Poisoned Chalice (ebook)

Argumento de Poisoned Chalice (ebook)

Poisoned Chalice chronicles the fateful end of the federal Progressive Conservative government in Ottawa. The Progressive Conservative Party sought to remake itself by choosing the first woman prime minister in Canadian history, but failed to heed the lessons of Meech or Charlottetown. Their strategy nearly worked. By the time the election was called, the Tories were neck and neck with Jean Chrétien?s Liberals. Then it all fell apart. This book, published exactly one year after the event, tells how and why it happened.

It gives a day-by-day account of an election campaign seemingly doomed to failure. It covers the strategy, tactics and political machinations that drove the Conservative campaign from the point of view of someone "on the bus." Read the strategy memos given to Kim Campbell. Listen in on her election-night phone call to Jean Chrétien. Relive Kim Campbell?s campaigh from one end of the country to the other.

More than just that, Poisoned Chalice asks fundamental questions about how one of the founding political parties of Canada could come to such an ignominious state. Does the Progressive Conservative Party have a future? Has it been overtaken for good by Reform? This book takes the reader back to the seeds of the Tories? defeat, from the constitutional debate and referendum, to the Conservative leadership race that never was, to Kim Campbell?s shining summer, to the electoral devastation of just two seats.

"On the whole, McLaughlin's account is clear and persuasive."

"For anyone with even a passing interest in Canadian politics, David McLaughlin's story is as compelling as the black box recordings of a doomed air crew."

Did Brian Mulroney hand Kim Campbell a ?poisoned chalice? from which no victory could be drunk?

This book chronicles the key political events of the last two years of the Progressive Conservative governments of Brian Mulroney and Kim Campell from my personal perspective as a political aide to both Prime Ministers and a close observer of the strategy, tactics, political machinations, and plain luck that make up the stuff of modern politics. Was the massive defeat suffered by the Tory party at the hands of Canadian voters on October 25, 1993, inevitable? Is the Party so out of touch, not just with Canadians but with itself, that it can never rebuild to become a force in the nation?s politics once again?

Looking back on the constitutional debate and referendum, the recession and unemployment, the sense of disconnectedness felt by the public from the country?s political process, the rise of the regional parties, and the personal antipathy felt by many Canadians towards Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and his party, the obvious answer may appear to be yes. But a review of the events in perspective, coupled with an assessment of what may have been the worst election campaign undertaken by any party in Canadian history, actually brings one to a different conclusion.

Nothing is inevitable in politics. Experienced politicians, parties, and governments learn to play the cards they are dealt. Both the referendum results and the Tory leadership race offered real opportunities for the government to ressurect its political fortunes. There is no question that a majority Yes vote in the referendum would have improved the standing ? however temporarily ? of the government with disgruntled Canadians. Alone, however, it was clearly insufficient. Voters were running out of patience with politicians and parties preoccupied solely with constitutional questions. There was only one real topic on their minds: the economy.

Accordingly, once the results of the referendum were known, Canadians closed the constitutional book as if the whole Charlottetown debate had never happened. Paradoxically, the clear, unequivocal No vote made it easiser to put the whole tiresome exercise behind them, demanding, as they did, that their governments do the same and concentrate on the economy. In this sense, the referendum results were more of an opportunity for the government than the magnitude of the defeat might have first suggested. With Canadians saying, almost without exception, that the economy was the number one issue, economic competence returned to the forefront as an election issue, an issue that had been the Conservative Party?s best card for the last two elections.

But there was a hitch. The old solutions were not good enough. Waiting for recovery was not sufficient. For more than two years they waited while their leaders bickered over issues that, however important, did not provide jobs or economic security for Canadians. Meanwhile, the economy worsened. The passage of the Charlottetown Accord would not alleviate this economic anxiety. The Canadian people?s sense of diminished economic expectations made it that much easier to say No. Economic hope was what they wanted.

The lingering preoccupation of the government with cutting the deficit and fighting inflation had not only sapped Tory strength across the country but also closed off new, more innovative approaches for generating growth and jobs in Canada. The contemporary media infatuation with the newly-elected Bill Clinton?s plan for ?investment? in infrastructure and training to kick-start the moribund American economy was illustrative of the need for new political thinking in Ottawa as well. Again, however, it was an opportunity for the Party and its leadership.

But if the referendum had helped take the poison out of the immediate political environment, it offered cogent lessons to the governing party that could not be ignored. The byplay of anti-politics and anti-incumbency was a potent arrow in the Opposition?s quiver. In the process, this helped confirm the legitimacy of the Reform Party and Bloc Québécois whose platforms, while poles apart on the appropriateness of federal MPs serving as champions of separatism, dovetailed on the need for more radical solutions to Canada?s seemingly endemic constitutional and economic questions. In this sense, they offered not more of the same, but real alternatives to the status quo, however unpalatable and unrealistic they seemed to their political opponents. Unless countered with new Conservative solutions, their appeals would have more depth than many observers first imagined. Yet, however, much they preached their particular brand of politics, the regional parties could never form a government. Only the Conservatives and Liberals could.

Brian Mulroney?s resignation, followed by almost half of his former Ministers, offered the Progressive Conservative Party a further opportunity to present itself anew to Canadians. It was not uncommon for political parties to hold leadership conventions in the last months of their mandates, as a means of internal rejuvenation, designed to hold on to political power. Lester Pearson made way for Pierre Trudeau and Trudeau, in turn, for John Turner; examples of the pros and cons, or more precisely, the right and wrong ways of changing leaders. At the provincial level, Don Getty made way for Ralph Klein in Alberta and Bill Bennett had passed on his title to Bill Vander Zalm in British Columbia. In each case the governing party was languishing in the polls until the leadership race, then went on to win a majority government.

The lesson from these episodes is that new leader is no automatic ticket to re-election. Indeed, the evidence from many other leadership changes (Davis to Miller; Peckford to Rideout; Buchanan to Cameron; Lévésque to Pierre-Marc Johnson; Vander Zalm to Rita Johnson), is that it works less often than realized. Leadership is only one component ? arguably the most important ? of renewal. Policy and party organization are also critical. In this instance, Kim Campbell?s replacing of Brian Mulroney in June, 1993, was not the wrong answer, only an incomplete one.

The key was to understand what lay behind the early Kim Campbell phenomenon. Canadians were looking for change, change from an unpopular Prime Minister and change from ?politics as usual?. For a P.C. government seeking an unprecedented third term, this meant embracing the need for change. First, they had to demonstrate to a sceptical electorate that they were willing and committed to change. Then they had to present a plan for fulfilling that change. Doing the same thing but doing it better was not enough. Low risk was high risk for Progressive Conservative candidates in the 1993 election year.

The Party?s failure to present a full, vibrant slate of leadership candidates to the Canadian people, coupled with a vigourous debate of ideas and approaches to issues that would truly rejuvenate the Party, meant all of its eggs were being put into one, increasingly risky, Kim Campbell basket. She was new. She was different. She looked like a winner. She was a ?checklist candidate? matching item for item what Canadians said they wanted when asked about the kind of Prime Minister they truly desired. The leadership race was really no contest at all despite the close results at the end.

Kim Campbell burst onto the political scene. Different, not just because she is a woman, Campbell appeared to embody the necessary personality and outlook for a disillusioned country. ?Doing politics differently? became her watchword. In that one phrase she set out to create a gulf between herself and her predecessor. But in the process she failed to define herself in terms of new policies and approaches that would find lasting favour with Canadians. Trust me for what I seem to be, she essentially proclaimed. In the end, she simply offered up the image that she was neither Brian Mulroney nor Jean Chrétien nor Preston Manning nor Lucien Bouchard. But who, then, was this stranger? Brian Mulroney?s constant admonition to the Party throughout ten years of power, that they had to win first in order to govern, had now come full circle. Progressive Conservatives had chosen a leader who was neither ready for the task nor truly understood what she had to do.

Ten years of power had taken its toll. The drawn-out recession, stubbornly high unemployment, and wretchedly bad poll numbers had sapped the morale and confidence of many in the Party and government. With the inevitable announcement of Mulroney?s retirement, many new initiatives ground to a halt. More decisively, new policy alternatives were not devised in any systematic way, either inside the government or outside in the leadership race, that would provide the badge of renewal required to win again.

Finance Minister Don Mazankowski?s final budget in April, 1993, simply confirmed the worst. Designed not to offend anyone in the midst of a leadership campaign, its spending cuts, hotly arrived at within Cabinet, were immediately derided as insufficient. It became a ?stand-pat? budget, serving simultaneously to undermine the Party?s own base with the business community and Reform-leaning Conservatives by not doing enough on the deficit, while demonstrating the bareness of the government?s own policy cupboard. It simply confirmed the deficit as an election issue, to the Party?s detriment.

Yet, none of this seemed to matter in the first flush of the leadership contest and the weeks

following the June 13th convention that chose Kim Campbell. As the summer progressed and she found her footing, Tory fortunes rose. By the time of the election call, the P.C. Party was more competitive with its rivals than it had been in several years. Leadership numbers for the new Prime Minister were almost twice as high as for the man who would eventually replace her, Jean Chretien. To her credit, Kim Campbell succeeded in convincing Canadians to give her and her party another look.

Yet, the favourable numbers masked the fundamental lack of vision, strategic thinking, organization, and focus needed to win an election campaign. Its armoury had only one weapon ? Kim Campbell?s uneven leadership. A neophyte Prime Minister, inexperienced in electoral politics and uncertain in the ways and history of the party she now led, put her fate in the hands of advisers whose bible was the polls and whose talisman was the focus group. They crafted a ?campaign by IKEA?, where the leader was but one component and whose role and words were decided not by her or even by people who really knew her. Not knowing her role, not understanding her script, Kim Campbell proceeded to unravel her own election chances.

Fearful of an anti-Mulroney backlash, the former Prime Minister?s name and record were banished from the Party?s vocabulary. But the political burden of the past was eradicated without being replaced. An unwillingness to devise and present a comprehensive platform, combined with an inability to articulate a positive message for Canadians as to why they should vote for Kim Campbell and her party, led to an election campaign that went from vapid to farcical to suicidal.

The result was the worst electoral showing of any major political party in Canadian history. Kim Campbell seemed to have received a ?poisoned chalice? after all.

This book is one window into how and why it happened, and what it means to the proud, historic, and now precarious Progressive Conservative Party of Canada, one of Canada?s founding political parties.

Was this truly the last campaign of the Progressive Conservative Party?0ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
FOREWORD
PREFACE
1. Introduction
2. ?Just Say No?: The Constitutional Debate
3. Legacy: The Mulroney Government
4. Leadership ?93: The Race That Never Was
5. Countdown: Campbell Takes Charge
ILLUSTRATIONS
6. Sunset at Sunrise: The Tories Debut ? Campaign ?93
7. Meltdown: The Tories Collapse ? Campaign ?93
8. Conclusion: Whodunnit?
9. Epilogue: ?And Then There Were Two?
NOTES
INDEX