According to New Democratic Party leader Lorraine Michael, the party convention this past weekend was “a room of people who are saying, 'we're new, we're moving forward.'" [quote via CBC]
Would that merely saying the words made it so.
The reality is that the party isn’t new. They aren’t moving forward either, except in the sense that time moves only in one direction and the province’s New Democrats are willing to watch the clock.
In a scrum with reporters after a public meeting about the Corner Brook hospital last Thursday, Frank Coleman showed he has picked up the tendency of some politicians to talk about themselves in the plural.
The reporters asked about Coleman’s tendency to shun media interviews and to pop up here as if he were playing peek-a-boo.
“We” had a strategy, Coleman told them, of talking to the “family” first and “we” would get to everyone else after. Coleman contrasted that with the opponent he wouldn’t name who spent a lot of time talking to “mainstream media” instead.
That’s a noticeable choice of words – “family” and “mainstream media” just like it is curious the way he referred to what will happen when he becomes “leader”.
On Monday, Danny Williams was actively campaigning with Danny Breen in Virginia Waters.
Breen posted this photo to Facebook:
Breen’s campaign is in serious trouble if the Old Man is knocking doors.
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Related:
Premier-in-waiting Frank Coleman, anointed replacement for Danny Williams, turned up with CBC’s David Cochrane to explain to the On Point audience what he is all about.
Cochrane asked him about Danny Williams and the widespread stories about Williams’ support for Coleman’s candidacy.
What happened next is fascinating.
Danny Williams appeared in Virginia Waters on Saturday to campaign for Danny Breen, the Conservative candidate in the by-election.
Breen’s campaign wasted no time in pushing out pictures of The Appearance, like the one above, another one showing him with some young fellows out posting Breen campaign signs in the district, or the one below showing him with some volunteers in Breen’s headquarters.
Sharp eyes will notice that the shot of the two Dannys is actually from something else entirely, not the campaign, but that’s neither here nor there.
What is important to notice is that this is the first time the Old Man has turned out publicly for His party since Hisself left the leadership in an unseemly haste in late 2010.
That’s what makes The Appearance stand out.
The Old Man has been content until now to do his work behind the scenes either directly or through agents. The fact Hisself is out pressing the flesh among the faithful sends a bunch of potent messages.
The Kremlinology post on Trevor Taylor, Paul Oram and the apparent policy disagreement in cabinet in 2008/09 generated two contacts (a tweet and an e-mail) that are worth discussing.
Let’s take them one at a time.
Trevor Taylor left politics in 2009 in an unseemly hurry.
One minute he was there.
Next minute? Gone from cabinet and the House of Assembly.
Then right on his heels went Paul Oram, who muttered something about unsound financial management by the Conservatives as he ran from the Confederation Building.
A very big clue to what was going on at the time turned up on Tuesday in Trevor Taylor’s column in the Telegram.
Twice last week, provincial Conservative politicians offered unprompted endorsements of Kathy Dunderdale’s leadership.
Natural resources minister Tom Marshall praised her as a compassionate Iron Lady who had his full support. Here’s the story VOCM ran:
Natural Resources Minister Tom Marshall says the premier has his full and complete support. Kathy Dunderdale has come under fire for a tough, cost-cutting budget that includes widespread layoffs and funding cuts. On VOCM Open Line with Bill Rowe, Marshall used a label which came into prominence during the term of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Thatcher came into power in the UK in 1970s and developed a reputation of being tough and uncompromising during a time of economic recession, earning the title "Iron Lady". Marshall says Dunderdale is also an Iron Lady, but one with compassion.
Meanwhile, Steve Kent – noteworthy in the past for his lack of Dunderlove – had this to say [via CBC and labradore]:
"Premier Dunderdale is a compassionate and principle-centered leader. I remain inspired by her vision and strength," Kent wrote.
…
Kent added that Dunderdale enjoys the full support of the PC caucus.
On Friday, the Conservatives sent Mount Pearl North MHA Steve Kent out as the designated hitter in a deliberate, orchestrated personal attack on the five lawyers who oppose Muskrat Falls.
He turned up on CBC’s On Point and repeated much of the same innuendo on Twitter.
Kent got a lot of negative feedback on Twitter and likely elsewhere about his comments. On Monday, Kent and his colleagues had dropped the personal crap.
Go right through the 2012 federal budget.
Look anywhere you want.
Try the chapter that lists off energy projects and how the latest federal budget will help them.
Note the reference to Hebron:
Hebron Offshore Oil Development (Newfoundland and Labrador)
ExxonMobil Canada Properties’ Hebron Offshore Oil Development project is a 19,000 to 28,000 cubic metres per day offshore oil production proposal located in the Jeanne d'Arc basin, approximately 340 kilometres offshore of St. John's. The proposal consists of an offshore oil production system and associated facilities. A project description was submitted in March 2009 and the review was completed in January 2012.
Go a bit farther down the page and find this reference:
Eliminating this tariff will lower business costs by $30 million annually, improve the competitiveness of the energy industry, including electricity generation in Newfoundland and Labrador …
Interesting. The federal government is going to make it cheaper to bring certain things into the country – like say oil, coal, and natural gas? – that would make it cheaper for you to make electricity in Canada.
Now go back to your search.
Look high.
Look low.
Try and find the words “Muskrat Falls.”
Your humble e-scribbler couldn’t find them.
Couldn’t find “loan guarantee” or anything like it, either.
After that, it seemed kind of silly to look for phrases like “copper-fastened.”
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In defending the $140,000 –a-year patronage job she gave to former Tory candidate John Noseworthy, advanced skills minister Joan Burke told the House of Assembly:
Mr. Speaker, no one can argue that Mr. Noseworthy has a unique set of skills.
Indeed no one can make such an argument.
Former auditor general John Noseworthy doesn’t have any special skills at least, in this case.
He is an accountant with lots of experience as a provincial auditor. In that role, he has been known to make a few serious fumbles.
Everything that Burke said her department needed to help the department sort itself out could be had from a great many people out there. Some would be former provincial public servants here or from other provinces. Some would be former federal public servants and some would come from the private sector. What’s more, all of those people would know more about the core mandate of Burke’s department than than John Noseworthy.
Joan Burke is right.
No one can argue Noseworthy has a unique skill set.
He doesn’t.
And to her credit, at no point in her response to questions in the House did Burke actually say he did.
Looks like someone foisted the guy on Burke and she got stuck trying to defend someone else’s pork-barrel decision.
The clue is in what Joan didn’t say.
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In a news release from the federal natural resources minister that heralded the future of Newfoundland and Labrador is energy, they didn’t mention the Lower Churchill once.
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As the Newfoundland and Labrador news release noted, the energy ministers from the four Atlantic provinces got together on Monday for a gab session.
Those who stood waiting for Jerome!’s latest tweet on Muskrat now know where The Oracle had been all day.
In Prince Edward Island, they issued their own release, including talk of Muskrat Falls.
All the Nova Scotians did was flip out a link to the release from Newfoundland and Labrador.
Odd that, donchya think?
Odd that PEI did their own thing, but the Nova Scotians didn’t.
Odd given the close relationship between the baymen and the bluenosers on energy issues these days. They should be on the same wave length right down to the fact that Kathy Dunderdale’s comms director is now issuing releases for the Nova Scotia energy department.
Maybe it’s nothing.
Then again, we are only a week away from the second deadline for Emera and Nalcor to finish their agreement on Muskrat Falls. Maybe the the Nova Scotians don’t want to draw attention to Muskrat Falls if they have a sense that the deadline may get shifted back again.
Let’s see what happens between now and January 31.
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I
We’d all like to think that political ideas come out of politicians’ heads after careful thought and lots of research.
In Newfoundland and Labrador, government ideas tend to spring from the ass.
A whole bunch of people in the province are not happy with federal plans to close a coast guard emergency call centre and shift the work to the Joint Regional Search and Rescue Centre in Halifax. Those people think the federal Conservatives pulled that idea out of someone’s ass.
Organized labour in the province is screaming blue murder about the decision. The opposition parties in the provincial legislature are raising a stink. They wanted to have an emergency session of the legislature and pass a resolution condemning the action. Kathy wouldn’t do it.
Meanwhile, Premier Kathy Dunderdale has been taking her time trying to figure out out to get in front of this issue politically while not pissing off the guy on whom she is dependant for a loan guarantee to help finance her mega-debt project slash election gimmick, better known as Muskrat Falls.
Premier Kathy Dunderdale told reporters last week that someone in her office was trying to get a telephone call through to the Prime Minister.
And a week later, she had to stand in front of reporters and tell them she was still trying to speak with her pal Steve on the telephone.
Well, either that or arrange a meeting whichever came first.
But on that most 19th century of technologies?
Nada on the telephone hooking up thingy.
The message is getting through, though, Kathy assures us.
And pressure is being applied using that passively voice sentence.
How, exactly is it getting through asked the brazen fish broadcast host Brian Callahan of fish minister Clyde Jackman? No call. No meeting. How is the word getting through from the provincial government to the federals?
Jackman didn’t know.
He just said we’d all know soon what the feds decided to do for sure on the call centre.
Now just to put that in perspective for those unfamiliar with anything that happened in the world before say 1999, that isn’t the way these things work usually.
Even in the darkest hours after the collapse of the Meech Lake Accord, Brian Mulroney would still answer the phone even if he knew Clyde Wells was on the other end.
The day Igor ripped through the province, Stephen Harper called Danny Williams to offer up whatever help Dan-o wanted. That’s right. Dan didn’t even have to wait to get his call returned. he got one free from Steve. Now Dan might have reportedly said no thanks because he didn’t want Peter Mackay to horn in on the credit for saving Danny’s bacon, but at least he actually did get the Prime Minister himself on the horn.
So Kathy’s message obviously isn’t getting through to the federal government on anything. Her loan guarantee is looking a bit more dodgy than before, she doesn’t really have anything to offer as a distraction and her poll results are still sucking worse than the St. John’s sewerage treatment plant on full reverse.
Not a good place to be in politically, especially for a party that used to thrive on issues just like this.
So what to do?
Offer to take over some bits of search and rescue in the province from the federal government.
Never mind the constitution.
Never mind that for decades provincial premiers have been fighting to keep the feds from dumping their responsibilities into provincial laps free of federal charge.
Never mind the cost to the public purse.
Never mind the fact mismanagement by Kath and her predecessor have left the government in a rough financial spot despite unprecedented government revenues such that the next decade could make everyone look longingly on the 1930s.
Never mind, even, that Kath and her mates buggered up the Igor thing that looked suspiciously like an emergency of the searching and rescuing type so that you’d wonder if they could actually find each other in the dark, in a closet with both hands and a flashlight.
No.
Faced with being outflanked politically by her local opponents, Kath opted to show how much she is different from every other politician in a long, sorry line of politicians in this province.
She decided to think with her ass.
In the past week, she could have fired off a strongly worded letter to Ottawa.
She could have sent a fax to Peter Penashue, the regional minister who is also the intergovernmental affairs minister.
She could have told reporters that she had made clear the views of her government that this was just not on.
When asked about it, she could have gone for the sophisticated answer and pointed out that the loan guarantee was another issue and that she would always look out for the best interests yada, yada, yada.
Instead, she opted for the ass-thought.
And to make matters worse, Kathy blathered on in public to reporters about her blatant political impotence by telling them that she has been a week trying to figure out how to get Steve to call her back but without success.
You don’t have to look at her possible motives for offering to take federal responsibilities off their hands and pay for them with provincial cash to boot. Nor do you have to look very hard to find the considerable numbers of flaws in her political bungling of what should have been a relatively small political issue.
What you can see pretty clearly is that Kathy Dunderdale and her political staff came up with this idea on the fly in a desperate attempt to be seen to be doing something on the issue. All they’ve really done in the process is show seasoned observers that they really don’t have a clue.
It is also pretty clear that they really don’t have any sense of direction, generally. That’s not surprising, mind you, given that when Danny did a runner, Kathy was only supposed to keep the office warm for a few months until his permanent replacement showed up. They’ve been coasting for a while.
But you would think that when the governing Tories decided to keep Kathy on a bit longer than originally planned, they’d have given her a set of ideas and some people who could actually manage these sorts of issues for her. That’s what experienced, seasoned political parties should be able to do after only seven years in office.
Should be able to do, but can’t in this case.
And just other other governments that couldn’t manage the small stuff, they went to the usual repository of Newfoundland political brilliance: the ass.
After a mere seven years in office.
Not a good sign.
Not a good sign at all.
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Being the premier of any province is a tough job.
It’s hard to appreciate just how tough the job is unless you’ve been there or have been pretty close to the person who has the job.
You can see the effect of the pressure in how fast people tend to age in office. That’s the basic point of a post from last October titled “The weight of office.” Danny Williams didn’t look unhealthy when he left office last fall but he was nowhere near the youthful looking fifty-odd year old fellow who started in the job in 2003.
Sometimes the strain of the job shows in other ways. Like say, the meltdown Kathy Dunderdale had at the last part of Question Period on Wednesday. The written record doesn’t show it, but take a look at the video.
Around the 44 minute mark, NDP leader Lorraine Michael starts on a series of questions that have barbs in them. There’s nothing in any of the questions that is the least bit unusual for a politician and there is nothing at all sexist in it.
In fact, odds are that Kathy Dunderdale herself has said something far more loathsome than the question perhaps in the heat of the moment on another occasion.
On this occasion, though, Dunderdale’s reaction is over-the-top. She gets red-faced and her voice cracks a lot. She brings up the rather obviously cheesy partisan attack Dunderdale’s political appointee made on opposition leader Yvonne Jones over a jab Jones made at Dunderdale.
Dunderdale looked flustered.
Something is bothering her but the one thing we can be sure of it: it wasn’t Lorraine’s pair of questions.
Well, not that alone.
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Danny Williams sat in his office in the Paramount Building – converted from an old movie theatre where the roof collapsed in the 1970s – and shot a video message he intended the Dunderdale Party to show at a dinner on Friday night during their two day coronation of a new leader.
They didn’t show it.
Timing problems they claimed.
So Danny’s people “leaked it” to CBC who duly posted it and have made it the centre of their weekend online coverage of the Dunderdale Party coronation.
With the story out there, Dunderdale party organizers claimed the thing was intended for a closed-door party meeting on Saturday or that it would be shown there instead, depending on which version of the story a reporter got.
Note the reference Danny makes to a similar weekend convention where he can show his appreciation. That plus the party makeover will give you good clues to the problems Dunderdale and her handlers likely had with the idea of Danny being around.
Then think about her dismissive line from earlier in the week about the rift between Danny and his hand-picked successor: something about how transitions can be hard sometimes. The picture should be getting clear to you now as to what this has been really all about.
The leak to CBC is interesting because when Danny tried to slip out of the country for secret heart surgery, his fans attacked CBC for daring to report it.
Only problem was, someone dropped a quarter on Danny and leaked the story to NTV who dutifully broke it.
Not CBC.
NTV.
That didn’t stop the Danny Boys – what do you call members of the Dunderdale Party? – from lacing into the Mighty Ceeb anyway and any time they could.
Now CBC is Danny’s bud for pushing out stories that cause some grief for the Dunderites.
Dunderheads?
Whatever.
Speaking of that period of great unease with Tory circles that culminated with the secret heart surgery debacle, wasn’t it interesting to see Trevor Taylor hosting the coronation supper Friday evening for Kathy Dunderdale?
Trevor’s sudden departure and the reaction within provincial Tory ranks are what triggered the series of posts in the Kremlinology series on what seemed to be some pretty significant problems within the provincial Conservative party machinery.
Turns out that Tony Ducey had a right to be worried.
And if all that wasn’t enough for you, just look at the line from Dunderdale’s speech as teased out by the CBC at the end of their video post.
Talk about your tells.
"Whether you're from Port aux Basques or Cartwright, St. Anthony, Port de Grave or Quidi Vidi, your district is one we are targeting in 2011 and we need your help to make that happen," Dunderdale told delegates, identifying the five areas of the province currently represented by Liberal or NDP members of the house of assembly [lower case in original].
With Danny in place, the provincial Conservatives could be on the offensive in the five seats they didn’t already hold.
With Danny gone, they don’t have that political luxury any more. The Dunderdale Party doesn’t have Danny’s polling numbers. heck even Danny didn’t have Danny’s polling numbers, last going off for sure.
The Dunderdale Party is likely going to be on the defensive in a dozen to 15 seats this fall.
You can get a good clue on that by the nasty reaction in some quarters this past week and this past weekend to Dunderdale and to the Stephen Harper visit.
Dunderdale likes her brave talk but how she delivers her lines tells much more.
That will have to wait for another kremlinology instalment.
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One of the cross beams has gone out of skew on the treadle.
Note that in CBC’s Monday night report on the rift within the provincial Conservative Party some people walked away from the CBC reporter like she hadn’t washed in a month.
Others cheerfully denied there were any problems.
Among the walkers: Jerome! and Darin, King of Uncommunication. No sign of Fairity O’Brien but odds are he’d be in the silent camp as well.
Among the smilers: Terry French and Shawn Skinner. The latter was stretching his own credibility to the breaking point after the whole Elizabeth Matthews fiasco, but that’s another story.
One suspects that the smilers would also include the gang that NTV’s Michael Connors reported at the Fabian Manning campaign launch Monday evening:
Seems like da byes want to make it easy for the rest of us tell which player belongs in what camp.
People will want to watch any broadcast of the Dunderdale coronation this weekend just to see who is where, doing what.
For those who picked up the pop culture reference at the beginning, here’s the original Python sketch of the Spanish Inquisition. Note the striking resemblance Graham Chapman bears to Jerome! before the latter lost his ’stache.
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Jerome’s shaved off his moustache.
Last time the province’s health minister went out in public sans ‘stache, he came up with some explanation for it and grew the thing back.
After your humble e-scribbler pointed it out and someone asked him about it, of course.
So what happened this time?
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Kremlinology has always been a series about trying to interpret signs to see if they can point out what is going on behind the scenes in politics.
In the case of recent monumental changes on the provincial political scene, though, it seems that the signs are unmistakeable even to someone with no political sense at all.
To get your head in the right space, recall that when the Tories lost a by-election in late 2009 – one, single political sideshow – the shockwaves rippled through the province like someone had whacked the jello. The surest sign of the anxiety within the party?
Tony Ducey, DBA Tony the Tory, wrote letters to every newspaper in the province saying that the Tory party was not dead. Who said it was even sick at the time? Well aside from your humble e-scribbler. All jokes aside, there really isn’t a person on the planet who would have suggested, even in jest, that a single belch of indigestion is a sign of a fatal heart attack.
The first clue to the big problems in the Kingdom of Dannystan was Tony’s denial of problems triggered by what was essentially a non-event. One by-election loss does not usually trigger the Gotterdammerung but apparently Tony was petrified that it did.
As everyone knows, much has changed in the meantime and many such tiny traces of evidence pointed to problems. Some of these clues were unmistakeable. The most obvious one of all happened last fall when, in the space of a week, Danny Williams went from being the guy who was poised to sweep to a third term as premier to being the guy standing third in line behind you at Canadian Tire.
Turns out that some Tories don’t believe in such obvious signs of resignation as…well…someone saying good-bye. The rumour running through Newfoundland and Labrador last week was that Danny had actually not quit and run at all.
Nosirreee, Danny had some undisclosed personal business to deal with. His resignation, His Christ-like admonition that we should all love each other and Kathy Dunderdale as Hisself loved Hisself’s children was merely a way of saying “Hang on, my duckie, this is really a big joke. I’ll be back once I’ve tidied up a little mess.” Once that was done, safely from the eyes of the evil news media, he’d come back. Like maybe around May and then he’d be ready to kick ass and take names again.
That story is everywhere.
Your humble e-scribbler heard it around town on Friday and got it in e-mails from several spots in the province and outside it. As comforting as that thought may be to some, and as much as some might like to imagine that Elvis isn’t stone-cold in the ground these decades or that the Gloved One will return, let us be abundantly clear:
Hisself is gone.
That sighting last week in the Confed Building likely has some sensible explanation but rest assured, this is not some script for 22 Minutes again. Danny is the ex-premier and not likely to be back.
Speaking of rumours – and Lord knows they have been all that most people passed around this Christmas - the only rumour not flying around the past couple of months has been that Hisself is about to get a semi-permanent guest spot on Doyle with the possibility of a spin-off next season. in that scenario, Danny would play a former politician slash lawyer slash saviour of the universe who rights wrongs from his office in a converted movie theatre where the roof collapsed. He’d have a couple of sidekicks from his political days and another couple from his legal days. Think of it as a cross between The Mentalist (the saviour and sidekicks angle), Slapshot (comedy and the jock angle) and Hell’s Kitchen (the histrionics).
The rumour that he wants to go federal is not as much of a joke as it first appears. You can find evidence of it in a year-end telegram interview in which he insists that his attacks on “Quebec” are aimed solely at Hydro-Quebec, not the lovely people of that province. And, as Danny claimed in the interview, he always has to qualify his comments so people don’t misunderstand.
Always qualify.
Yeah, right.
As far as federal politics is concerned his anti-Quebec tirades make him radioactive but that doesn’t mean he didn’t harbour a few delusions about replacing Steve.
In any event, Danny is gone.
He is not coming back.
The intense and wildly-varied rumour market is a sign of nothing more than the gigantic shitbake that is gripping the province’s Conservatives. And this latest one is the most bizarre of all.
Think about it for a second.
If their story is true, Danny would be pulling a turn-around even greater than that pulled by Joe Smallwood in 1969. The old bugger retired and then, in the middle of the leadership campaign to replace him, announced that only he was worthy enough to succeed himself.
He launched a comeback and defeated all comers, including John Crosbie.
What’s more Danny would be going against his own mother’s wishes for him. She did tell reporters, after al,l that she would shoot him if he tried to run again for anything other than the bus.
And Danny’s mom, it should be noted, used to drag her crowd door-to-door to get rid of Smallwood and the Satanical spawn he led. How friggin’ cruel would the universe be to have Danny come back into politics against her wishes and do it in a way that shows more raw ego than Joe Smallwood.
What a savage twist would it be to have that sainted woman discover in her declining years that her favourite son is merely the meat-suit for her worst political enemy’s political soul? 
Danny coming back a la Joe Smallwood would bring on something like the Apocalypse. It would certainly make his mom’s head spin around a few times.
Might be good TV though. Gordon Pinsent could guest star as the ghost of Peter Cashin with Mark Critch as the young, pre-possession Danny. Kevin Noble could play an actor torn between his love of Joe and his love of Dan. There’d have to be a news release on Monday from Terry French announcing provincial government funding to support production of the series which will relocate from Vancouver to St. John’s. Plan is to build on local experience of a TV series shot in St. John’s and starring an old car.
Once you get past the shark jumping tale, though, there is another bit of speccy running around in some Tory circles as well that is worth having a laugh at. That has to do with the reason for backroom deal currently playing out before our eyes.
Apparently, Tories are sticking with Dunderdale because she is the status quo and that’s what everyone wants. Everyone loves Danny. Everyone loves things the way they are – the polls show that - so the way to ensure victory in the fall is to keep things just the way people love them. Think of this as a variation on the Danny: Resurrection storyline since it derives from the theory that Danny is the key to any future Tory victory. It just confuses Danny with the party.
At least it has the advantage of being consistent with past Tory rationalisations. Here’s the second paragraph of Tony the Tory’s letter from 2009:
Still, before anyone says that this is the beginning of the end for the PC party in the province and that the tide is turning towards the Liberals, it is not. It's far from it: the PC party is still in the 70s in the polls and have over 40 of the seats in the House of Assembly.
The only problem with this story would be the facts. Even if we accept CRA polls as being anything close to real, their tracking of Tory party support is not encouraging. The party has been tracking behind its former leader. In the most recent version, the party support continued the downward trend it’s been on since 2007. In fact, over the past six months, the party support numbers went up but then dropped dramatically in just three months.
If the Tories are keeping Kathy Dunderdale it is not because people want more of the Tory same.
No.
They are keeping Kathy because people in the Tory backrooms are scared shitless at the thought of a nomination fight. They are so scared of any nomination contest that they will use any and every excuse to justify the current charade, including claiming that it is nothing more than what the Liberals have done. If that’s the sort of lame-assed stuff they are coming up with, stand by when it turns out that Danny did a few massive give-aways of his on resources, by the by.
But that, dear friends may turn out to be the least bizarre thing to happen in this year of massive political turmoil in the province.
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Gordon Campbell resigned suddenly last week as Premier of British Columbia. Campbell’s been under considerable political pressure resulting fro introduction of the harmonized sales tax in the province.
The Globe this weekend is taking a look at the impact not only of Campbell’s departure but the abrupt way he left the political stage. The quote Bob Plecas, a former Campbell advisor:
Any serious contender to replace Mr. Campbell, whose unpopular harmonized sales tax has crippled the party, would have to be free to differentiate himself or herself from the current policies, he added.
“But what he’s asking them to do is stay on the Titanic and keep rowing,” Mr. Plecas said.
It’s not exactly the same situation at the other end of the country. Campbell left suddenly and pretty much unexpectedly. Danny Williams, by contrast, has already made it abundantly clear he’s in the later stages of his political career in this province.
In fact, Williams first talked about quitting politics in late 2006. Not surprisingly, one of the things he was moaning about at the time was the weight of the office he volunteered for. The backstory on his winter and spring full of discontent, at the time, probably had much more to do with the collapse of Hebron talks and revelations about gross overspending and criminal activity in the House of Assembly, some of which continued until 2006, rather than any real annoyance with the life in the political goldfish bowl.
Fast forward four years.
Williams’ most recent version of the 12 minute rant at every Goldstein he could think of seemed to be much more about his frustration with the Lower Churchill, the budget and other matters than about liberals and the media. After all, he finished up by urging people not to pay attention to the “bullshit”. That would be, of course, the same “bullshit” he just spent 12 minutes obsessing about.
Doesn’t make sense, does it?
Not really.
Then again, it seldom does.
Maybe he was offering excuses for failure.
“Imagine how much I could do…” or whatever the exact words were. Your humble e-scribbler has made the same point many times before. Maybe a lot more would get done if only the current administration didn’t spend so much time - and public money - manipulating public opinion or obsessing about the three people in a coffee shop in Deer Lake who muttered misdemeanour words about the Old Man.
Maybe Williams was just venting his considerable frustration - yet again - again with the job he volunteered for and that no one is forcing him to keep. It’s just that those outbursts seem to be coming a bit more frequently lately. His last Great Whine Session was in August, the last polling period.
As these bitch sessions seem to come closer and closer together, it seems appropriate to wonder how and when exactly Williams will finally give us all the wave from the Cessna door as he heads off to Florida more or less permanently.
Will he go before October 2011 or has his caucus roped him into one last kick at the cat? What happens if the polls shift and it looks like he won’t reclaim the seats he has right now let alone score all of them? Danny Williams hardly seems like the kind of guy who would stick around and settle for being in exactly the same spot again. He needs to go for something bigger. But what happens if he couldn’t hope to sweep all 48 seats in the House?
Will he struggle along and wait until 2013 or 2014 before pulling pin? Will he give plenty of lead time and hang around while his successors duke it out or will he pull a Campbell and walk out one fine January afternoon?
No matter what happens, we know that Danny Williams is in the final stages of his political career. Go back to April and you can see a list of some of the contenders and pretenders to the throne who are already campaigning for his job. Maybe it’s time to think now about how he will finally slide out of his current job and when.
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