Reboot Alberta

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Except for Hancock and Stelmach....

Except for Dave Hancock and Ed Stelmach it seems every other candidate is someone that more and more people are becoming increasingly afraid of for whatever reasons. Some reasons are legit and some are fabricated. If you believe some of the commentary in the blogosphere about the so called Dinning 14 Whoppers – even the fabricated reasons were “fabricated.” The conspiracy goes that his supporters are doing this to divert attention from “other issues” they “presumably” don’t want to be exposed. Smoke, mirrors and pockets full of petty mumblers is mostly what I am seeing. Politics by misdirection and misinformation! Pathetic isn’t it!

Will anyone emerge from the campaign pack with personal character, qualities and values that actually gets us engaged in thinking about the future possibilities and potential of Alberta for the benefit of all Albertans? Instead we see the emergence of the not entirely unjustifiable fear, in some cases, of some candidates who are self aggrandizing power-mongers, or narrow minded ideologues, presumptive and assumptive obvious winners, or the simply hapless and hopeless. Only Hancock and Stelmach appear to be above all this and seem to personally grasp the true essence of the leadership role in a representative democracy – that is of being the servant leader.

We campaign and govern by the systemic discouraging of debate, dialogue and informed dissent. Just go to the newspapers tomorrow and visit Garth Turner’s blog and see what happens to free speech and democratic discourse in regimes of centralized top down message controlling mean spirited leadership. We centralize power in party leaders and their entourage of unelected, faceless and yet enormously powerful political advisors. For the sake of efficiency in power politics we forsake citizenship and representative democracy as a consequence.

I am tired of the hypocrisy and the systemic self serving side of politics. I want someone who aspires to leadership who will give me a reason to believe again…not naively or pseudo-intellectually – but rather a sincere hopeful belief that is brimming with enthusiasm, curiosity, authenticity and imagination. I don’t expect some super human capacity as a precondition of leadership. I expect humility and human decency as my precondition for leadership.

I want someone to lead Alberta with a view beyond the next election cycle. Some one who can listen to gather information and opinion and then synthesize the information to make it useful and accessible to me. I want them bright enough that they can know enough about an issue and can explain it in context. I want someone who knows how to be reflective, thoughtful and is able to comprehend and evaluate alternative inputs and then come up with useful knowledge and some workable ideas.

Then I want someone with the wisdom to make profoundly important choices – not perfect choices - but who will be able to pick an alternative with sound reasons and actually know why they make the choices they do. Then I want them to feel obligated to explain the choices and reasons behind them to me and, if necessary, take the time to try to convince me that they have done the right thing and for the right reasons. For me the right reason includes doing the most good for the most people with the least damage to the environment while enhancing our social cohesion as a province and a country.

Then they have to be forceful enough and able to push and pull the levers of government to create a plan to achieve the objectives and have the skills to actually execute the plan. Is that too much to expect? It appears to be – but it better not be. Seeing what Harper has wrought in 8 months as pro tem Prime Minister and looking at giving someone 2 years of virtually total control over Alberta before they have to face an election means we best take this PC leadership selection process seriously.

Finally, we desperately need to attract a better quality of person into politics and have them come to serve for better reasons than merely gaining power. To get that better quality person we all need to start treating our quality elected people much better. A little respect would go along way, but only for those who deserve it, obviously. A little more trust and the benefit of the doubt would be nice for who consistently work to earn our respect. That would be nice too. I remember as a lawyer, virtually every time the phone rang it was going to be a dispute or problem. It wears on you after a while. I never recall anybody ever saying to me “Gosh, what a great day I’m having, I thought I’d call my lawyer.” I expect politicians feel much the same way.

7 comments:

  1. Anonymous10:26 am

    I too would welcome the'leader' you describe. However, I cannot imagine in this world of sound bites and deniability that anyone with those qualities would want to run for public office.

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  2. Anonymous1:19 pm

    Well Michael, have a listen to Ed and Dave sometime. Years of public service, without scandal - but sadly until recently not a lot of recognition.

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  3. Ken,

    Do you think that part of the reason that Stelmach and Hancock are not drawing a backlash is that they are generally not considered to be front-runners in this race? It seems to me that most of the focus is on Dinning, Oberg, and Morton. Putting aside their respective records, any candidate who is consistently getting headlines is going to draw negative feedback along with the positive.

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  4. HI Alex -
    I think you are mostly right re headlines and front runner status. Two things are in play here. The traditional media looks at how much money a candidte has, who is backing and how the players are orchestrating the campaigns. If they recoginze the names then they conclude so-and-so are the front runner(s). In one person one vote secret ballot with the possiblity for a citizen to show up on voting day and pick up a membership and vote - NOBODY really knows what is happening in the hearts and minds of Albertans.

    Secondly, and more curiously, the Michael Adams (Environics) research on Canadian social values indicates that Canadians perceive something that is advertised and promoted must have something inherently wrong with it otherwise it would not need the hype.

    The Americans are just the opposite...if it is advertised and has a brand label it must be good.

    In short, you cannot buy political power in Canada or Alberta - via advetising, too many paid professionals or too much money in the campaign coffers. We Canadians and Albertans tend to get nervous and don't trust the candidate/product/service that is too promoted as opposed to proven.

    We are old fashined - we expect candidates to earn our respect and confidence and to work hard to convince us they are worthy of our consent to be governed.

    Interesting don't you think?

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  5. Those polling numbers are definitely interesting. I think it might help explain why in most cases perceived upsets recently, the winner hasn't jumped into the lead in the media's eyes until just around election time (leaving no time for the candidate to dominate the headlines and create a backlash). The best example I can think of is the Edmonton civic election in 2004, where Stephen Mandel wasn't put ahead (or within striking distance) in any of the polls until a few days before voting. The opposite example would be Stephen Harper, who seems to peak about two weeks before election time, leaving plenty of time for people to think twice about him.

    Could either Stelmach or Hancock pull a Mandel on the three perceived front-runners? Stranger things have happened.

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  6. Anonymous7:31 pm

    Alex,
    Certainly possible. The Mandel example is a good one to use.

    Plus I think if a "proper" poll was conducted, which had a uniform geographic sample of persons that are either members or plan to purchase a membership in order to vote, you would find Hancock's Stelmach's numbers significantly higher than they are in the various publically available polling data. I heard that the Leger poll had both Hancock and Stelmach higher when only PC members were polled, with Stelmach ahead of Oberg.

    Plus, look at the turnout Stelmach had in Edmonton for a fundraising breakfast. Over 1,100 people attended - at $45 per person at 7am on a Thursday morning. And as Tom Olsen in the Calgary Herald said, these were normal people, "not just a bunch of suits looking to rub elbows with the powerful". I don't know of any other candidate who pulled off something this large.

    The PGIB poll was a farce, as Ken C clearly laid out. And I would certainly discount any poll that was being put out there by someone openly supporting any leadership candidate. Can you say conflict of interest?

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  7. Hi anonymous - it is difficult to do a proper poll given the need to poll members and those who intend to become members and then acutally become members.

    That said, we are doing a web based survey on what are major issue drivers and a candidate preferences based on what level of comfort you would have recommending the various candidates to someone. NOt how will you vote but there is a range for each candidate...will give us the relative strength of each from those who participate.

    It is at the top left corner of www.policychannel.com. Visit and tell us what you have to say. We will publish the results weekly and people can see the trends and changes. Being web bsed it can be "invaded" like the other unscientific polls but we are not asking just who are you voting for. We are asking about most and least important issues in a way that forces you to think.

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