HANCOCK THE PICTURE OF A PERFECT INTERIM PREMIER
Politician looks bright, even unburdened in official portrait, unveiled at the legislature
There is a sunny simplicity to the official portrait of former premier Dave Hancock, unveiled with great ceremony Monday at the legislature.
Hancock is facing the viewer with a big smile on his face as sunlight floods in through the window behind him, illuminating the legislative building in the background.
In fact, the background almost dwarfs him, and that’s the point. This is a portrait of Hancock as part of a larger whole. It is not Hancock as the dominating premier, because, of course, he wasn’t.
Hancock was an interim premier who was elevated to the position after the sudden resignation of scandal-plagued Alison Redford in March 2014. Hancock was to serve six months, just long enough for the Progressive Conservative party to choose a new leader (who turned out to be Jim Prentice).
“It was the best summer job I ever had,” Hancock joked Monday.
Because his tenure was deliberately fleeting, there might be some surprise among Albertans that Hancock would have his portrait hung alongside Alberta’s 14 previous premiers.
But Hancock was legally and properly a premier. He was chosen by his caucus colleagues and that, interestingly enough, is how prime ministers were once chosen under our parliamentary system of government — not by a general election and certainly not by a one-person-one-vote presidential-style contest, but by a majority vote of elected members (yes, I realize the opposition members weren’t invited to vote, but you get the point).
There are also no hidden symbols in the portrait, unlike that of Redford, unveiled with absolutely no ceremony last year. Redford, realizing she is still a polarizing figure in Alberta, wants history to judge her and has avoided public appearances. Her picture has her hand resting on books titled Equality and Opportunity while she studiously avoids looking at the viewer.
Of all the premiers in portrait, Hancock arguably looks the most relaxed — probably because he was the most relaxed in the job. He was an interim premier whose job was pretty much to make sure the lights stayed on.
As a politician, he was smart, competent and employed a rhetorical skill that could suck the oxygen out of a room — a handy talent when extinguishing political fires, but one that tended to leave quote-seeking journalists more stupefied than usual.
He was the perfect interim premier. He was the antithesis of the backslapping rootin’-tootin’ politician. He was thoughtful, hard-working and such an effective MLA that he won re-election by landslides in his home riding of Edmonton-Whitemud. He was also something of a throwback to an age before Twitter, Facebook and 15-second sound bites.
In a career that spanned more than 17 years, he held such ministerial portfolios as intergovernmental affairs, justice, education, health and human services. He probably had more influence in government than we’ll ever know. As justice minister in 2002, Hancock’s voice-of-reason rhetoric regularly prevented the right-wingers in caucus from burning down premier Ralph Klein’s big-tent government over issues such as same-sex marriage.
He has stayed out of the spotlight since leaving politics, but on Monday waded back in when asked by reporters about revelations that Premier Rachel Notley has been the target of many more threats than her predecessors.
“One of the tragedies of what’s happening now in the public discourse is that it’s getting, in my view, less civil. There’s more personal attack and less of an approach to policy.”
He blames hyper-partisan politics in the United States, amplified by social media.
Seen in that context, Hancock’s sunny portrait is something of an antidote against the dark political poison that seems to be infecting us these days.