One of the best PMs we’ll never have
It was the biggest news story you didn’t hear on Nov. 27, 2016. That’s t he day, si x months before the Conservative Party of Canada leadership convention, when a certain window closed: the day Rona Ambrose did not resign as Conservative interim leader in order to be eligible to seek the party leadership.
The reasons: she made a promise back in 2015 not to run and she isn’t interested in the job, apparently. But why truncate a promising career, leaving a dotted line where the next and most logical step ought to be?
Depending on how this goes down in the spring — and how events south of the border influence it — many people may look back on Ambrose’s sitting it out as one of the great missed opportunities in Canadian politics: when the CPC left its best and brightest player on the bench, denying the party a swift and graceful return to government, and depriving Canadians of one of the best Conservative prime ministers — and a woman, at that — we might have had.
Kevin O’Leary is billing himself as the party’s great white hope and the only contender, he says, who can beat Justin Trudeau. He wouldn’t be able to make that claim with Rona Ambrose on the ballot. You only have to see the Conservative interim leader in action these days to know she’s firing on all cylinders. She could take O’Leary and Trudeau all while squeezing in a weekly long-distance hike.
Last week, on Donald Trump’s inauguration day, Ambrose sat down for an interview with Peter Mansbridge, as did Foreign Af- fairs Minister Chrystia Freeland. Her relaxed, confident, conversational style was, by comparison to Freeland, a breath of fresh air. Where the minister appeared self- conscious, weighing and measuring every response for just the right amount of spin, Ambrose emerged as that rarest of rare breeds: A Real Human of Ottawa.
Sure, she may have the supply-teacher advantage, neither grasping for popularity nor fighting tooth and nail to hang on to it. But the result of that comfortable place — intended or not — is that she’s achieved a level of sincerity almost entirely absent from pol- itics. And she’s done this while maintaining her credibility as a critic: not a fierce one, perhaps, but fair and even-handed.
She questions, condemns and provokes the Liberal government but does not descend into the Trump/O’Leary pit of disparaging the nation, plunging the citizenry into a situational depression about what a mess we are.
On the floor of the House of Commons, Ambrose is a quickwitted, skilled debater and, unlike the prime minister, she does not have an annoying stammer that is now so bad, by the way, the PMO requires a Toastmasters intervention. Her sparring matches with Trudeau prove that he is absolutely beatable and that she is not outmatched or undone by him in any way — not in terms of intellect or charisma.
And where good looks are concerned — yes, it matters, deal with it—Ron a Ambrose can rock a power suit with the best of them. She’s exactly the kind of Sela Ward-type (think Sarah Palin with a brain) that Hollywood directors clamour for on those rare occasions when they cast women in positions of power.
The way the Conservative interim leader presents, and then backs up style with substance, is an enormous advantage to the CPC.
Rona Ambrose’s charm, credibility and experience could be a force for good in the conservative movement.
If this reads like I have a girlcrush on Rona Ambrose, that’s good news for the CPC in a general election because I’m probably not the only one. She’s well- liked in Ottawa, too, having recently been voted by her peers as 2016’s hardest-working MP.
Before “insider” became synonymous with “swamp- dweller” and “outsider” synonymous with “saviour” it was generally accepted that the work of government required leaders with experience. Healthy democracies need fiscal conservatives who are also rational actors who respect the norms and traditions of democratic institutions.
An upset by an attention- seeking celebrity firebrand who has nothing to lose ( even if Uncle Kevin flames out spectacularly, he’ ll just go back to television with a larger Twitter following) would not be good for Canada.
It’ ll be the biggest news story in the country on May 28: the new occupant of Stornoway will be known to the nation. The mood and tone of the CPC will be re-set, to what exactly we don’t know.
If it is Kevin O’Leary, it will usher in a similarly depressing era of Trump- style, made- in-Canada “carnage.” For its part the CPC won’t be able to say “We didn’t see it coming” nor will it be able to say “We did everything we could do to prevent it.”
No matter who the winner is, though, a lot of people will miss the intelligent, hard- working, articulate woman who might have become a great prime minister.
DEAL WITH IT — RONA AMBROSE CAN ROCK A POWER SUIT.