She could have been a contender
Suppose, on entering politics, she had been content to start out as a humble backbench MP. Suppose she had spent some time learning the ropes, mastering a few files, practicing public speaking, acquiring a smattering of French, demonstrating an ability to work with others. Suppose she had supported the same party for more than a year or two. After a while, people might have said: you know, she’s got a lot of money, she looks good in expensive clothes -- and she’s qualified. Let’s put her up for leader!
But that would have taken time -- a year at least -- and Ms. Stronach is not accustomed to waiting. Or perhaps, to be more charitable, she was the recipient of spectacularly bad advice. At any rate, that is not how things worked out.
Instead, Ms. Stronach will be remembered for launching perhaps the most ill-founded leadership bid since Peter Pocklington, unsupported by much experience of either public or private life and notably untroubled by serious thinking about the issues. That her campaign team included some of the party’s most seasoned players shows what some people will do for money, though even her father’s billions were not enough in the end to buy the party.
She will be remembered, also, for her part in Paul Martin’s constitutional coup d’état -- his refusal, for nine long days in the spring of 2005, after losing what was at least arguably a confidence vote, either to resign or submit to a confidence vote, preferring instead to spend the interval dangling government jobs in front of opposition MPs, until at last he emerged, smiling, with Ms. Stronach at his side, at that bizarre press conference: the one where the reporters openly laughed at him.
And so was born the career of Ms Stronach, Minister of Human Resources Development and, in an amusing touch, Democratic Renewal. One job for one vote (or what else was David Peterson negotiating all that time?): the margin of heiress, as it turned out, by which the government was eventually spared. Yet neither party, looking back, could now account the exchange as having been worthwhile.
For the Liberals’ part, it marked the beginning of the end: Mr. Martin was revealed as a grasping conniver, willing to do and say anything to hang onto power. Such was the damage to his public image that he was unable to survive the later hit from Gomery, or not with sufficient strength to carry his party. Indeed, not a few Liberals have since speculated whether it might not have been better for the party to have lost that vote.
As for Ms Stronach, her usefulness to the Martinites ended the moment she crossed the floor. After a few desultory months in office, they were gone, and she was back on the opposition benches. Lacking support for an immediate leadership campaign, and defeated in her bid, at the Montreal convention, to arrange the rules of the next race to her advantage, she surprised no one in the party with yesterday’s announcement.
Indeed, if there was any party that profited from her brief fling with the Liberals, it was the Conservatives, who were thereby disposed of a disruptive influence. That she demolished what was left of Peter MacKay’s reputation in the process must be counted as a bonus.
Perhaps the oddest part of her legacy will prove to be her brief elevation as feminist icon. Ms Stronach proved herself an adept, or at least avid, player of the victim card, treating every slight or setback as evidence of a special hostility toward women in politics: as if no male politician had ever endured public scrutiny of his private life (Bill Clinton), or his appearance (Stephen Harper, Preston Manning, Stockwell Day, Peter MacKay, etc etc).
Let’s be clear: as a politician, her chief assets were, in order, her money, her gender, her clothes and her looks. No male politician as ill prepared as her would have been given a second look as a leadership candidate, even with her money. Her own contributions to women in politics must include Martha Hall Findlay, shoved aside as Liberal candidate in Newmarket-Aurora to make room for her the day she crossed the floor, and Lucienne Robillard, stripped of her Human Resources portfolio in the same deal.
But, as I say, it need not have been this way. Ms Stronach is not stupid, or ill-intentioned. It’s perfectly praiseworthy that someone so favoured in life should be prepared to submit herself to the rigors of politics. Given time, she might have done much. If only she’d had more patience. If only she’d been prepared to wait.
4/12/2007
