I don't want to single Chantal Hebert out for her latest article.

She is probably one of the best political commentators on the federal scene. But her latest column gives me the opportunity to talk about the limits of "left versus right" politics.

When designing policy or running a government, left and right are unhelpful concepts. Take a ministry like Environment, a union may be part of a local NIMBY movement opposing new green generation while corporations are lined up in support of the environmentally-friendly action.

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Political players rarely spend much time measuring the relative "right or leftness" of a proposal. Instead, it is more about the communications opportunities, stakeholder reactions and practical results on the ground.

This is because most average folks don't think in terms of right and left. In fact, in a lot of cases, they don't even know what they are.

The whole left versus right concept comes from the early French Revolution and the seating plan of the 1791 Legislative Assembly. The royalists sat to the right of the King and the radicals to the left.

Somehow this bizarre shorthand remained a convenient way to sustain "us versus them" concepts in politics that tend to belittle the complexity of modern coalition building and policy making.

Take economic policy. In 1791, the "right" was protectionist, mercantilist and agrarian. The "left" was for free trade, free commerce and low tariffs on things like corn. Today, those positions are generally speaking reversed but you can easily find protectionists on either side of the aisle.

The public is smart enough to pay little attention to these labels because they don't apply to themselves or their lives.

The American polling company Harris Interactive did a survey in 2005 that demonstrates my point. They examined the understanding of average Americans of typical political shorthand used by journalists and politicians, the dyads "conservative and liberal" and "right and left." The results show that majorities could accurately place typical social policy questions like abortion and gay rights next to the labels conservative and liberal, but there was considerable confusion on a number of issues.

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For instance, Harris found that 50 per cent of Americans thought conservatives supported gun control while 39 per cent thought liberals tended to be the champions of tax cuts.

That confusion only increased for the less value-laden terms "left" and "right." The Harris survey found the term "right" was broadly seen as equivalent to "conservative" but that "more people don't know what the phrase means with between 20 and 27 per cent saying they are not sure whether a right-winger would support or oppose each of the seven policy positions."

After reviewing the findings, the respected social scientist Leo Bogart said, "The confusion over what the widely used political labels actually mean reflects their common use as epithets rather than as true descriptions of people's beliefs. Those beliefs are often inconsistent and self-contradictory, because Americans don't adhere to a party line or doctrine that provides ready answers to all questions. We may be 'conservative' on some issues and 'liberal' on others, but it's the specifics that matter, not the labels."

Before you get on your high-horse about stupid Americans, the numbers are actually worse in Canada.

A 2002 Compas survey found that just 47 per cent could accurately place the Canadian Alliance to the right of the NDP. While 32 per cent admitted not knowing, 18 per cent said the Alliance was to the left of the NDP.

Voters tend to make decisions on how to cast their ballot on general party affiliation ("I've liked the Liberals since Trudeau"), broad policy appeals ("The Conservatives are for lower taxes"), like-mindedness of the leader ("Jack Layton fights for the little guy") or a contrast position that mobilizes their action ("I'm voting Liberal to stop Stephen Harper").

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They don't really get their ruler out and measure where a party is on the artificial left-right spectrum.