Worthy of Joe Clark on a Good Day

I have obviously been reading too many Liberal bloggers this week (and, yes, there are quite a few good and sensible ones out there). The optimism for the Liberal Party’s future that they’ve portrayed seems to have infected me somewhat: I was actually beginning to think that a real debate over the future of that party, brought to the table by several leadership candidates other than IggyBob, might set the stage for the Liberals to, à la the Pearson opposition period, truly rethink themselves.

Well, so much for that.

One by one the leadership hopefuls have tumbled. Kennedy, Hall Wilson, Coderre, Manley, McKenna … asked to play, and answering “no thanks, not me, not this time”. The unstated finish to that, of course, is “… not under these rules”. A $90,000 entry fee (and let’s just forget the discount for a successful run of delegate-gathering for a moment, since by definition those who force the policy discussion for the most part won’t be front-runners) and a 10% tithe to the party on monies raised isn’t very attractive when anyone considering the run knows how many riding associations and how many party operatives are already in the hip pockets of IggyBob.

No, it’s not worth a candle — or the debt.

But here’s the thing. Canadians have seen Ignatieff and Rae, thanks to 2006. Surprisingly (to their egos) and unsurprisingly (to the rest of us) they were found wanting. Don’t believe it? Remember the “Anyone But Iggy” and “Anyone But Bob” motifs of the 2006 race? Isn’t that why Dion managed to sneak up the middle: Kennedy’s deal with Dion could drop a group of delegates for the next vote into Dion’s camp, but it was the migration to Dion out of the “Oh God No…” crowds — on either side of the IggyBob juggernauts — that gave the Liberals St-Stéphane.

Now by this point you may think, “ah, he’s pointing out how that kind of race can have a Joe Clark moment, such as in 1976 when Clark came up the middle between the Mulroney and Wagner camps in the PC Leadership. But, no: that’s not the point.

The point is that Ignatieff’s camp and Rae’s camp are set to fight to the finish — to the point where the investment in beating the other guy is so strong that, no matter what the candidate says afterward, the camp carries on the struggle, much like Joe Clark in his second incarnation as Progressive Conservative leader (and we all know how well that turned out). If you’re not buying that the internecine warfare in the Liberal Party will be that bad, just consider what Ignatieff’s supporters continued to do to back him against Dion post-December 2006. Was Ignatieff duplicitous about his loyalties? Probably not: his supporters just weren’t giving up the fight.

Much as with a negotiation where there’s only one issue on the table — anyone who has done this knows how difficult it is to get entrenched views to move without a way to “get a win” for everyone — what is effectively a two-way race (and LeBlanc is unlikely to be much of a challenge to the IggyBob battle, certainly not enough to turn either camp toward considering him as a rival) will be a single issue fight. Can we live with that other guy? The probable answer is “no” — and unity will be further delayed.

Remember, too, Canadians know Iggy and they know Bob, and they weren’t impressed with either one enough to push them over the top the last time. So neither is likely to be an engine of growth for the Liberal Party: at best, a “hold the fort” while the battle continues to rage under the surface.

That, in turn, will further damage the Liberals. The Canadian people — not the media, but voters in almost every demographic slice — are heartily sick of a party who thinks its own internal issues are the nation’s business. For the Liberals to prosper, three things are required: a belief that whomever “wins” in May 2009 actually has the rank and file behind him; a serious non-grab-bag policy rethink that gives a reason to believe in the party; and a winner who can act Prime Ministerial in Opposition.

None of that is on offer with IggyBob. Maybe those Liberals who thought to insult BCers by complaining about the cost of coming to Vancouver were on to something: a regional rump that’s even more Toronto-Ottawa-Montréal (and not much elsewhere) — and that’s the IggyBob promise! — shouldn’t meet elsewhere. After all, the Bloc wouldn’t hold a convention outside of Québec; why should a residue of Liberals do the same?

Unfurl the egos and the hurt feelings, because that’s where the Western World’s most successful power management organization is headed — followed by an on-going whittling away at the edges and a residue power base in just a few places.

PS: Financially, the party is losing with an IggyBob outcome, too: far fewer fees, far fewer new delegates and members … ah, but the battle of the egos really is more important, isn’t it.

Kill the “National Governing Party” Idea

I am no friend of the Liberal Party of Canada. Nevertheless, there is something that is responsible for the decline of the Liberals in our national life: the idea of the Liberals as Canada’s “National Governing Party” (NGP).

That the Liberals were able to dominate Canada’s twentieth century with success in office year after year does not create an entitlement, but many people — and I include editorial writers, columnists, bloggers, reporters, party supporters, hacks and politicians in this — by believing in this mythological status also come to believe in it as an entitlement. By definition, therefore, any leader of the Liberals ultimately has to deliver a return to (or retention of) power. A failure to do so brings out the knives. These may (as in John Turner’s case) or may not (as in the probable outcome for Stéphane Dion) lead to another chance to win an election. But those who believe in an entitlement are vicious and seek revenge if they find themselves denied.

The Liberal Party has to drop the entitlement thinking. As long as it exists, the party is not really a party. It is a flame attracting the moths, the corrupt seeking power for its (and their) own sake. No one with two brain cells to rub together would, on sober reflection, consider either Michael Ignatieff or “Today’s” Bob Rae as serious contenders for national leadership and potential high office: their subordination of principle to personal interest is manifestly visible and has been since the first leadership race in 2006. No one who has ever suffered through a Justin Trudeau speech would consider him as suitable for anything other than the backbenches at this point in his life other than the mystical power of his surname. From these and other jockeying and braying moths in the spotlight and the queueing up of the power-brokers and aides behind one or another “bandwagon” to the type of ground worker in campaigns of my personal acquaintance who think nothing of stealing from co-workers to fund their party life, the Liberal Party attracts those who believe the state and the taxpayer exist for their personal aggrandizement.

Give Dion credit. The “Green Shift”(™ licensed) was not a policy that appealed, but, in the face of his party’s failure to actually think about policy and what it stood for he did do the heavy lifting of trying to provide it with one. That the party felt quite comfortable in dispensing with policy in 2006 — and apparently still is not particularly seized by the question — shows the underlying truth of what I have just written about the Liberal Party’s flame and its moths.

Perhaps taming this beast is now beyond hope: if so, the Liberal decline looked forward to by both Stephen Harper and his Conservatives, and Jack Layton and his New Democrats, will continue. (They are already a Toronto & Montréal rump attached to an Atlantic stronghold, but close examination of the results riding by riding shows how much of a close thing this was in a fair number of seats — and the trend continues to work against them.) There is too much unbridled ambition tied up in the Liberal legend of being the party entitled to lead, and perhaps no leader can emerge that can tame the horses involved in such a competitive race. But a focus on the question why should anyone choose to switch to the Liberal Party? rather than the eternal quest for the leader with the charisma and intensity to bring back old glory days of supping at the trough of “rights denied” might be a very good starting place.

Don’t expect it, though. There’s just still too much impetus behind the idea — and a much more thorough thrashing required at the polls — to make that point stick. For the mythos of the NGP also leads, inexorably, to two other notions: that NDP voters are Liberals “seduced away” and that can be scared into returning, and that Conservative voters are Neanderthals and fascists by definition. Neither of those memes reflects reality, either: a party that won’t deal in reality is unelectable in most of the country. Enough said.

Along the way, of course, Stephen Harper must also drop the notion of the Conservatives becoming the inheritor to the “National Governing Party” meme, or his accomplishment in bringing 2/3 of the fractured big tent right of centre together will fall apart much as the Liberals have been doing since Trudeau (Chrétien benefitted from the disarray in Conservative circles through three general elections). We shall see if he and those around him “get this”. A good starting point would be nurturing and developing more Conservative voices, and a strong set of Ministers with good public identities, demonstrating an openness to differing ideas about the future of Conservativism in Canada.

Do I muse in vain? Or will it come down to another Government-of-One vs the winner of Yet-Another-Horse-Race-Looking-for-the-Leader-Who-Brings-The-Entitlements-Back? For there is nothing “natural” about any party being in Government.

Parties Hoist on their Own Petards (Part I)

A week has passed since the by-elections of March 17, and in a week Parliament will resume, with the four new MPs being presented in the centre aisle. Already, though, the drum beats of renewed bluff and bluster, storm and fury, and threat upon threat again takes up the airwaves and hectares of highly processed dead tree delivered daily at the door. All that noise — and the speculation of near immediate leadership change and policy change in one or more parties from the pundit gallery.

We return to the possibility of real governance in Canada facing multiple parties hoist high and fluttering in the breeze of their own rhetoric, leaks and ambitions. This faces the Harper Government no less so than those on the other side of the aisle, although it is, perhaps, working its way out differently within the ranks of the Conservatives. Leaving them to the end, then, let’s look at the others:

It Should Have Been “May is Not a Leader”, Perhaps?

After a year of Conservative advertising under the tag line “Dion is Not a Leader”, it would be difficult to use the line elsewhere, if only for fear of being copied. Yet there are numerous circles of thought in Canada today which coalesce around the following: “the Green Party would be worth a look-in were it not for Elizabeth May”.

Goodness knows May has done a number of strange things: having placed second, last time, in London North Centre (and second with a chance of taking the seat in future, not a “second to Bob Rae’s 59%” as in Toronto Centre last week), she has eschewed running there. She struck a bargain with Stéphane Dion (detrimental, certainly, to the Liberals in setting the Green Party up as a viable alternative to the local Liberal — a move that almost cost Joyce Murray her chance to parade next Monday, what with the 3:1 growth of Green votes, mostly from the Liberals, in Vancouver Quadra) to enable her to carry out a quixotic tilt against Peter MacKay in Central Nova, a seat closer to an inheritance than a contest. She could even have sought a seat in one of the four by-elections just held — one of the comments regularly heard in Quadra was “Dan Grice is doing well, but why didn’t May contest this seat: she’d have won and have made it to the Commons”. (Nothing against Grice, mind, simply a recognition that this was a likely opportunity to succeed and that the leader of the party didn’t take it.)

Then there’s the positions she has spoken on, far more Liberal-me-too than charting positive reasons to vote Green.

Come the next election, the battle will be over media time, and participation in the debate. May’s job since the election of 2006 has been to (a) create those positive reasons to look at her party so that (b) the demand to expose the party in the debates would be there (in the newsrooms as much as in the streets) and (c) get a Green into the Commons, much as Reform got Deborah Grey into the Commons. Even one seat makes a difference.

At a time when Canadian politics is showing the early signs of realignment (consider the sheer number of MPs crossing the floor — and winning re-election under their new colours! — this decade) the Green leader had, above all, the responsibility to become a viable destination for those seeking alternatives. In this she has failed.

Jack! Wishes Paul Martin Was Back

Do you recall when Jack Layton became NDP Leader in 2003? Since then, he’s been consistent: he has claimed, over and over again, that the Liberals have moved too far to the right, and that the New Democrats are their successor on the centre-left of Canadian politics. The NDP popular vote has risen in both the 2004 and again in the 2006 general elections. However, there is a huge difference to the NDP in facing a Conservative minority Government and facing a Liberal minority Government, one that Jack Layton has bet everything on — with little to show for it.

Layton’s strategy for the past two-plus years with the Liberals on his side of the aisle has been to try and convince Canadians that the Liberals are not needed. This is, of course, a welcome move from the Harper Government’s perspective: the squeezing of the middle term in the three-party equation by both ends potentially helps lead to a Conservative majority — and, if BC politics (where this squeeze occurred back in the 1950s) is anything to go by, such a squeeze would make the Conservatives the “natural party of government” and the NDP into the strong-yet-almost-never-good-enough “Permanent Opposition”.

The problem Layton’s facing is, despite the reams of truth he dispenses — his party votes against the Government while the Liberals abstain and abstain; his party raises a non-confidence motion against the Government while the Liberals avoid anything so direct; his “Canada’s Effective Opposition” tag line reflects the reality of a Liberal party silenced by its loss, going through a leadership process, then never really settling down after the convention to the task of constructing its own policy positions — the message is fundamentally rejected by the Canadian people and the Canadian media. The media rejects it both because it comes from what, in their book, is generally considered “the filler at the end of the story” (the fundamental story being the horse race between the leading parties and the knifings and back-stabbing potentials within them), and because they know it’s irrelevant: Canadians are often followers of tradition and vote from habit more than from constant consideration of the issues.

Then, too, some elements of NDP policy — even those these are consistent with who the NDP are deep in their roots — don’t sit well with the public. “Out of Afghanistan” may sound noble to many ears, but even many of those (judging by call-in radio) who don’t support being there and don’t want to stay also don’t want to be seen to cut and run. There’s a constant sense that “Working” or “Ordinary Canadians” is code for people who earn less than me: that makes some of the notions on offer seem dangerous, especially since it’s those in that family income between $40,000 and $140,000 range that are feeling stressed, yet feel Jack Layton may be talking about them paying more to transfer to others.

Jack’s best days were when he faced off against Paul Martin, with his sense of entitlement, his wealth, his dithering “all over the mapism” to be exploited (especially in a minority situation), and with the fracture lines the Chrétien-Martin wars dug deep into the Liberal party. None of these face him now with the Harper Conservatives in government. He must either position the NDP squarely with positive attributes and reasons why voters should choose them on their merits, or he will find his party squeezed.

After all, only a few Canadians per hundred spend time thinking about politics between elections. All his actions in the House since 2006 will be dust in the wind once a general campaign is underway.

Anything to Say About the Bloc?

Well, frankly, no. First, I am no expert on Québec and can’t say one way or the other whether Bloc voters are tiring of the game of blocking action in Ottawa rather than being (potentially) a part of it. Second, if Duceppe wasn’t forced out after his dalliance with moving to the PQ (and dashing back to the Bloc within a week) then the post is his regardless of performance, for neither his caucus nor voters (in the three Québec by-elections of 2007) seem disposed to make him the issue.

Tomorrow: the Liberals and the Conservatives.