Stockwell Day Revisited

You won't believe me, but I wrote the following column without realizing it was one year ago exactly, I wrote about Mr. Day. What a difference a year makes.

Once upon a time in my youth and innocence, I thought Joe Clark was treated cruelly by his colleagues and the media. I still remember the cartoons in the Toronto Sun invariably showing him with idiot mittens dangling. I have not the slightest doubt Joe Clark - who by all accounts is an honourable and decent man insofar as a career politician can be - can only be thinking two things these days. The first is "better you than me," and "they've got better with practice."

Of course, I'm really talking about Stockwell Day. The full story will come out sooner or later, but even now it's clear that Mr. Day has experienced the most spectacular and prolonged meltdown of any politician on earth. Not being a fly on the wall within caucus, such as it is these days, I can only speculate on what brought Mr. Day to this position. There appear to be several overlapping factors, including not quite ready for prime time syndrome, lacking the mother-wit to keep a low profile on his religious beliefs, an inability to stay on script, a tendency to put style ahead of substance, and a lack of that certain something called leadership.

Mr. Day held a number of portfolios in the Alberta government, including Treasurer. Given Alberta's finances over the last few years, he didn't have the usual stresses in that ministry, but still, you'd think Ralph wouldn't have given him the job if he had demonstrated prior incompetence. Yet one wonders why Ralph introduced to the Alliance, and encouraged him to run for the leadership if he was such a strong performer in the provincial government. Nobody has accused Ralph Klein of being politically dim. I can easily believe that Ralph eventually saw the flaws in Mr. Day, and took the opportunity to get him out of his government before he exploded. Ralph could well have had the Peter Principle firmly in mind; that people rise to their level of incompetence. As well, if Mr. Day had performed well after all, perhaps Ralph thought he was going to have a friend in high places.

Canadians are generally a tolerant group when it comes to religious beliefs, although Canada used to be a thoroughly Christian country. This has changed with all the immigration over the last few decades. It's been a struggle at times, but non-Christian religious values are accepted now. We don't have the sectarian strife so common elsewhere in the world, and most of us want to keep it that way. What people believe is their own business, providing they don't push it others. So why did Mr. Day make such a point of his conservative religious values? It wouldn't have bothered Canadians to find Mr. Day had strong religious beliefs and attended church weekly. But Canadians were not prepared to find that he seriously believed that humanity co-existed with dinosaurs. Sure, some people believe as he does, but they would have voted for him anyway. I'll bet the dinosaur comment crossed the line for many voters.

Political parties have a number of tools they use to get their message out to voters on their own terms, and to minimize the damage inflicted by other parties. One of the most important of these is to have everyone singing from the same songbook. Whatever the party policy is on an issue, everybody projects it. Everyone changes their speeches to concentrate on the message of the day. They all respond the same way to damaging allegations. Everybody except for Stockwell Day. Monte Solberg used to be the foreign affairs critic, and had worked extensively with other parties to develop a common stance on the Israeli Palestinian issue. Then Mr. Day co opted Mr. Solberg's time and contradicted everything he had said up to that point. Boom, one reputation trashed in an instant, another dragged further into the mud, and an opening created big enough for critics to drive the space shuttle through. There are no doubt other examples the public is unaware of. One doesn't lose 20% of one's caucus by accident or with one or even two gaffes.

Perhaps one of the more enduring images of Stockwell Day is his zooming up to a press conference on one of those little watercraft that so many cottagers hate. That can't have persuaded them to vote for him. We expect our politicians to wear a business suit, not a wet suit. One of the slogans of the old Reform party was "politics done differently", and most Canadians could accept that. The wet suit and jet ski was a little too different.

Last I heard, poor old Stock was hanging in there, but I haven't yet listened to the 10 o'clock news. His political career is finished, and even he knows it in his more lucid days. I wonder what he will do for a living after stepping down from being the Leader of the Official Opposition? He's hardly a career politician. Joe Clark rolled up his sleeves and went to work for the guy who stabbed him in his back, and was one of the very few people to come out of Mr. Mulroney's government with clean hands. Even more, he enhanced his reputation, but that route isn't open to Mr. Day. About the only future I can see for him is to settle down as the pastor in a church of fellow believers. Perhaps tonight the on and off resignation will be on again and the destruction of Mr. Day will be mercifully terminated. Whatever will the media do without Mr. Day to provide a headline?