Lessons for Wynne, from Donald Trump
The world has changed, but what does that mean for the premier?
Kathleen Wynne changed her mind about Donald Trump the night he won the presidency.
Up until the vote, she’d written him off. But as the results rolled in, Wynne realized how much she had underestimated Trump — not just his unexpected hold on power, but his unlikely path to power.
Like Rob Ford before him, Trump had tapped into a powerful protest movement that conventional politicians had tuned out. Still “shocked” by the political earthquake in America, Wynne’s first impulse was to warn her top aides about aftershocks closer to home.
Would Trump’s anti-government message find fertile ground beyond Ohio — in Ontario?
The premier told aides it was a deep-seated response “by people who felt that decisions were being made about their lives by other people who knew nothing about their lives,” Wynne said in an interview this week.
She recalls her “deep realization that the anger that was being expressed during the campaign ... could be very, very destructive.”
Destructive for government. And fatal for politicians in power who, like Wynne, face re-election. Which leads to the premier’s paradox: The more she heeds people’s pocketbook concerns — ruling out road tolls, expanding rent controls, easing hydro bills — the more she plays politics like a conventional politician. Which means she may continue to disappoint some of her early supporters who imagined her as a leader who would do politics differently, but now see her in a different light.
Politicians must walk a fine line between listening and leading. Now, with an election looming, Wynne is trying to reposition her politics.
“We have to understand what the role of government is,” she said in her Queen’s Park office. “I’m one who believes that government has a more important role to play right now than 30 years ago.”
But to get there, she first needs to persuade people she’s on their side. The question is, which side?
Some Ontarians are convinced she just can’t feel their pain — on hydro rates, for example. Others think she’s too quick to appease — or pander — by buying off voters with their own money (or borrowed money to lower those electricity bills).
Wynne said she is seeking her own third way: Not only using the government’s taxing power to help people, but using its regulatory power to empower people.
She rattled off a list of do-good government: free tuition for eligible college students; 100,000 new child-care spots; pharmacare for those up to age 25; a hydro discount of 25 per cent.
Beyond that, she pointed to new measures that aren’t bankrolled by the provincial treasury but will leave more money in people’s pockets (albeit at the expense of business): broader rent controls; a $15 minimum wage by 2019; fair pay for parttime workers.
But when asked about the perception that she is out of touch, the mere question left the premier looking — and sounding — wounded.
Despite aides urging her to give up constituency work after becoming premier in 2013 — Wynne gets extra staff to deal with routine duties — she heeded the advice of former PM Jean Chrétien to continue calling and meeting voters in her riding personally.
“I said to my staff, ‘Well, if Jean Chrétien can do it, then I can do it.’ So it has always been critical to me that I stay in touch with people and that I listen to them. It pains me that there are people who don’t know that.”
Beyond being out of touch, there’s another view of Wynne that she wrestles with. According to internal Liberal research, many early supporters thought Ontario’s first female premier would be unlike any other — more consensual, less partisan, and consequently not as competitive as her male predecessors.
Hence her honeymoon, which propelled Wynne to an unexpected majority government in 2014. But the more that voters saw Wynne mixing it up with her opponents, the more they viewed her as just another politician.
Which, of course, she is — except that she is being held to a higher standard, or a double standard, Wynne counters. Beyond the haters (my mailbox overflows with people calling the premier “bitch”), even her own supporters are perhaps conflating gender with generosity and collegiality in unrealistic ways.
“Was there something that was expected of a female, a woman as the premier, that wasn’t expected of men?” she asked. “It’s an interesting question for young girls ... Was there something going on in their perception of a woman and how she would behave?”
Wynne nods her head as she is reminded of that research showing people expected her to be more consensual. “And not as competitive.” It is perhaps an unexpected — and unrealistic — expectation in politics, where nice guys (and women) finish last. Winning requires competing, for which Wynne makes no apologies.
“Yeah, I’ve been running in races my whole life. I started competing in track when I was 12. I love crossing the finish line first,” she said, growing animated in her chair as she described the track meets she aced as a teenager. “It is a great feeling — the ribbon on your jersey is a great feeling.”
As is winning elections. If there are any more for her to win in the era of post-Trump protest votes.