Herd Management
The peasants sometimes are revolting
Around the time a half dozen cabinet ministers booked a meeting with Dwight Ball to discuss his need to spend more time with his family, a generic Canadian political science professor at Generic Canadian University over by the CBC Content Assembly Facility on the Parkway in Sin Jawns scoffed at my suggestion that a political caucus can only be ruled as long as the members agree to be ruled. It was one of those haughty Mainlander kinda things and the fellow is one of the reasons why I resurrected that word in my vocabulary.
Let that be a reminder that Canadian political scientists are usually the last people you should go to for any understanding of politics. Sounds ridiculous. Like saying a medical doctor knows knothing about disease and illness but it’s actually a thing. With a few spectacular exceptions, Canadian poli sci types have no idea how politics really works. They have theories, which they can describe in exquisite detail but they have the same relationship to reality as you’d get from a medieval theologian expounding on limbo. The only saving grace is that your typical poli sci Canuck would at least figure out what limbo means if you got them drunk enough and then trotted out a broomstick. Well, a couple of the older ones would until the rest clucked and tutted and started screaming about racism and cultural appropriation.
Anyway…
You’d get as much help from your average Canuck poli sci type understanding what’s going on in the federal Liberal caucus as you would from the assorted reporters, commentators (some of them with poli sci doctorates), all telling stories about signed letters with no signatures and the supposedly “stormy” Liberal caucus meeting Wednesday. Add up all the stories and heave out the speculation about the letter that wasn’t a letter, what was in the letter, the idea that the Reform Act would dispense with all the “drama” going on, and who the dissidents are, by name, and you have Paul’s hexagonal ball: two thirds of three fifths of frig all. These are all the perspectives of people who need drama or want drama for their own reasons that may or may not have anything to do with Liberal caucus politics. But look around all that dancing about architecture, faze at events in Ottawa, and you’ll see the story itself.
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Related…
Take three points in particular to notice.
First, notice that both the long-rumoured replacement for Justin Trudeau - Mark Carney - and Christy Clark admitted they want a shot at replacing Justin. Carney said he’s organizing some folks in the event the job opens, which likely means they’ve been in place for months, and Clark said she’s taking French lessons. If Justin follows his father’s example, takes a walk in the snow, and heads for the exit, Carney will get the job and Clark will expect a cabinet seat for giving the Liberals a show for the punters that might steal some of the steam out of the Conservative machine.
Carney is a serious candidate because other really serious Liberals have obviously decided he’s their guy should Justin go but they clearly haven’t turned on Justin yet. They are willing to let him hang around. Meanwhile, they’ve been talking Carney up for months and just a few weeks ago, Justin gave him a supposedly real job. Big Clue right there that some powerful Liberals behind the scenes are behind Carney, if the need arises.
If Clark were a serious candidate, osti, she’d have made her announcement in flawless Quebecois having spent the time since she quit British Columbia politics quietly sorting out that big gap in her background. Telling us she’s started lessons is like wanting to spend more time with your family as you quit politics. It’s what they all say but it is just a line. Serious candidates don’t talk about things and then do them. They do things *before* they talk about them.
Second, notice that in *all* the talk about the dissidents and about what happened in caucus, the number of people who want Justin gone, and so on most people in the Liberal caucus aren’t looking for Justin to go. Not a slightly bigger number than the chuckles. A huge difference. Like seven times as many for keeping him. They just want to know what the plan is from Justin and his team to tackle the Conservatives. They’ve asked for this before and nothing’s been coming except the Carney appointment, which might be why folks asked again for some clear details. There is a problem in the Liberal caucus. Folks are edgy, but inside doesn’t look like what people are talking about outside.
Third, notice that the folks openly ready to ditch Justin are pensionable by the looks of it or disproportionately from Atlantic Canada. That’s a key detail. The pensioners don’t give a frig anyway since they’ve already got another gig sorted out or could if they needed to.
Atlantic Canada went heavily Liberal after 2015 and the current polls show the biggest shifts in votes have been in the Far East. They are the ones feeling the heat more than most others. In Ken McDonald’s case, he’s a stalking horse for someone else possibly but since Ken’s already pensionable and he’s had a second gig lined up since long before he spoke publicly about Trudeau the first time, he’s got some room to grab a bit of limelight without worrying or really having skin in the game. Keep your eyes open. Whatever happens to Justin, Liberals will tell you Ken will take on Barry Petten in the next provincial election for Team Furey with the promise of a Cabinet seat for him.
That is, unless Ken’s wife puts him in his place like Darin Luther King’s wife did. Well, at least in the officially unofficial version of the story. Don’t believe what you see on the news. At the very least, the news shows things already done and over with and in politics they seldom reflect the whole story let alone the true one.
If this makes your head hurt a bit, check out the results of a recent poll by Abacus Data into the attitudes of Liberals voters. The results help to explain the perspective inside the Liberal Party when they look at the future. It isn’t what people outside see. Look at the 20% who want JT to stay and run. A majority of current Liberals (56%) and a significant plurality of 2021 Liberal voters and accessible Liberal voters - 42% and 40% respectively - want Justin to stay even if it is just up to the election. Very few want him to leave outright and, if you group the two options that don’t involve him running again but stay on meanwhile, that softer option is the larger (29%) among both accessibles and the 2021 voters.
That’s a big thing because smart politicians always distinguish between what’s happening now and what could happen in the future. They don’t panic. They know things can change and as in 2015, sometimes things change dramatically. Liberals weren’t supposed to win in 2015 but they did. As long as the Liberals have a shot, they’ll look to play it so those folks who want Justin to stay at least until the election look like folks who are not firmly opposed to him. They are persuadable. They are hope. And that’s all any Liberals need to stick with Justin in the absence of a viable alternative.
You really see the strength of this hope in another Abacus question. When Coletto asked folks in Liberal ridings what their Liberal member of Parliament should do, a crushing majority of current Liberals and a decisively plurality of accessibles and 2021 Liberals wanted their MP to “Defend Justin Trudeau and encourage him to run again.”
Boom!
Forget what the polls show of the whole picture. Just look at what Liberals want. It’s clear a majority of Liberals and likely Liberals want Justin to stay. He’s a known quantity. They’ve won with him three times before - even if two of them were near-bust - and evidently most Liberals are willing to let him lead the team again. There’s nothing surprising in this. It’s basic psychology. And it’s quite clear from the evidence that the caucus and the majority of partisan Liberals think Justin Trudeau is the best choice they’ve got to tackle the Conservatives next time out.
In the meantime, Justin and his people are at least willing to make Carney look like he’s part of the plan. Better to have the little camel in the tent pissing outward and for those nervous types, Carney might look like a plausible back-up if Justin quits.
People who think political leaders are all-powerful are all-wrong, as Ian Brodie and Archie Brown have shown. People talk about leaders and ignore the rest for many reasons. Part of it is the mistaken belief they are magically powerfully. Most of it is convenience, a kind of short-hand, or based on the influence of American politics, which is dominated by the figure of the President.
Lots of people can talk about The Leader because you can get away with it. You don’t have to know much of what actually happens in politics and government and you can still get your paper accepted in a journal, your book published, and interviews and speaking gigs to boost your brand.
But the ones who have more insight, who take more nuanced views, and who tell you things that actually pan out in the long run - call it analytic and predictive value - are people who have some knowledge of politics. Think of their edge as “been there” versus “never been there.” That’s what separates an Ian Brodie from an Alex Marland or a Donald Savoie, for example.
Party leaders aren’t all-weak but they aren’t all powerful, either. They are at the front of a group of individuals inside caucus and inside the party who come to the table with all their qualities - good and bad - like any group of people would. And like all groups, they find their own dynamic with shifting cliques and factions who form coalitions or agreements or consensus on issues that becomes the way the group responds.
Caucuses are living things made up of living people and to understand what’s happening you have to know the elements. You cannot easily reduce the elements to digits and abstractions and come up with anything that genuinely helps to understand what just happened or what’s likely to happen next. But you can get a paper published that will help secure you tenure and maybe even win a prize or fill up a slot on a current affairs show.
Any given leader will get the top job in a party caucus but it can be a difficult one to keep. That’s because the cats need herding or hand-holding of ego-stroking. Every leader must manage the caucus if he or she has any goals they want to accomplish even the goal is just survival. How every leader does that will vary. That’s because a caucus will only be governed as long as it agrees to be governed and every caucus is different. This week, Trudeau showed up for caucus, stared down the handful of dissidents, listened to griping, secured himself for another while, and stayed alive. That’s caucus management. That’s what matters.
Parliamentary government is collective government, to adapt a saying about Cabinet government. That’s why when looking at a government caucus - whether in Ottawa or St. John’s, you cannot pin everything on the leader. Look at the caucus. Look at what the members do. You can see pretty clearly in this case they are willing to let Trudeau and his team run things into the next election even if - as it appears from outside - they’d also be running the party into the ground. They might. Or they might not. No one can predict the future with any great accuracy and Liberals are willing to hope.
And if you are still sceptical about the dance in a caucus just look at the provincial Liberals over the past decade. Two different leaders and yet they still generate the same indecisive, indifferent policies and get the reward of public indifference as well. That’s because collectively Liberals in Newfoundland and Labrador don’t have any clear idea of where to go or what to do aside from stay in power and hand out the spoils to their buddies. Dwight Ball was spectacularly beige but even after a series of incredible bungles, blunders, and cock-ups starting less than six months into office and lasting his whole time as Premier, it took the Liberal caucus and the backroom gang five years or so before anyone thought they needed a new avatar at the front of the team.
They found the Ultimate Image and Andrew Furey has turned out to be even more beige than beige. Yet nothing has changed in Liberal support among voters. Nothing. Doesn’t matter. The people behind the current Premier (his Dad, the folks inside the caucus and the party) are like the people behind the current Prime Minister: they think he is delivering what they want. That’s good enough for them.
You have to look at the whole picture to see what’s going on. In Newfoundland and Labrador since 2015, the Liberals collectively could not even cover a shit Brit boy band because they do not have one direction. Doesn’t matter. The people in caucus and the party are getting the plums they want, regardless of what’s happening to the province. The other parties are the same, but all of that is something for another time.
For now in Ottawa, Justin has survived and while the party powerful and the caucus are contented to let him carry on, just watch Ottawa and see what happens. The polls and the chatter look one way to people outside the party but inside the dynamics are very different. The Liberals might swap out Justin for Mark Carney or someone else in the longer run but right now, the caucus is happy to let Justin stay and, by all signs, lead them against the Conservatives. Now the challenge Justin faces is to do that.
Meanwhile, the Conservatives are already running the heart-tuggers about Pierre adopted by two teachers and taught all the saccharine myths of the Canadian dream. One uses Pierre doing the voice over. The most effective version features Pierre’s wife telling us about the family and the kids and her. While the Liberals have dithered and dawdled, the Conservatives have relentlessly stuck to their highly effective campaign. They are now putting the finishing touches on public perceptions of Pierre himself, thereby making whatever the Liberals might come up with, Justin in front or not, all that much weaker and less effective.
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