Insider Baseball
Andy, Rod, Proton, and John
The American writer Joan Didion died on Tibbs’ Eve. In her long career, Didion wrote about wildly different topics like California in the 1960s, crime in New York City, or, later in her life, the death of her husband and the serious illness of her daughter. One of her better know political books, Salvador, was a long essay, published as a book in 1983, that looked at what the United States was supporting in central America during the early Reagan years. Like her other essays, Salvador revealed intimate and telling details of current events, much of which had been reported but escaped public notice in the rush of the news each day.
Didion wrote a series of essays between 1988 and 2000 on American politics, starting with one for the New York Review of Books called “Insider Baseball.” You can find the one essay at the link – just register to read it for free – or you can buy it in a collection called Political Fictions. Inside baseball is a term that’s been around for decades. It means information that is only of interest to people deeply involved in something, whether it is baseball, where the term first turned up, or, in Didion’s use, in politics. What’s she’s writing about might appear trivial and inconsequential, but Didion’s insider perspective of politics reveals things that are deeply meaningful to people outside politics as well.
Didion sets up the contrast between the insiders and the outsiders at the start of her essay. She positions herself firmly in one of the two groups. The first paragraph of that essay is a delight in itself, as an example of superb writing from an essayist at the top of her form, if nothing else. Plain language and ordinary sentences describe what plain and ordinary people across America would know as the elements of their lives. Although the scenes she sets are as much part of the fictional portrayal of American life as the reality, people would know and understand both.
They slip effortlessly between the two, without thinking of the difference between their experience and a mix of common fictional images. Both exist with equal truthfulness. That Didion plays so effortlessly with that idea is a mark of both of her perceptiveness and her writing skill.
It occurred to me, in California in June and in Atlanta in July and in New Orleans in August, in the course of watching first the California primary and then the Democratic and Republican national conventions, that it had not been by accident that the people with whom I had preferred to spend time in high school had, on the whole, hung out in gas stations. They had not run for student body office. They had not gone on to Yale or Swarthmore or DePauw, nor had they even applied. They had gotten drafted, gone through basic at Fort Ord. They had knocked up girls, and married them, had begun what they called the first night of the rest of their lives with a midnight drive to Carson City and a five-dollar ceremony performed by a justice still in his pajamas. They got jobs at the places that had laid off their uncles. They paid their bills or did not pay their bills, made down payments on tract houses, led lives on that social and economic edge referred to, in Washington and among those whose preferred locus is Washington, as “out there.” They were never destined to be, in other words, communicants in what we have come to call, when we want to indicate the traditional ways in which power is exchanged and the status quo maintained in the United States, “the process.”
Newfoundland politics gave Didion an obit in action over Christmas, an homage of sorts, albeit unintended. Lots of examples of stuff that people inside or who fancy themselves inside the local power process got excited about but that was trivial, even to insiders. It is their fiction of themselves. None of them likely saw the reality.
My day on Twitter started Friday with me posting a note about a change in one of my LinkedIn contact’s job. LinkedIn spits out these notifications routinely along with suggested messages to the person. That’s why you get so many private messages from people, including those who know you well, that are also in the default format prompted by the program “Congratulations on your [unspecified] work anniversary.”
This one seemed better fit for 280 characters on a Friday and nothing more.
Insider Baseball Update: Former Dwight Exec Asst Rodney Mercer is back in the Premier's Office. Mercer spent a year with Ball between January '16 and Jan '17.
Mercer left a four year gig with @PaulAntleNL 's Avalon Laboratories to take up the new job.
That’s it. Nothing more to it than that. Then reality happened.
By the end of the day, the opposition Pea Seas were tearing their shirts in anguish at the naked arrogance of the Premier creating a political job for a political staffer in his political office then hiring a political friend to fill it. The assorted goons and anonymous buffoons of local Twitter were also wailing alongside the Pea Sea goofs about the horror of it all.
Finding itself under frenzied attack, the Premier’s Office issued a statement about the whole thing. Just to reporters. Not to the world. Even a message to the Premier’s official account got no response. After all it is only for fluff, not for actually, you know, informing people about useful stuff.
Anyway, reporters got an email or something. It called the two jobs created in a new central Newfoundland office “entry level” and the work similar to what happens in the Corner Brook office. Watch the NTV story to get the full effect.
The thing is, the Premier’s Office in Corner Brook dates from the 1960s when Joe Smallwood represented a district in Corner Brook. Like the cabinet office in the Sir Richard Squires Building, the satellite Premier’s Office in Corner Brook pandered to the west coast crowd who from birth believe they are always playing second-fiddle to Town, even when they aren’t.
The office has mostly handled the Premier’s constituency work and not much more than that. The reason there’s been an office in Corner Brook for so long - aside from making the west coast mafia feel important is that for some reason known only to politicians, an abnormal number of Premiers since Confederation decided to represent Corner Brook districts or ones near Corner Brook. Roger Grimes – one of the two Premiers after 1949 to hold a seat in central Newfoundland – put an office out there because that where his constituency was. Made sense. He kept the one in Corner Brook because had he closed it, the open line shows would have been penderized, as the Corner Brook crying has been known in some circles.
The fact the Premier’s Office hired a former candidate to work in a new office is the insider baseball bit of this. What’s not so trivial is the question unanswered: why did they create a new office in central Newfoundland? The premier’s constituency office is in Corner Brook, close to his west coast district. If the office in central will do what Corner Brook does - as the media statement claimed - then the Premier now has two constituency offices. That makes no sense. If the office does more than that, that makes no sense either. Provincially, the Liberals have a senior cabinet minister in the region. There’s no shortage of Liberal members across central and all of them are in touch with their district and the region.
So there’s no need of a Premier’s Office in Grand Falls-Windsor any more than there’s need for one in Goose Bay, Nain, or Trepassey. That’s why political people are scratching their heads. The only noticeable thing that’s happened in central Newfoundland lately is the federal Liberal loss there in the 2021 federal election. One of the people hired for what is supposedly an entry level job worked for Scott Simms for years doing the sorts of things she’ll be doing still.
Wags wondered, then, if the office was really a front for the federal party, with Mercer the form EA and former candidate either along for the ride or to build his own profile for another election run sometime. The truly creative insider-political wags wondered if this was just another sign the real Premier Furey had an office in the Senate.
The Pea Seas claimed this is new money and could have been spent on something else. They never mentioned that Doris Cowley is leaving the 8th Floor after a year and a bit. That gives the Premier’s Office a salary unit from within the Office budget to cover one or both of the new jobs just as every government office can do and countless Premier’s Offices have done before now.
Any opposition party can be lazy and inept, as they were. Bad things don’t happen as a result. But when the Premier’s Office fumbles, that’s a bad sign both for the incumbent and for the rest of us. Make no mistake: they fumbled.
Look at what the Premier’s Office didn’t do in creating the office and hiring two new staffers. They didn’t issue a news release explaining why it was needed. They cobbled something together *in response* to the Friday flash fire. That tells you they weren’t ready. They were also obviously and overly sensitive about the office. That’s why they described the jobs as unimportant - entry level ones - while claiming there was something so important going on in central it needed a whole new office to managed.
Without a good explanation, the Premier’s Office left room for the rumour mill to fill the gap. That joke about Premier George Furey running the province from his Senate office is an example of that but it isn’t just some smart-arsed line. It picks up on the way Andrew Furey aligns himself with the federal Liberals at every turn. Like the story last week that the provincial government won’t be funding seismic exploration for the offshore. Something the *federal* Liberals would be big on but not necessarily the provincial Liberals who are still pretty keen on oil and gas.
Strategically, none of that is good for the local Furey and the local Liberals. It undermines them with local voters. Not dramatically. Not like they are going to collapse tomorrow. But it’s just more in what is a year of these sorts of stories. It gives the opposition easy political hits but - more importantly - it makes people doubt the provincial Liberals full stop on everything from the economy to public debt..
After all, Premier Andrew Furey hasn’t had a clear policy on natural resource development, especially oil since he took office. Even in his controversial trip to Glasgow, Furey told one story to the punters back home he was all London Tipton on our major industry - Yay, oil! - but overseas, in his one known media interview, Furey sang from the federal hymn sheet: we gotta ditch the oil to save our Labrador Current.
The confusion whether over oil or economic renewal and the PERT report - does no one any good. Not Furey personally. Not the Liberals. Not anyone else in the province, either. Episodes like the new office fumble don’t help.
Furey’s office likes to issue statements rather than offer up the boss for anything but a highly controlled interview. It’s a defensive play that limits the chances for the boss to shag up. But even when Furey is prepared he can still shag up. That happened twice last week.
The first was in a VOCM interview where he got needlessly testy. Furey stumbled over a response and the reporter just went back at him politely but firmly to get a clear answer. Furey harrumphed that he didn’t like the tone of the question. The exchange made Furey look arrogant to some, but to lots of people he just looked weak.
Same as his reply to a predictable question from Peter Cowan during a two-part year-ender for CBC’s Here and Now. Cowan asked about the Liberal party’s application to a federal fund that helped businesses cover costs during the pandemic. Furey’s answers was weak: we are looking at it. On top of that, a combination of Furey’s passive-voiced insistence that “nothing was done incorrectly” and the self-conscious “I really didn’t fart just then” grin right after looked amateurish. Unprepared. Not up to the job.
Or worse, not really interested in the job. Last week, people got a reminder of a minor issue that came up around the time he took office. Furey insisted on hanging onto to his medical licence even though there should be no practical way for him to continue being a surgeon and holding down the Premier’s job at the same time. He is not Buckaroo Banzai. Being Premier is a full-time job.
Yet, during a major outbreak, Furey flew to Goose Bay and spent a few days doing something he seldom ever did as a surgeon: he gave people injections. Labrador member of the House of Assembly Lela Evans took Furey to task. She said people needed him in St. John’s doing Premier things, not in Labrador vaccinating people.
She’s got a point. Furey’s trip looked like a photo op. A publicity stunt. He’s already got a rep for that fluff. Thing is, Furey’s trip also looked like someone going back to what he really wants to be rather than what he gets paid to do. That’s not an idea Furey needs in people along with the rest of it.
The problem for Furey and by extension the local Liberals is that even if people aren’t consciously aware of a comparison many of them can recall politicians like John Efford. Efford died last week after a short illness but for a long time John Efford was one of the most popular politicians around. He had a goal, was driven to achieve it, and was blessed with the energy to get there. Efford was also connected very much to the people of his district and people who thought like him across the province. That’s what made him a powerful figure and a fearsome opponent.
No one could ever accuse Efford of being unprepared for an interview. John may have had his share of media training but what appeared in front of the camera was always genuine Efford. John put his own face and his own voice to whatever he needed to say. He didn’t weasel around. His heart was in everything he did. You never doubted he wanted to be in charge. You got John, Cromwellian warts and all.
Dwight Ball ran into chronic political problems because he made Hamlet look decisive. He was distilled essence of dithering. On a scale with John Efford on one end and Dwight Ball on the other, where would Andrew Furey be? If you put him on the Dwight end, then you can see the political problems Furey may be courting when the province faces so many problems.
Problems like the never-ending COVID pandemic. This latest outbreak has many details that make it different from earlier outbreaks but the one that is most striking is the among of anger in the public over the way politicians are managing it. Not just here. It’s everywhere in Canada if not across the western world. People are angry government is doing too much. People are angry government is doing too little. No one is Goldilocks.
Dr. Proton Rahman turned up last week on CBC radio to tell everyone this outbreak was almost over and that everything was just fine. Not clear if CBC just went looking for him or someone in government pushed him out there, but the interview stood starkly against lots of other media reports about potential deaths in Newfoundland and Labrador if things got really bad.
The reason why Rahman wound up on the radio is the insider baseball bit. What’s more important is that what he said was not based on fact and evidence. That’s a big deal because both the provincial government here, like governments across Canada, claims everything they do is based on science and evidence. The reality is starkly different.
Rahman claimed we may be seeing the peak of the outbreak. Simply put, there’s no sign of it. Look at the chart at the top of this column. New cases have tailed off slightly over the past few days but the active case count is huge, and growing. We haven’t seen yet the drop in recoveries to match or exceed the jumps in new infections. That’s when the recovery starts. Right now, we are still racking up way more new cases than recoveries. So, there’s no evidence to support Rahman’s claim.
As Rahman knows, those numbers everyone uses are the official ones. Problem is the Chief Medical Officer changed testing rules over the holidays so that we no longer can say that the official numbers of tests and infections and recoveries represents all or nearly all the sick people out there. We have no idea how many people are sick and have recovered or are sick and haven’t been tested. We don’t know how many sick people have a cold or the flu and who has the mild version of COVID Omicron produces. Other numbers people have been relying on like the number of positives as a share of all those tested are also useless now. So, no, we don’t have any evidence to support Rahman’s claim that the wave is about to crest.
Yet, Rahman offered an opinion without any evidence to back it up. Not exactly the kind of move that builds trust in anyone’s ability, let alone that of a medical doctor. If Rahman guessed right and the numbers tail off eventually, then he might look like a genius to some people. If he guessed wrongly, which is possible, he looks like an idiot. Either way, Rahman doesn’t come off that great because he’s guessing. That’s what the anonymous buffoons on Twitter do. That’s not what doctors are supposed to do especially the one held out as the forecasting guru for the provincial COVID team
The tailing off thing wasn’t the only bit of nonsense Rahman spouted in the recent interview. He said the booster shots would prevent the spread of the disease. Yet the number of breakthrough infections – people doubly vaxed or double-vaxed *and* boosted – is so large no one believes vaccines prevent infection anymore.
Provincial officials believe the booster lessens symptoms. It doesn’t prevent people from getting sick. That’s what the evidence shows. That’s why the provincial government is pushing so hard to get boosters out there. Even the CMO believes everyone will get COVID, now. She’s just trying to lessen the damage, not prevent people from getting sick.
Rahman’s interview points to a wider issue, not just about government’s COVID manage but also about the way the provincial government runs. The people making decisions at the top do not have around them people who can think strategically. Of if there those strategic thinking people sitting in offices or cubicles, they just don’t pay attention to them.
From the outside, it is hard to tell which it is. Either way the result is the same: Everything government does reflects short-term perspectives. Tactical thinking. Limited information and even less understanding of what the limited information means. No way of reliably sorting through different perspectives to find the best answer. The preference to chase after brain farts.
What’s worse, as Ross Wiseman showed in his own mention of a one year budget and four year political cycle, or as Kathy Dunderdale showed when she talked about how many people paid how little tax, seeing a part of a problem without having the slightest inkling they could have done something to change things.
That’s reality.
Not fiction.
That’s important.
Not insider baseball.
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