Nice Guys Finish Third
Bruce Cameron is a political strategist, pollster and media commentator who has seen a few post turtles in his time.
It's often said that "nice guys finish last". In Ed Stelmach's case he is genuinely a nice guy-- decent, hard-working, and honest. From my personal experience and other people's assessment that have met him or worked with him, the phrase "salt of the earth" springs to mind. So the obvious question is "why is his leadership of the PC Party and the Province being increasingly called into question?"
As Ed Stelmach prepares for the upcoming PC Party convention in Red Deer November 6-8, (where his leadership must be put to a vote according to the Party Constitution), pundits and politicos should look back to recent history for some clues about how the vote may unfold. Premier Ralph Klein had overstayed his welcome as PC Party leader by the summer of 2006, and an unofficial leadership race began in earnest, culminating in a seven person race in 2007 in which Ed Stelmach did not finish last, but third.
There were seven candidates in 2007 for the leadership (and by default the job as Premier of Alberta), and I vividly recall one of the first candidate forums in St. Albert. At the time I was working for Lyle Oberg, considered a dark horse and maverick with an outside chance of becoming leader. As it turned out, we were able to position Lyle Oberg as one of the top three contenders eventually. But on this early night of the PC leadership race, my task was to listen carefully to each candidate's comments, assess their delivery, and report back to the Oberg team. My comment at the time about Ed Stelmach was that his delivery was so halting that it made even his own supporters squirm in their seats. It was difficult to assess the substance of his remarks because it was so hard to understand him. Needless to say, many of the other camps, including Jim Dinning's, Ted Morton's, and Dave Hancock's, probably dismissed Ed as a serious contender after that first forum.
There is another saying that Stelmach supporters took to heart: slow and steady wins the race. In fact, in the early days of his leadership, the media commonly referred to him as steady Eddie. It was certainly true in winning the leadership race that he slowly and methodically made the rounds to every corner of the province on his tour bus, identifying and eventually pulling out his vote. In fact, were it not for Ed’s ability to pull out the vote in his own riding of Vegreville, Lyle Oberg may have well finished third. The difference between third and fourth place essentially came down to the difference between Ed's margin of victory in his home riding of Vegreville versus Lyle's much smaller margin of victory in his home riding of Strathmore Brooks. Why was it so important to finish third? Because the two other leading camps, for Dinning and Morton, were so adamantly opposed to each other that they would rally behind a third-place finisher rather than see their "enemy" elected.
Only time will tell if slow and steady wins the race. His advisers often fall back on the fact that he already did win two races, the PC leadership race and the last general election, despite predictions of a Tory collapse. But this time things look different. His own personal approval numbers are at historic low levels for a ruling PC leader, his party's momentum is a toxic -54, and even before the Wildrose Alliance selects a new leader, the political landscape in Alberta has shifted to a three-way race between the plunging PCs, the surging WRA, and the Liberals, who seem to be holding on to about 1/5 of the electorate.
If current trends continue and the likable but unloved Premier cannot reestablish a sense of direction and vision for the Province, it is likely that by the spring of 2010 the Wildrose Alliance will be leading in the polls. But will it matter? After all, the next provincial election does not happen until 2013. The real question is whether the Party will wait that long for the tortoise to win the race.
The Post Turtle (sent to me by a long time PC organizer)
While suturing a cut on the hand of a 75 year old Longview rancher, whose hand was caught in a gate while working cattle, the doctor struck up a conversation with the old man. Eventually the topic got around to Stelmach and the job he was doing as Premier.
The old rancher said, 'Well, ya know, Ed is a 'post turtle'.'
Not being familiar with the term, the doctor asked him what a 'post turtle' was. The old rancher said, 'When you're driving down a country road and you come across a fence post with a turtle balanced on top, that's a 'post turtle'.'
The old rancher saw a puzzled look on the doctor's face, so he continued to explain. 'You know he didn't get up there by himself, he doesn't belong up there, he doesn't know what to do while he is up there, and you just wonder what kind of a dumb ass put him up there to begin with.'
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Monday, October 5, 2009
Competence and Caring: When it Comes to Healthcare, How "PC" are the PCs?
Bruce Cameron is a pollster and political strategist who recently published a public opinion survey on the state of healthcare in Alberta for CBC
There's an old adage in political circles that you can win elections by ruling from the head or the heart, but rarely both. Typically elections in Canada are won primarily by appealing to rational economic arguments about good management or competence and secondarily about empathy and caring. A classic example is the contrast between the NDP in Ontario under Bob Rae, which was elected through an appeal to the hearts and not necessarily the minds of Ontario voters, compared to the relatively heartless but forcefully competent and decisive approach of Mike Harris and his Conservatives, who ultimately fared much better than the NDP in running Ontario.
Premier Stelmach and his advisers would do well to consider that old political adage when trying to navigate the tricky issues surrounding healthcare in Alberta. Political correctness calls for a great deal of caring and empathy when dealing with requests for healthcare funding, particularly for seniors who often need it most acutely. But if the existing budget challenges in Alberta make cuts to healthcare a more likely political option, the Stelmach government will need to substantially boost its perceived competence to carry out any cuts. So far they have failed on both accounts—competence and caring. This is not because the Premier is viewed as heartless (far from it, given his down-to-earth and genuine folksiness), but because his government has shown such political incompetence in dealing with the first of what will likely be many more healthcare funding skirmishes—the debacle in Fort McMurray.
To understand why healthcare is such an explosive issue in Alberta politics, look north to Fort McMurray. Long time local Progressive Conservative MLA Guy Boutilier publicly backed Lyle Oberg in the PC leadership race in 2007, with whom he now shares the dubious distinction of being publicly turfed from the Tory caucus. The irony and the importance should not be ignored: Lyle was tossed out by his own colleagues while Premier Klein kept a stately distance from the bloodshed. Guy was abruptly expelled from caucus this summer in a phone call directly from the Premier. Why? For having the audacity to stand up for his constituents in Fort McMurray. No “skeletons in the closet” from Guy. He aired the dirty laundry publicly. And the sword he chose to die on was a broken healthcare promise, made by Premier Stelmach, to build a much needed long-term care facility for seniors in the fast growing city.
To make matters worse, the Provincial Government recently followed up the muzzling of Guy Boutilier by announcing plans to spend $241 million over the next five years to expand the boundaries of Fort McMurray. As the Premier put it, the plan would “create new jobs for today and new homes for tomorrow.” He might have added that if any of these new 9,500 residents of Fort McMurray happen to grow old and need long-term care, the only option will be to ship them hundreds of kilometres to the south.
Kicking out Boutilier speaks volumes about the way the Stelmach government makes decisions and tries to enforce those decisions through party unity. Picture recently defeated PC candidate Dianne Colley Urquhart at a candidate’s forum telling the voters of Calgary Glenmore riding that she would remain true to her party’s policies even if it meant voting against the wishes of her constituents. The howls of outrage were visceral. But the Boutilier decision also highlights one of the most important battles going on in Alberta today – the struggle to take healthcare decision making out of the hands of political representatives in favour of decision making by healthcare administrators.
This is not the first time the Provincial Government has experimented with centralizing, decentralizing and now recentralizing healthcare decision-making. Alberta was originally a leader in decentralizing healthcare decision making in the 1990s when the Klein government established a series of elected and appointed regional health boards to balance local political interests with professional healthcare advice. But those changes met with stiff resistance by elected MLAs who feared that competing elected members of health boards would be making decisions on the issues of most importance to “their” voters.
Like many things the Stelmach government faces, underneath the monolithic conformity of massive conservative majority’s there is a lot of discontent brewing. Take for example a recent editorial on healthcare from the Mayerthorpe Freelancer, a weekly newspaper in the Whitecourt riding which the Progressive Conservatives have held since Peter Lougheed swept to power in the 1970s.
“The government is centralizing power to a degree that would have made one of the country’s greatest centralizers, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, pale by comparison. …… it is difficult to imagine how concentrating power back into a secretive, plodding ministry of health has improved care.”
Whitecourt is not exactly a hotbed of socialist dissent, so when the Premier’s ideas are likened to Pierre Elliott Trudeau's, the early warning systems and alarm bells should be going off among Stelmach’s inner circle! Even more damning, and perhaps a sign of things to come, is this comment from the same paper about the growing tendency of the government to curtail public input on a whole host of issues:
“It appears that the centralization of health services by Stelmach’s government has stripped the regions of the power to shape services to local needs and has muzzled the voice of the public to have a say in local health care.”
Muzzling a barking dog may prevent it from biting you, but as the locals say “you can't make it hunt”. And you never know when it might turn on you. If it does, Stelmach and his advisers best hope for equal parts caring and competence.
There's an old adage in political circles that you can win elections by ruling from the head or the heart, but rarely both. Typically elections in Canada are won primarily by appealing to rational economic arguments about good management or competence and secondarily about empathy and caring. A classic example is the contrast between the NDP in Ontario under Bob Rae, which was elected through an appeal to the hearts and not necessarily the minds of Ontario voters, compared to the relatively heartless but forcefully competent and decisive approach of Mike Harris and his Conservatives, who ultimately fared much better than the NDP in running Ontario.
Premier Stelmach and his advisers would do well to consider that old political adage when trying to navigate the tricky issues surrounding healthcare in Alberta. Political correctness calls for a great deal of caring and empathy when dealing with requests for healthcare funding, particularly for seniors who often need it most acutely. But if the existing budget challenges in Alberta make cuts to healthcare a more likely political option, the Stelmach government will need to substantially boost its perceived competence to carry out any cuts. So far they have failed on both accounts—competence and caring. This is not because the Premier is viewed as heartless (far from it, given his down-to-earth and genuine folksiness), but because his government has shown such political incompetence in dealing with the first of what will likely be many more healthcare funding skirmishes—the debacle in Fort McMurray.
To understand why healthcare is such an explosive issue in Alberta politics, look north to Fort McMurray. Long time local Progressive Conservative MLA Guy Boutilier publicly backed Lyle Oberg in the PC leadership race in 2007, with whom he now shares the dubious distinction of being publicly turfed from the Tory caucus. The irony and the importance should not be ignored: Lyle was tossed out by his own colleagues while Premier Klein kept a stately distance from the bloodshed. Guy was abruptly expelled from caucus this summer in a phone call directly from the Premier. Why? For having the audacity to stand up for his constituents in Fort McMurray. No “skeletons in the closet” from Guy. He aired the dirty laundry publicly. And the sword he chose to die on was a broken healthcare promise, made by Premier Stelmach, to build a much needed long-term care facility for seniors in the fast growing city.
To make matters worse, the Provincial Government recently followed up the muzzling of Guy Boutilier by announcing plans to spend $241 million over the next five years to expand the boundaries of Fort McMurray. As the Premier put it, the plan would “create new jobs for today and new homes for tomorrow.” He might have added that if any of these new 9,500 residents of Fort McMurray happen to grow old and need long-term care, the only option will be to ship them hundreds of kilometres to the south.
Kicking out Boutilier speaks volumes about the way the Stelmach government makes decisions and tries to enforce those decisions through party unity. Picture recently defeated PC candidate Dianne Colley Urquhart at a candidate’s forum telling the voters of Calgary Glenmore riding that she would remain true to her party’s policies even if it meant voting against the wishes of her constituents. The howls of outrage were visceral. But the Boutilier decision also highlights one of the most important battles going on in Alberta today – the struggle to take healthcare decision making out of the hands of political representatives in favour of decision making by healthcare administrators.
This is not the first time the Provincial Government has experimented with centralizing, decentralizing and now recentralizing healthcare decision-making. Alberta was originally a leader in decentralizing healthcare decision making in the 1990s when the Klein government established a series of elected and appointed regional health boards to balance local political interests with professional healthcare advice. But those changes met with stiff resistance by elected MLAs who feared that competing elected members of health boards would be making decisions on the issues of most importance to “their” voters.
Like many things the Stelmach government faces, underneath the monolithic conformity of massive conservative majority’s there is a lot of discontent brewing. Take for example a recent editorial on healthcare from the Mayerthorpe Freelancer, a weekly newspaper in the Whitecourt riding which the Progressive Conservatives have held since Peter Lougheed swept to power in the 1970s.
“The government is centralizing power to a degree that would have made one of the country’s greatest centralizers, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, pale by comparison. …… it is difficult to imagine how concentrating power back into a secretive, plodding ministry of health has improved care.”
Whitecourt is not exactly a hotbed of socialist dissent, so when the Premier’s ideas are likened to Pierre Elliott Trudeau's, the early warning systems and alarm bells should be going off among Stelmach’s inner circle! Even more damning, and perhaps a sign of things to come, is this comment from the same paper about the growing tendency of the government to curtail public input on a whole host of issues:
“It appears that the centralization of health services by Stelmach’s government has stripped the regions of the power to shape services to local needs and has muzzled the voice of the public to have a say in local health care.”
Muzzling a barking dog may prevent it from biting you, but as the locals say “you can't make it hunt”. And you never know when it might turn on you. If it does, Stelmach and his advisers best hope for equal parts caring and competence.
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