Wildrose win would hardly be surprising
If in a week Wildrose Leader Danielle Smith becomes premier of Alberta, many will call it a stunning upset. But in fact it won’t be stunning at all.
Smith’s ascent has been predictable, to the point of being inevitable. And that was even before the stench of death began wafting over the campaign of Tory incumbent Premier Alison Redford, because of various scandals and pratfalls, and before Smith’s perceived victory in last week’s televised debate.
A week is a long time in politics and strange things do, occasionally, happen. But Redford now needs a big reversal to win a minority, let alone keep her majority. The reasons for this are both personal and political.
We should note at the outset that historical precedent had Redford at a disadvantage before the writ was dropped. Setting aside the 41year incumbency of Alberta’s Progressive Conservatives, launched in 1971, the modern Alberta Tories are the house that Ralph built. Ralph Klein, who stepped down in 2006, still looms large, though he is no longer active due to illness. Like Mike Harris in Ontario, Klein placed an indelible personal stamp on the party he led — which was freewheeling, straight-talking, fiscally austere and, unerringly, effortlessly populist.
Klein’s successors, first Ed Stelmach and now Redford, have struggled to define themselves in his long shadow, just as Ernie Eves sought and failed to do after Harris in 2002-03 and just as B.C. Premier Christy Clark is struggling to do now. It’s tough to follow a big, bold act. Indeed, something about being elevated to high office through shifts in party leadership, as opposed to a popular vote, appears to be the kiss of death. (This seems particularly true with Conservatives who try to sand the harsh edges off a predecessor’s tough or controversial policies.)
In Redford’s case this dynamic has been compounded by, paradoxically, her gifts.
She is clearly bright, knowledgeable, experienced and ambitious. Her years of national and international work — she was an adviser to former prime minister Joe Clark when he was minister of external affairs in Brian Mulroney’s cabinet, and she later worked on human-rights and democracy-related issues in Bosnia, Serbia, Namibia, Uganda, Mozambique, the Philippines and Afghanistan — set her apart among Canadian politicians, at any level.
The wrinkle: None of that necessarily gets you far in Red Deer. In appearance, tone, attitude and substance, Redford could not be more different from the model imprinted by Klein — a contrast she compounded in her first (and perhaps only) budget in February, which is larded with new social spending and sprinkled with softfocus notions such as “wellness” and “investing in families and communities,” that would have sent Klein rushing to the nearest pub for sustenance. Alberta’s 2012 budget projects deficits until 2014, which would have been anathema under Klein.
A big dollop of Redford’s trouble predates her: It was Stelmach who ended the era of fiscal conservatism in 2009, running the province’s first deficit in 16 years. But she unwisely reinforced the Stelmach narrative, namely that the Conservatives have been unfaithful to Klein’s legacy, and become smug, complacent and “high-fallootin’.” As a result, Redford’s exemplary international track record hurts, rather than helps her, inasmuch as it sends a message of aloofness from the concerns of ordinary Albertans, most of whom, if truth be told, are more concerned with their own domestic balance sheets than the state of Afghan democracy.
Now contrast this with Smith: She too is a bright go-getter with a polished media presence, and she also has a record of professional achievement — but within Alberta. Smith cut her teeth as a columnist and editorial writer for the Calgary Herald, hosted her own weekly current affairs TV show, then moved to a series of conservative think tanks before becoming a provincial director with the Canadian Federation of Independent Business. Better small-c conservative creds, in other words, you would be hardpressed to find: And she has an ear to the ground, which Redford apparently does not.
This may be why Smith went to market with a suite of five bedrock, simple policies that appeal to Albertans’ small-c conservatism and common sense: Balanced budgets, back-to-basics in education (while eliminating some accumulated fees), shorter medical wait times, unqualified support for the oilpatch and accountability. Anyone who remembers the Mike Harris victory in Ontario in 1995 will see a clear echo here. Indeed parts of Smith’s policy booklet might have been lifted verbatim from the famous Common Sense Revolution pamphlet that propelled Harris to power. There are also echoes, of course, with the winning federal Conservative platform and campaign of 2005-06.
Like Harris in ’95 and Harper in ’06, Wildrose put a dampened finger to the wind and caught the wave. Then, as now, it is not rocket science — though it is, perhaps, an art. The curiosity is that Redford and her team did not see the falling anvil until it was too late.