I’m Too Old For This ****

Dear Conservative Party of Canada Leadership Hopefuls, Campaign Teams – and anyone mildly curious about party politics in this country:

It appears we are in the initial stages of a race to pick someone for the top job. This happens. By my count, whoever wins the next CPC leadership will be the ninth such person since I first shelled out money to be a paid-up member – more if we add those folks who, like Candice Bergen, are there on an interim basis.

My first reaction is neither of shock nor surprise. It is more along the lines of the phrase that Danny Glover’s character repeated continually in the nearly half-dozen films in the “Lethal Weapon” franchise, that “I'm too old for this s**t.”

You see, over those forty years (yes, forty years) I have been involved at varying degrees of ‘intensity’ – from organizing local efforts to just showing up and casting a ballot. The circumstances can depend upon how engaged I am to simply how busy I am with the rest of my life.

The last vote was one that I was heavily engaged in. I’ve been involved in the Commonwealth / CANZUK movement for the better part of two decades, and was excited at the prospect of a leader – and potential Prime Minister – that would make this a government policy and a reality. Whoever takes over may still be committed to it, but it is unlikely to find another who was so personally passionate about it.

But passion is a two-way street, though, and I don’t seem to have any where this new contest is concerned.

There were some grumblings from certain quarters about how the ‘grassroots’ was frozen out of all this, that it was an up-down vote determined by 118 people in a room in Ottawa. That is technically true, but the rules are the rules, and the number of people choosing a successor to Mr. O’Toole will be decidedly larger. I’m not prone to quibbling over the rules of a game just because I don’t happen to like the score.

But I still lack enthusiasm, and I should explain.

Before I begin, I should preface that this is not a Conservative thing. Anyone who viewed the Chretien versus Martin tussles years ago, or the more recent drama of Annamie Paul’s leadership of the Green Party should not think that what I’m about to say is endemic to one party.

On the surface, leaderships are billed as a great celebration of grassroots engagement and party renewal. That is true, but only to a point. There are other truths and we need to have an adult conversation about them.

Leadership campaigns often begin for less than high-minded reasons. Within parties are a subset of the membership. On paper there can be tens of thousands of paid-up members across Canada, but we are really talking about a core of 300-400 people at the upper limit. This includes sitting parliamentarians, staffers, party executive members and various advisors who gravitate between Ottawa and Bay Street. They cut their teeth in the youth ranks of the party, hone their skills in campus clubs, intern on the Hill and develop a CV good enough to become a VP of Government Affairs at a company, or even hang out their own shingle as a consultant. Watch a pundit panel during a newscast and you’ll catch a glimpse of them.

Whoever serves as a party leader – or Prime Minister – is of vital importance to that group. If you’re like me, and you live and work in a non-partisan world, you’re largely concerned with general competence and all the “peace, order, and good government” stuff. If, on the other hand, your income and career prospects hinge heavily on who occupies the corner office, you have your own subset of concerns.

This is not to say that insiders don’t care about your priorities. They do, and they have those concerns as well. But unlike you, they also like being able to call the leader or chief of staff on their cellphone. They like invitations to the nicer parties and venues. They like getting articles in a major newspaper and they like having Rosemary Barton or Evan Solomon ask them what they think. And they like earning enough money to afford better than Kraft Dinner, or whatever you ate last night.

What I know is that from the moment a leader takes charge, there will be a group of people who want a change at the top for all those reasons I’ve cited. What they do will fall along a continuum that ranges from mean tweets to informal meetups to strategize a change. They’ll have a person in mind who will be interested enough to give them hope but not enough to expose themselves. At some point a confluence of events will create an opening and voila!

Then, there’s a leadership where candidates and teams fan out across the country to the tens of thousands of members through virtual meetings, meet and greets, and the like. Hands are shaken, food and drinks are served, and selfies with the candidate are taken. Through this, the speeches and policy statements, and the army of volunteers who phone and message, one person will win.

There will be a brief respite from the battles. There will be the magnanimous gestures, the hands across the aisle, and the call to put past differences aside for the common good. But out among the throng of the faithful listening to the victory speech there will be those at the back of the room who silently sulk because they can’t book a meeting with the new leader, or they have some personal issues with the people who took over. It could be that they were turfed too and have some unfinished business. They sneak out, head to the lobby bar, and commiserate over their turn of fortune.

Plans are made and strategies are devised. It is in those moments that the new leader’s days are numbered, and some pretender’s stock is on the rise.

This does not absolve a leader or a team, or presume they were innocent victims of palace intrigues. Just because knives are out doesn’t mean you have to fall into them. In fact, if you assume that somewhere there are a group of motivated people who want what you have for themselves, you might be more cautious, more careful in your own actions.

But let’s not pretend that this does not happen. Indeed, this has been going on for so long I’m surprised that Billy Joel didn’t write a song about it.

People once conspired to dump Diefenbaker to get Stanfield. Then Stanfield was pushed out for Clark. Clark spent much of his leadership fending off challenges until Mulroney took over. And yes, there were those who muttered about dumping Mulroney, but winning elections and skilful caucus management headed that off. Then we got Kim Campbell, who was over before she began, and Jean Charest who had two strikes against him before he even took over. This, of course, was followed by the return of Joe Clark for a time, the duel between Peter MacKay and David Orchard occurring simultaneously as Reform had replaced Preston Manning with Stockwell Day and Reform became the Canadian Alliance because some Reform MP’s decided to caucus with Progressive Conservatives to form the DRC for about five minutes. Then, came the merger of the CA and the PC’s into the Conservative Party of Canada, precipitating another round of angry partisans picking up their toys and leaving in a huff. And let us not pretend that during the relative quiet of the Harper years there weren’t people making their plans, scheming their schemes, and such. So, in comes Andrew Scheer and out goes Andrew Scheer, to be replaced by Erin O’Toole in 2020, bringing us to today.

My younger self used to be excited by these things. Political nerds view elections much like normal human beings watch the Stanley Cup playoffs, the Super Bowl, the Olympics, or the Oscars. My current self, however, would just as soon watch something on Netflix or find out more about this Wordle thing that everyone is so obsessed about.

I know that people are going to go on about how the future of the nation is at stake, and how much I matter as a member of the “grassroots.” And I know, in theory, there is a thread of truth to it all. But I also know that much of it is driven by people motivated by money, access to the boss, TV face time and a membership to the Albany Club. I get that those things are important to them, but I fail to see why I should care. For that matter, I fail to see why anyone who lives outside that bubble, earning a modest living in their community through conventional means and simply wanting competency at the top should care whether you get to have a celebratory selfie at a black-tie soiree with single malt being served.

Yes, I’m probably going to lose something among certain quarters in saying these things, but what I lose in saying this will have no tangible impact on my life. There are no lobbying contracts to terminate, no access to lose, and no pundit gigs to cancel. Believe me, after 40 years of phone calls, lawn signs, knocking on doors, leaders’ tours and conventions, if joining the ranks of the cool kids in the cafeteria at lunch were in the cards, it would already have happened.

On the other hand, if there is something to be gained it is in getting something off my chest, and in encouraging any person with aspirations for the top job (or proximity to it) to walk the talk – to not refer to the “grassroots” as some valued group, then treat us like extras on a movie shoot. Our votes mean something, and we lend them for a reason. It’s all that some of us have and treating them like casino chips in the game of high stakes poker you are playing is insulting.

If you really want to make the effort and do more than pay lip service, you’ll have my attention. If not, then I’ll have to investigate this Wordle thing.