A shallow Liberal pool
This Saturday, in Winnipeg, the Liberal Party of Canada holds its second leadership debate. There is no reason to think that this one will be any more useful than the debate in Vancouver.
That’s what happens when bald men (and women) fight over a comb. If the candidates are the weakest in the party’s history, it’s because the party is the weakest in its history. The leadership is less a prize than a prospect.
The hard reality is that the Liberals have never been a third party. In choosing their new leader, they are in uncharted waters — somewhere between setting a course and staying afloat.
For most of their history as the country’s “natural governing party,” succession was a coronation. So it was when Louis St. Laurent followed Mackenzie King, Pierre Trudeau followed Lester Pearson, John Turner followed Trudeau, and Paul Martin followed Jean Chrétien. Each time, the party could draw from a deep pool of talent.
Even when choosing leaders while they were out of office the Liberals could mount a strong field because they were never long from power. They were in official Opposition, with the presumption of restoration (when Canadians came to their senses, they thought). In 2006, when they were unseated after 13 years in power, they could still attract a legion of household names.
Today, the Liberals are no longer the second party in Parliament with the expectation of being the first; they are the third party with the hope of becoming the second.
That changes everything in a leadership race. A diminished prize creates a diminished field. How could it be otherwise?
Under other circumstances, Justin Trudeau would not be in the race. He wanted to wait another five years to run — if he ran at all. He wasn’t sure he was ready.
The same doubt surrounds every other candidate, whom columnist Andrew Coyne calls “an impressive bunch,” of “many personal and professional accomplishments.”
That’s true, up to a point. But a little of this and a little of that doesn’t necessarily make a leader, which demands a suite of talents, beginning with raising money, recruiting candidates, building an organization and developing policy. Then there is managing a parliamentary caucus and doing battle every day in question period.
Ideally, we want excellence in a prime minister: a good education, a sound vocation, a sense of distinction (books, awards), fluency in French and English. We also expect political experience.
In this race, who has all that? None, really.
Marc Garneau was an astronaut. Martha Hall Findlay, Deborah Coyne and Martin Cauchon are lawyers. Joyce Murray was an entrepreneur. Karen McCrimmon was a lieutenant colonel. George Takach is a professor. David Bertschi was a crown prosecutor. Trudeau was a teacher. In that sense, yes, they are accomplished.
But political experience? Trudeau, Garneau, Murray and Hall Findlay (who lost her seat in 2011) have sat in Parliament for four years. Martin Cauchon was in Parliament 11 years before he left in 2004.
Only Cauchon has served in the federal cabinet, though Murray was a minister in British Columbia. Almost half the field — Coyne, McCrimmon, Bertschi, Takach — have never been elected to anything.
Still, they happily insist that they are prime ministers-in-waiting. Who needs political experience? We’ll learn on the job!
It is true that we ask for less political experience than we once did; Stephen Harper never served in cabinet at any level and was in Parliament eight years when he became prime minister. In the United States, Barack Obama had been a U.S. senator for only four years. By contrast, when John F. Kennedy ran in 1960, his critics said that his 14 years in national politics was inadequate.
In the United States, no one in the last century has been elected president without holding prominent elective office other than Dwight Eisenhower, who commanded the Allied forces in the Second World War.
A distinctly Canadian requirement is bilingualism. All the candidates have it, to their credit, though Cauchon and Coyne are weaker than the others in their second language.
These, though, are only the prerequisites of a credible candidacy. After that, there are other fundamental criteria: intellect, temperament, charisma, stamina, oratory. And then, of course, there is vision.
In this race, we can write off the political neophytes. They are running out of vanity, ego or delusion, and they are noise in the conversation, as they were in Vancouver.
Of the serious candidates who have actually been in the game — Trudeau, Garneau, Hall Findlay, Murray, Cauchon — there is much charm, brains and ideas. The party will choose one of them.
If the charismatic Trudeau is the front-runner today, followed by the estimable Garneau, the energetic Murray, the ebullient Hall Findlay and the cerebral Cauchon, it is because he checks the most boxes.
But let’s get real: the last time the Liberals chose a leader, almost none would have been a serious contender. Today, in a smaller world, the last shall be first.