Oratory set to win the day

What we have here, ladies and gentlemen, is a small town, just 5,000 souls and change. It is a town much like any other town, if that town were populated exclusively by strikingly ambitious, unnaturally friendly, perpetually earnest, disproportionately young people who drink until all hours of the day and night. And just now the town is electing a mayor.

Or that’s what it feels like. Leadership conventions, as a rule, are part hazing ritual, part hothouse laboratory, in which the strange alchemy of propinquity compels human beings from different backgrounds and far-flung parts of the country to puzzle some consensus out of their divisions. But usually there is a sense that the process is contained within limits; that the conclusion, if not already decided, is nevertheless within the powers of a few party power brokers to control.

But this convention is unusual in its free-wheeling unpredictability. The delegates, those strange townsfolk I described, are actually going to decide this. I don’t mean to suggest anything too thoughtful or high-minded -- whatever emerges from this convention will be the fruit of the usual mad rumours, corny showmanship, intrigues, threats, bribes, and outright dirty tricks. But, in the end, the fate of the leadership contenders is in the hands of 5,000 notably independent-minded electors. And whatever the candidates’ powers of persuasion, the arguments and supplications of other delegates will weigh as heavily in the balance.

That is, I think, how it should be. Choosing a leader engages such intangible qualities, and such a complex mix of considerations, that there is some merit in gathering party members to consider the matter en masse, threshing it out for several days of sweaty argy-bargy, rather than as several thousand isolated individuals voting in their ridings. I still prefer the classical system, long since abandoned in this country, whereby a party leader is elected by the members of the parliamentary caucus. But if it it must be the party at large that decides it, better by delegated convention than by a direct vote of the membership.

So the Liberals have chosen well, in rejecting the proposal of the party’s youth wing to adopt the latter system; this will not be the last such occasion, as some hoped and others feared. The odd thing is that, by the usual arguments in favour of delegated conventions -- the hoopla, the excitement, the chance to grab some free media -- to this point this one would rate as something of a debacle. Consider:

* The policy debates have been mostly marked by the absence of either, though emptier still of actual delegates. The majority of the workshops, what is more, were carried out almost entirely in English, much to the dismay of the French press.

* Having shelved the Quebec wing’s explosive motion to recognize Quebec as a nation, the party was blindsided by a motion out of its Aboriginal Peoples’ Commission urging constitutional recognition of natives as nations, only avoiding a messy plenary debate by the intervention of some timely procedural niceties.

* The choice of Howard Dean as keynote speaker, a subject of some controversy when first announced, looked even odder after the event, a flat, uninspiring speech that raised little enthusiasm among its listeners (though Mr. Dean’s French won praise, at least by comparison to Frank McKenna, who introduced him).

* And the divisions that wracked the party through the Chretien and Martin years remained on view, even as the party paid tribute to Paul Martin, the leader who oversaw their decline from majority to minority to opposition. Mr. Chretien was, sadly, unable to be present last night, owing to a prior engagement in China, though by some miracle he was able to book a flight back in time for the vote on Saturday.

But now things are bound to get interesting. The candidates’ speeches tonight promise to be one of those rare occasions in public life when the course of events is decided, or at least heavily influenced, by the sheer power of oratory. With more than 40% of delegates, according to a pre-convention poll, undecided who to throw their support to on the second ballot -- and even higher levels of uncertainty surrounding subsequent ballots -- it is impossible to say how their votes will combine, even if we could predict which candidates would cross the convention floor to whom.

I am conscious of the self-interest of the media in these matters, our tendency, shameless showmen that we are, to assess any matter according to its potential for drama. But the test of this convention will not be whether it provides the party with a showcase, or the hoped-for short-term “bump” in the polls -- if anything, I predict Liberal support will sag for a time, as the flawed reality of whichever individual is installed in the leader’s office replaces the imagined perfection of his anticipation -- but whether it chooses a leader who can point the party in the right direction for the longer term, and keep it together in the interim.

Because whoever is elected mayor of Gritsburgh, his troubles have just begun.