Yet it is at the same time a wholly modern phenomenon. Previous generations of politicians were corrupt in their own way, but the practice of stacking conventions with hordes of "instant Liberals" or "rent-a-Tories," so regular a part of recent campaigns, has really only emerged in the last two decades. It was not always thus.
Indeed, it was not always the case that leaders were even elected, or not by the membership. Until the end of the First World War, the leader was chosen by the members of that party's parliamentary caucus. As such, he had no independent power base, and was entirely dependent on their goodwill: for as he was hired by the caucus, so he could be fired by the caucus. Canada's second prime minister, Alexander MacKenzie, was unceremoniously dumped by this means after losing the election of 1878. A sitting prime minister, Mackenzie Bowell, was forced out in 1896, after losing the support of his cabinet.
Even so great a prime minister, and so cunning a political animal, as John A. Macdonald was not immune from challenge. In the Pacific Scandal debates of 1873, Macdonald retained the support of most of his caucus; but enough Conservative MPs defected to the opposition that he gradually lost the confidence of the House, and was forced from office.
Still, the scales were tipping in favour of the leader, with the rise of sophisticated party machines and their indispensable lubricant, patronage. Parties became more and more hierarchical, with power increasingly drawn to the centre. The election of MacKenzie King as Liberal leader in 1919 marks the start of the modern political era: the first time in Canada that a leader was selected by the party at large, rather than caucus, and the model ever since.
There, arguably, began Parliament's long slide into irrelevance. As Charles Moore writes in his history of Confederation-era Canada, 1867: How the Fathers Made a Deal, "Canadian politicians and analysts have always identified mass membership participation in the choice of party leaders as a triumph of democracy. The cost, barely noticed, was the abrupt loss of what little influence elected members of Parliament still had over their leaders." That may overstate matters. The choice of leader may have been taken out of their exclusive control, but members of Parliament remained influential players in the internal politics of each riding, to say nothing of their role in brokering delegate support at conventions. For decades, leadership races remained dignified, even boring affairs: if not scarred by the abuses of later years, they were not quite democratic, either.
The 1948 Liberal convention was orchestrated by King from start to finish, from the choice of candidates to run against Louis St. Laurent to their eventual falling into line behind him. Conservative politics, in the perpetual wilds of the opposition, were not quite so tame. Yet Conservative leaders seemed in no danger of losing their jobs, no matter how many elections they lost. After all, they had a mandate from the party.
A critical date was 1966, when the Conservatives became the first party to introduce a mechanism for "review" of the leadership, with the express aim of removing John Diefenbaker. Now the membership really came into their own. The ensuing years could be said to be the nearest thing to a golden age of party democracy. The conventions that chose Pierre Trudeau in 1968 and Joe Clark in 1976 were relatively open, unpredictable affairs; in both, the winner was the "outsider," rather than the candidate of the party establishment. Yet both were clean races, at least by present-day standards.
Where, and when, did the rot set in? How did we get to our present state, of not only mass recruitment, but even mass purchase of memberships? Of elderly drunks, and children, casting decisive votes? Of busloads of ethnic minorities deployed to stack nomination meetings?
It began, as so much recent political history does, with two bitter internal rivalries: between Joe Clark and Brian Mulroney for the Conservative leadership, and between John Turner and Jean Chretien for the Liberals'. Mr. Mulroney and Mr. Chretien were each bested for the party leadership the first time out, each evidently feeling the lesser man had won -- and each looking forward to the next leadership review (the Liberals adopted their own version of review in 1982; rather than at every convention, as the Tories had it, it was to apply only after each election). Factor in the roughhouse political traditions of Quebec, in which both Mr. Mulroney and Mr. Chretien were schooled, and the rise of big-city political machines, fed by waves of recent immigrants, and the rest could almost be predicted.
Mr. Mulroney and his supporters, seeking delegates to challenge Mr. Clark's leadership at the 1983 convention in Winnipeg, discovered the often-anemic Conservative riding associations of Quebec -- the party had not won more than two seats there for many years -- offered ample opportunities for stacking meetings. It was from that race that stories first emerged of Mr. Muloney's operatives rounding up old men from the local flophouses and handing them membership cards.
A year later, with the close of Mr. Trudeau's 16-year career at the helm of the Liberal Party, Mr. Chretien's organization began a similar effort to sign up new members in his home province. Mr. Turner, for his part, enjoyed great success in the ethnic enclaves of Toronto. Adding to the mix, a so-called "Third Force" of ethnic power brokers emerged, offering their skills as recruiters to the highest political bidder.
And so it continued. Mr. Turner's leadership remained under almost constant challenge, notably at the 1986 convention -- again, with all sides furiously recruiting hundreds of new members. The 1990 Liberal leadership race was essentially a replay of the 1984 experience, only with Paul Martin replacing Mr. Turner, and Mr. Chretien emerging victorious.
Just when it seemed things could get no worse, they did. Two new developments made the need to sign up new members even more urgent. One was the emergence of well- organized, single-issue campaigns, notably anti-abortion groups, as a political force: the defeat of Patrick Johnston, a well-regarded candidate favoured by the party elite in the 1987 race for the Liberal nomination in Scarborough West, was an early warning sign.
His opponent, the then-unknown Tom Wappel, went on to challenge for the party leadership in 1990.
And the parties themselves contributed to the melee, by changing the rules for leadership elections from the old, delegated conventions to the "one-member, one-vote" races in vogue today. If the intent was to take the parties out of the hands of the elites, it failed: with leadership races now little more than glorified membership drives, the warlords were more in control than ever -- a different breed of warlord, to be sure, not so beholden to the party hierarchy, but warlords all the same. Tom Long's ill-starred campaign for leader of the Canadian Alliance in 2000 showed the perils of this system, as, in a different way, did Stockwell Day's victory.
It's not clear what it would take to wean the parties off their dependence on regular infusions of instant members. But as the Liberal Party's current trials show, the practice is a repeating stain on the party's reputation, a perpetual temptation to political mischief, and an ever-present source of division. As with practically every other Canadian political institution, it is in dire need of reform.