0 — after all, shows he’s among the most popular politicians in Canada today. Ford toppled the last Liberal dynasty in a landslide two years ago (and then suffered a downward slide) but if an election were held tomorrow the landslide would likely be even bigger, with his Tories winning .

But Ford also understands that popularity numbers, like pandemic numbers, go up and down, and that it’s easier for pundits to point fingers at a local politician than a global virus.

There is no cure for COVID-19. But Ford knows he will be held accountable, and is watching the U.S. president pay the price for his wilful incompetence on all fronts.

“He’s not on my Christmas card list. I’m ticked off at him,” Ford said of Trump.

When a student raised the mental health challenges for those stuck at home in mid-pandemic, Ford opened up personally — and then turned again on Trump:

“I’m passionate about this. There’s no secret, you know, my brother (the late Toronto mayor, Rob Ford) had an addiction. And until you live it, until you live it and a family member has it, you don’t realize, and it’s tough.”

When I asked about Trump’s cruel mockery of rival candidate Joe Biden’s son for his addiction problems in the first presidential debate, the premier pulled no punches.

“I get so frustrated. There’s an unwritten rule and … and every politician knows this: You never attack someone’s family,” Ford fumed.

“I thought it was terrible, it was disgusting, I thought, honestly, the whole debate was disgusting.”

Which it was. But can Canadian politicians behave differently?

That was the inspiration for our , just before the last provincial election, when I invited all four major party leaders to come together onstage — not to tear each other down, but to compare notes about how to connect with voters. Ford wasn’t yet leader, but we saved a seat for him all this time.

So can Ford behave better as premier? That’s what Suzanne wanted to know.

“Prior to COVID, you were regarded as the Trump of Ontario, for what Martin already described as a combative style,” she began. “How do you propose we hold you to account — to continue on your path away from a Trump style to a more collaborative path putting Ontarians first?”

Good question, judging from the chastened premier’s reaction. Good answer, too.

“Boy, that was a real slap calling me Donald Trump,” he chuckled. “I’m anything but Donald Trump.”

That’s undeniably true today. The president’s reckless mishandling of COVID-19 and his racist misanthropy placed him in a league all his own.

While Ford spoke well of Trump in the past, and his Tories borrowed shamelessly from Trump’s playbook in the last campaign — playing wedge politics to divide Ontarians — Ford doesn’t play the race card. And he long ago dumped the Trump road map.

“I think it’s important that we work together,” Ford persisted.

In fairness, he’s now doing his fair share. Last week, he surprised the legislature by as premier, Kathleen Wynne, and later invited opposition leaders to meet him privately in the premier’s office.

“I like it better when we talk to each other instead of shouting,” he told students. “I want to continue on speaking with them, collaborating with them, coming up with ideas. I understand what they have to do. They’re in opposition, they have to go after me — that’s politics.”

I countered that politics needn’t be a dirty word, nor poison — it’s a prerequisite, not a counterpoint, to democracy. The question is how politicians disagree, disrespect, dismiss and diss each other.

Journalists, too. The usual Twitter trolls seemed to expect we’d punch Ford in the face at the forum, even if only figuratively.

But this wasn’t a news conference or confrontation over COVID-19 (though the topic kept coming up) — the premier takes pandemic questions most mornings from the opposition, and almost every afternoon from reporters. It was a forum on democracy, post-pandemic — and a learning experience.

Most students didn’t seem to know that Ford doesn’t eat red meat or drink — always a fun fact (though I didn’t reveal that I usually see him sneaking a smoke outside the legislature). Nor did I know until Tuesday that Ford grew up with a young immigrant from Morocco living in his home, exposing him to Islam — a fact he shared with me and Ryerson president Mohamed Lachemi (originally from North Africa) just before we went live with the forum on our Zoom platform.

Whether on the pandemic or politics, there are no personal panaceas. But the premier has the power to make our politics better and do democracy differently than Americans.

For example, by cleaning up money politics — which happens to be my personal passion, and the subject of a as a columnist. Unfortunately, Ford ducked my question about campaign finance reform and the need to between affluent donors and average voters.

A missed opportunity for the premier, and the province. But instead of punching him in the face, I told Ford I’d get back to him (not at him) in print.

To be continued. In .

The point is that a lone politician can’t cure a pandemic. But he can heal political sickness, if he listens.

That’s democracy.

Martin Regg Cohn is a Toronto-based columnist covering Ontario politics for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: