Insider baseball

What is interesting to people on the inside is often of no interest to people outside.

That idea, in a great many more eloquent words and with a bunch of other ideas, may be found in this 1988 article by Joan Didion.

Some people will get this.

Most will not.

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The Same and the Different

Bob Wakeham may find this irritating or revealing but, contrary to Wakeham’s conclusion, there is nothing ironic in Danny Williams’ letters to the CBC ombudsman complaining that CBC producer Peter Gullage is biased.

First, here’s Wakeham’s comment from his Saturday column:

The irony in all this is that Williams has absolutely no need to stoop to this thin-skinned foolishness, turning molehills into mountains, and portraying himself as a mannequin for diapers.

The premier is still immensely popular, has done more things right than wrong, and should keep his disgust with journalists like Gullage (and commentators like me) buried.

Perhaps it’s part of the addictive power trip.

Now here’s a definition of irony:

Incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs.

There is nothing about Williams’ action in the Gullage complaint that is different from what occurred before.  So if one expected Williams not to moan, whine, bitch and complain, then one has not found irony, but blindness on the part of the observer.

Williams’ relentless negativity is legendary.

His capacity to slag off anyone, friend or foe, is equally legendary.  Take friend George Baker, for example, who has nothing but Bill Rowe-like praise for the powerful Premier and his amazing awesomeness.  The senator was not immune to Williams’ wild accusations, as labradore recently noted:

What about George Baker who got muzzled after they bought him off? What happened to him?

George Baker:  bought, i.e. corrupt as in bribed into silence.

Nothing could be further from the truth – to borrow one of Williams’ ironic phrases - and at the same time, nothing could be closer to Williams’ hyperbolic ranting.*

Nor is this the result of the supposedly usual addictive power trip that seduces Premiers. Wakeham tells a story about Clyde Wells complaining  - legitimately - about Wakeham’s crowd, the ombudsman ruling and Wakeham ignoring.

Yes, folks, Bob’s balls are legendary, at least in his own mind even if, as it turns out, his memory isn’t.  There was another episode in which the Ceeb buggered up a story about expenses.  They thought that the amounts to be spent went up when -  in fact – the administrative rules had changed on how much entertainment needed** pre-approval from treasury board.

That’s as arcane an issue as it gets but it was also a highly contentious one at a time when the government is hurting for cash and laying off workers.  And, in the case of the Ceeb, the story was totally wrong in the implication that cabinet ministers and senior executives were whining and dining better than ever before.  They aired a nice correction to that once the ombudsman ruled.

The lesson there is not what Bob would like us to focus on. The story here is not of sameness but of differences.

For starters, the complaints to which Wakeham refers were ones where the issue was about specific incidents and actions by Wakeham’s crowd with specific details anyone could look at and judge.  The complaint was not about Bob Wakeham but Williams’ bitch about Gullage seems to be characteristically personal in all its dimensions.

Then, the complaints to the ombudsman followed a series of calls and letters (no e-mail in those days) trying to resolve the disagreement in that way.  One gets the sense the Gullage episode was basically a letter straight to the Big Gun.

Then, it was all perfectly normal stuff in the dance between politicians and government on the one side and news media on the other;  pretty much indistinguishable from what happens between reporters and other people being reported on.  No screams  - necessarily - of “your mother wears army boots” or “you don’t have the balls for it”.  Just disagreement, heated or otherwise. Not personal; just business.

And the most important distinction of all:  it wasn’t Wells, if memory serves, who penned the missives and made the phone calls. He knew to leave decisions to the people he hired to do specific jobs.  He had staff and in particular senior staff who were seasoned enough and capable enough to talk him out of doing the sorts of things that Williams is now famous for.  Refuse to let him do the things that would damage his reputation in the community.

As much as something got up Wells’ nose, he – and they – appreciated that becoming the butt of jokes, even if confined to the newsroom, diminished not him but his entire administration and the people in it. Once you’ve become a mannequin for diapers, to borrow Wakeham’s phrase, it really doesn’t matter that you’ve “done more things right than wrong”.

They knew that if Wells spent huge chunks of his time and all that emotional energy chasing after every little thing, there’d be crap-loads of work that simply didn’t happen.  There’d be projects delayed by years with all the cost over-runs  - wasted public money - associated with the sluggishness.  Legislation would get lost in the bureaucracy.  Other laws would be passed but not enacted.  Staff appointments would be delayed and at times there’d be an enormous turn-over in a short period.

And that was at a time when government wasn’t run, in detail, from the Premier’s own office.

Wakeham’s basically out to lunch on this one:  Williams behaviour in going after Gullage is exactly what anyone who has watched the man for more than five minutes would expect.  Everything about the episode is typical.

It isn’t confined to people of Gullage’s stature.  Judges are a favourite target, usually because Williams has lost yet another legal case. Even a letter from Ordinary Joe to the Gulf News or some other of the weekly organs across the province can net an unhappy call from the Old Man.

At some point, mainstreamers like Wakeham will start noticing there’s much more to this than an addictive power trip:  If Hisself is writing letters and making phone calls about this trivial stuff, what is it that he isn’t doing?

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Ya got four years, Kurtis

Ralph won this one and he ain’t giving up the seat for  a second try.

Odds are extremely good, though, that this will be his last kick at the political cat.

Bide your time.  Brush up your pitch.  Get some experience under your belt.  Give it another go.

At least you aren’t recycling yourself at the school board.

Ya got four years, Kurtis: 

Use the time wisely.

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The lesson from Nova Scotia

In Newfoundland and Labrador these past few days some local adherents of the Orange Creed – that’s New Democrats, not Protestants or Dutch – have been buoyed by the success of their Nova Scotia brothers and sisters.

Others have been talking about the prospect of local New Democrats doing the same thing here that Darrell Dexter and his party did in persuading Nova Scotians to take a chance on voting NDP.

Therein lies the first lesson local New Democrats should learn:  Darrell and the crew didn’t ask Nova Scotians to “take a chance” on anything.  They presented a professional, credible alternative to the other two parties. 

There was no chance involved.

There was a choice.

A few years ago, the Nova Scotian Dippers were like other labourites.  Being a New Democrat was to be part of a social cause or a social group, not a bunch who seriously thought of winning an election.  That’s not unusual. Other labour parties have gone through the same thing.  The Labour Party in Britain once cherished ideological purity over electoral success.  So too did New Democratic parties across Canada.

But, like those other labourites elsewhere,  the Nova Scotian New Democrats decided it was better to be in office than standing impotent on the sidelines with their ideological purity intact.

That’s the second lesson the local New Democrats need to learn:  there is no substitute for power.  You can have all the lovely ideas you want but if you don’t win the election it’s just as well to order another round at the Ship and explain your theory to the bottom of a pint of Guinness.

You get to win by organizing.  Find volunteers.  Get people who know how to organize. Raise money and put it in the bank.  Find candidates.  Reach out and bring new people and new ideas into the fold.

Inevitably, there will be a crowd who will get pissed at the loss of ideological purity, but that’s the price of shedding the sack-cloth and the stench of burning martyr and donning the mantle of government.

Equally inevitably, for every old bolshevik who abandons ship for the Greens, there’ll be two or more new people who either weren’t in politics before or who defect from another team.

The two major parties don’t get elected because people vote the way their parents and grandparents did.  That’s a convenient excuse dreamed up by someone who just can’t face facts. 

The two major parties get elected because they hold onto a cadre of supporters and then add on a whole bunch of people who change their votes from time to time. The other two major parties appeal to voters with the platforms and promises by finding out what voters are looking for and then offering it to them.  Put another way, they get elected by building coalitions of people who have similar views or who can find enough reasons to vote for one team over another. 

That’s basically what politics is about:  bringing people together and that should be what New Democrats do naturally.

But they don’t.  Instead, they try to not just distinguish themselves but drive a wedge between themselves and voters.  New Democrats of the old school make it seem like it is a sign of moral weakness to have voted for the other two parties at some point.  Before one can vote New Democrat one must first  admit the sins of ones voting past.

That’s the essence of that common NDP refrain that the other two parties are all alike.  Predictably, it turns voters off.

Think about that for a second and then look at two New Democrat leaders.

Think about Jack Layton, he of the “they are all alike” school.

And then think about Darrell Dexter.

If you can perceive the differences, and you are a New Democrat, then you are well on your way to learning the Lesson from Nova Scotia. You are well on your way to bringing a genuinely competitive alternative to voters.

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How NOT to get into cabinet

While sources told CBC News that MPs have been calling the premier to talk about the battle brewing in Ottawa and to get his opinion, a spokesperson for the premier's office said his government wouldn't be commenting on a constitutional issue.

Be the Liberal member(s) of parliament who couldn't fart without getting marching orders from "their premier".

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