There are no new mistakes in politics

At no time is a political party at greater risk than during a bitter leadership battle. With coalitions of thinly veiled differences that run across clan and ideological divides, a party’s institutional fabric can be fatally ripped in a bloody leadership campaign.

That is the thoroughly irresponsible risk to which Patrick Brown is subjecting his political tribe.

He can shake off dating staffers half his age; revolting, but not illegal. He can deny attempting to sell his favourite date site, a Barrie bar, to a prospective Conservative candidate, with eyebrow-raising timing. He will have a harder time explaining how one third of the party memberships sold under his leadership turned out to be frauds.

Harder still: who paid for his dozen or so trips to India and the Middle East in recent years?

His hardest challenge is explaining that his entire inner circle, the men and women who gave up two years of their lives to help elevate him from obscurity to victory — after taking all this in — departed en bloc.

That the party will suffer for years as a result of his narcissism is a given, how much and how long is all that remains to be seen. How did this come to pass? In part, because the Mike Harris and Tim Hudak generation were shown the door by the Brown team. They may have earned their banishment in terms of successive self-inflicted defeats, but they sliced off nearly two decades of party history and experience all at once.

The Liberal Party of Canada went through a decade-long civil war as a result of the vanity of two men. One can, therefore, sympathize with the young team around Justin Trudeau, who sent every one of the lieutenants to either leader to purgatory.

Sadly, the consequence was to cut themselves off from some of the best minds in Canadian politics: a generation of Liberal strategists and former ministers. The absence of their access to that collective political wisdom has emerged over and over in weak political and communications management.

New Democrats have just come through a similar six “lost years,” between the death of Jack Layton and the arrival of Jagmeet Singh. The failure of Thomas Mulcair’s leadership had roots similar to the Liberal and Tory experience: a leader and his team who knew little about the institution they were given command of.

Those who ignore the fragile bonds of a political party, who ignore unhappy riding presidents, who look to poll numbers for proof of future success, make serious strategic blunders.

As someone thrust into a senior political management role at a completely irresponsible age and experience level, I was terrified. But the elders wisely surrounded me with adults — literally dozens of wise uncles and political aunts. I reached out to them daily, at first in near panic. Among the lessons they hammered home was that most political mistakes were predictable, had already been made and had a series of tested political remedies.

For institutions essential to a functioning democracy, political parties are almost uniquely archaic institutions, culturally and organizationally: Their history is mostly oral, their principles and values passed from veteran to newbie verbally, and their real decision-makers and opinion-influencers are often well-hidden from all but the cognoscenti.

It was with considerable relief, therefore, that this aging political hack watched “the kids” responsible for the first Jagmeet Singh convention in action last weekend. They were determined to do things their way but not so arrogant as to refuse the support of the grey hairs.

The convention’s star as chair was a savvy Saskatchewan labour executive, Barb Byers, who deftly kept the volatile beast of a 2,000-person convention in line. The floor managers were a fascinating blend of a few Broadbent-era boomers, some greying Layton veterans, and dozens and dozens of earnest activists in their twenties.

So, to those young radicals who rail against the “old elites,” who demand the wholesale execution of all of “yesterday’s failed compromisers” after a leadership change; and to those aging veterans struggling to hang on, refusing to let the next generation take the reins, when they are passionate and hungry, even if they are still frighteningly green — give your heads a shake!

The new boss and the old party need you both.