187 Search Results for wynne

A few of you let me know that the Wizard – who was receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars a month, in the Wynne era – was sympathetic to the Keilburgers and critical of Yours Truly. So sad.  So I thought I would provide this one from the archives. It suggests that, if you are looking for someone who knows how to win, you shouldn’t ever look to this guy – he’s advised three Liberal parties. And he’s wrecked all three.

A week to go, and I have already started to hear some of the excuses being road-tested by the Wizard and the Board. They know they are going to lose.  So they are readying their rationalizations.

Here’s ten of them, which I may turn into a Hill Times column.  Feel free to add more in comments.

1. “We’ve been in power for more than a decade, we knew winning again was unlikely.” That so? Really? Except: the same excuse could’ve been trotted out in 2014, when it was also more than a decade in power. And: Stephen Harper didn’t drive his party in the ground. Christy Clark won a minority.  Bill Davis ruled Ontario forever. And so on.
2. “Female political leaders never get re-elected.  Misogyny, etc.” Uh-huh.  Except: Nancy Pelosi, Margaret Thatcher, Angela Merkel, Indira Gandhi, et al.  They all did okay.  Misogyny isn’t solely a Canadian problem.
3. “Kathleen is gay.  She was defeated by homophobia.”  Gotcha.  Explain: 2014.
4. “This is the former Premier’s fault.  Gas plants, blah blah blah.  Wasn’t our fault.”  This one drives me nuts.  (I mean, Kathleen Wynne would still be a little-known school board trustee were it not for Dalton McGuinty.)  Besides, it isn’t just disrespectful, it’s disingenuous: from the perspective of Joe and Jane Frontporch, folks, it’s all one Ontario Liberal Party, you know?  Voters remember you worked for Dalton, Kathleen.
5. “Hiding Kathleen wouldn’t have worked.  She’s the leader, we needed to have her front and centre.”  Gotcha.  A former Ontario Liberal leader, Lyn McLeod, experienced precisely the same problem in 1995: she was dragging her party down.  So, McLeod and her senior people made the (tough, principled) decision to take her off the air for the final two weeks.  They held onto 30 seats as a result.  Why didn’t Wynne do likewise?
6. “We ran an ethical and scandal-free government.  We were sunk by Dalton’s scandals.”  Repeat after me: it’s never the break-in, it’s the cover up.  Example One: Jean Chrétien resigned in December 2003, and the daily headlines were then still screaming about the so-called “sponsorship scandal.”  Chrétien’s approval number?  Sixty per cent.  Example Two:  five years earlier, in December 1998, Bill Clinton became the most popular president in the history of U.S. polling, at 73 per cent approval – all of which came after the Lewinsky scandal, and his impeachment in the House of Representatives.  Scandal isn’t what sinks you: per Harry Truman, it’s trying to pass the buck about scandal.
7. “After fifteen years, there was no way we were going to win again.  We decided to take the hit so a new leader could start fresh.”  Really?  Seriously?  Next week, I will be presenting y’all with quantitative evidence showing that this is hooey: the Ontario Liberal brand was popular, the Ontario Liberal record was popular, the Ontario Liberal caucus was popular.  What wasn’t popular was the leader.  She needed to talk a proverbial walk in the proverbial snow.  She didn’t.
8. “Our internal polling actually showed that we were going to do far worse.  We are pleased where we ended up.”  You are forgiven if that one in any way reminds you of this.
9. “Trudeau has hurt the Liberal brand everywhere.  He pulled down our numbers.”  Did Trudeau take on water after India? Yes.  Does he have both sides of the ideological spectrum (unfairly) mad at him after the decision to buy the Trans Mountain Pipeline?  Yes.  But the notion that Trudeau is in any way responsible for Wynne’s disastrous campaign is absurd.  If anything, her numbers pulled down his.
10. “We’ll be back.”  Well, some of us will be.  But Kathleen Wynne and the Wizard and the Board?

They won’t be.

Comments (20)

Steve Paikin is a nicer guy than me. As seen here, he is urging people to forgive Kathleen Wynne’s disappearance from the legislature.

I am not so forgiving.

The Ontario Liberal Party was my political home. I was proud to run its winning war rooms in 2003, 2007 and 2011, and to serve under Dalton McGuinty and Don Guy. I was equally proud to work with great people like Chris Morley, Laura Miller and Brendan McGuinty.

Kathleen Wynne – and her Wizard and her Board, the ones who pushed out dissenters and made themselves a fortune in contracts from both the party and the government – have destroyed the Ontario Liberal Party, perhaps for good.

This is Kathleen Wynne’s legacy:

• The loss of party status, and all that goes with that.

• A double-digit debt, one that will be impossible to pay off for years to come.

• The worst election performance in Ontario political history.

• A party that is reviled and despised, and with no sense of what it stands for anymore.

When the microphones and cameras were pointed her way, Kathleen Wynne was charming and exuded warmth. When they weren’t, Kathleen Wynne was just another politician: a ruthless operator, one who was willing to say and do anything to hold onto power. One who believed it was all about her.

To my friend Steve Paikin, then, I respectfully dissent. I say, instead, that this is all that Kathleen Wynne and her loathsome wrecking crew are owed:

Nothing.

Comments (27)

On Saturday, five days before Election Day, the Ontario Liberal leader conceded the election. Usually, politicians wait until, you know, the actual vote has taken place.  But Kathleen Wynne insisted she was doing so because she wanted to help her party’s candidates. “I would never want to do anything that would undermine any of my candidates, any of those races. I have thought long and hard about this, believe me,” she said.

Her view: I’m helping out my caucus and candidates by throwing in the towel.  The view of many Ontario Liberals: bullshit.

One lifelong Grit, Jim Curran, wrote this on Facebook. He has given me approval to quote it:

I am voting Liberal anyway. What Kathleen did to her candidates yesterday was pretty much the shittiest thing I’ve ever seen a leader do to her own, hardworking, selfless, dedicated candidates who have put their lives and families on hold for the party they believe in. It was absolutely selfish and totally disgusting IMHO. I will continue to support my local Liberal candidate as the alternative is not acceptable to me. I’m for a party dedicated to a living wage for its citizens, free pharma for the young, dedication to making sure our kids get to go to college and dedication to building and expanding hospitals for our growing and aging population. In [my riding] I will be voting for [his candidate], LIBERAL.

I feel the same way.  I am disgusted by what Wynne and her $70,000-a-month “strategist” Wizard did.  But I am going to enthusiastically vote for my friend Arthur Potts, the Ontario Liberal candidate in our riding, because he richly deserves re-election.

This morning, Kathleen Wynne was yet again on CBC Toronto’s Metro Morning, because she likes preaching to the choir.  Matt Galloway, who is a tough interviewer, demanded to know why Wynne didn’t quit the leadership a year ago.  Lots of us have been wondering that, although I was pretty much the only one saying so publicly.

Wynne dodged and weaved, but then she finally said she had consulted her “advisors and colleagues,” a year ago, but concluded that she “really believed” she could get re-elected.

Let’s examine that, shall we?

Exactly one year ago, here’s what the Angus Reid Group were saying about Wynne’s ability to get re-elected.

Not too good, eh?  Least-popular Premier in Canada.

But maybe she meant to say the year before that – in 2016.  So, here she is in May of that year.

A bit better, but not by much. So, what gives? Kathleen Wynne has been very unpopular for a very long time. What persuaded her to “really believe” she could win over the past couple years?

There are two possibilities, here. One, she is delusional, and totally removed from political reality. Having known her for a long time, however, I can tell you this is impossible. She is very, very smart.

The other possibility is one I have been hearing whispers about: Kathleen Wynne was being presented with numbers that were completely and totally wrong. Those bogus numbers persuaded her – and, beyond her, her cabinet and caucus, who never once rose up in revolt – that victory was attainable.

I think you all know where I am going with this.

Kathleen Wynne would have resigned a year ago if she had been presented with reliable, verifiable data. She would have have quit if she knew the truth. But someone didn’t give her the truth.

I wonder who that person is?

Comments (29)

My view, expressed below, is this: the biggest story of the Ontario 2018 election isn’t so much the Orange Crush™ or whether DoFo was the wrong choice.  It’s the total collapse of the Ontario Liberal vote.

Case in point:  this LiUNA effort – which isn’t pro-Tory or pro-Dipper as much as it is anti-Wynne (and, specifically, Carpenter’s Union pension-holder Steven del Duca).

This election is extraordinary.  As with this web site, I believe it will be remembered for one thing: how voters of every persuasion came together not so much to reward Andrea Horwath or Doug Ford – but more to punish, and drive out, Kathleen Wynne.

As I – and, um, me myself and I – have been saying for a long time, all this could have been avoided, if (a) Kathleen Wynne had taken a walk in the snow a year ago; (b) if the OLP had fired The Wizard™ and The Board™ she had hired and grossly enriched, and (c) new blood and ideas had been brought in.

They didn’t do any of that.  What they got, as a result, is stuff like www.dealDuca.org.  Across the province.

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Spoke to CBC’s Mike Crawley yesterday about why Kathleen Wynne is doing so badly.

Told him Wynne made herself the only face of this government – that she didn’t ever use her capable ministers or caucus to spread the Ontario Liberal gospel. She insisted on being the only Ontario Liberal people ever heard from – to the extent, even, of actually going to grocery stores to repeatedly announce beer sales, and treating it like it was the moon landing.

Being the only recognizable face of your party is fine, I told him – if you are certain you are always going to be popular forever.

No one is popular forever.

Link here.

Snippets here:

“We teach our clients that simplicity, repetition and volume work. That’s what [PC leader Doug] Ford and [NDP leader Andrea] Horwath are doing. Sounding like a deputy minister at a policy convention doesn’t work. It’s how you lose.”

And:

“A daily frenzy of seemingly-unrelated announcements doesn’t equal having a narrative. When you don’t have a narrative, you don’t have much of a chance.”

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There are all kinds of clichés about how and why governments lose.

That they defeat themselves. That they die by degrees. That they become the very thing they had ‎once pledged to always oppose.

Mostly, though, governments forget the plot. All of governing – all of the politics – is telling a story, every single day.

Some folks call that a “narrative,” and assert that you need a narrative to win. And, it’s true: having a compelling, easily-understood story is pretty important.

People are busy. They’ve got a lot of stuff going on. ‎Taking a kid to early-morning hockey practice, getting an aging parent to the clinic, trying to get to work on time, catching up on sleep.

So, political parties need to get their attention. You don’t do that by throwing statistics at voters. You do that by having a narrative, a story. Facts tell, stories sell.

Barack Obama had one: “Yes we can.” Dalton McGuinty in 2003, too: “Choose change.” Justin Trudeau: “Hope and hard work.” Those were good ones. They worked, big time.

Kathleen Wynne, now less than 60 days from an election many expect ‎her to lose, has no story to tell. There’s no narrative, there. No bright red thread that runs through the stuff that she says and does.

She has briefly prorogued ‎the Legislature so that she can have a Throne Speech, sure. But Joe and Jane Frontporch don’t care about Throne Speeches. They don’t pay attention to those. The media and political people do, but that’s it.  Normal people don’t.

So, the last opportunity‎ Wynne has to tell her story – any story – is in the budget that is being unveiled at the end of this month. We don’t know much about what’s in it, but we do know one thing: Charles Sousa lost the argument.

Wynne’s Finance Minister was rightly proud of having balanced the budget last year. It was a big deal. But then he was told – instructed, really – to go back into deficit. So he will: $8 billion worth of red ink. That’s a lot.

When I heard that, I was shocked, and I don’t get shocked by politicians very much any more. That figure strongly suggests we are about to witness the most expensive Hail Mary pass in Canadian political history.

I don’t think it’s going to work. Not because Kathleen Wynne isn’t an amazing communicator and a wily campaigner. Not because she doesn’t know how to beat Conservatives. She does, she does.

I don’t think it’s going to work because it bears a strong resemblance to a previous political failure: the orgy of spending promises that took place in the dying days  ‎of Paul Martin’s regime in 2005.

Remember that? It possessed all the dignity of that helicopter lifting off that rooftop just prior to the fall of Saigon. It felt as desperate as a death row at midnight in the deepest South.

Martin promised to amend the Constitution in the middle of a leader’s debate: he actually did that. He proclaimed a stirring new vision for indigenous people without allocating a plug nickel to pay for any of it.

He promised tax cuts, lots of them. He started spending money, lots of it. “Mr. Martin, known for his careful stewardship of Canada’s public finances under Mr. Chretien,” The Economist wrote disapprovingly at the time, “has gone on a bit of a spending spree in the run-up to what he knew would be an early election.

The magazine continued: “The government promised $39 billion in new tax cuts and spending over the next five years. Mr. Harper accused of Mr. Martin ‎of promising over a billion dollars a day in order to hold onto power.”

In yesterday walks tomorrow, goes the saying. Down here in Toronto in 2018, it’s feeling like Ottawa in 2005 all over again. You know: spend like a proverbial drunken sailor, throw every single policy Vietnam at the wall, just to see if something sticks.

But, you know: if it didn’t work in 2005, it is unlikely to work in 2018.

So why is Kathleen Wynne making a losing narrative her only narrative? Good question. Lots of Liberals are asking the same question. “She’s smart,” they say. “Why the desperation?”

The answer may be found not in Wynne. More likely, Ontario Liberals say, the authors of the Hail Mary Pass Budget are found with those around Wynne, and not Wynne herself.

And guess what? Surprise, surprise: the ones who Kathleen Wynne are relying upon for strategic advice are the very same men who advised Paul Martin in his bunker back in 2005, as the blue horde was closing in. Same guys.

Same strategy, too. It has three parts. One, bet the house on your opponent doing some career-ending stupidity. Two, promise everything to everyone. And, three, spend like money is water. ‎ Go crazy.

Now, full disclosure: this writer doesn’t much like those Paul Martin guys around Kathleen Wynne. They hounded my friend Jean Chretien for years, and – as a result – they wrecked the Liberal Party of Canada for a decade‎.

They look like they’re getting ready to do the same thing to the Ontario Liberal Party – a political party about which I’m rather nostalgic. I ran the aforementioned McGuinty guy’s three war rooms, and I want to keep the OLP off the endangered species list, you know?

But the polls. The polls – Doug Ford, um, notwithstanding – have been showing the Ontario Liberal Party facing a possible third-place finish. Even against Doug Ford.

Doug. Ford.

The solution to that isn’t to ape Paul Martin’s losing narrative. The solution isn’t to go nuts with other people’s money.  The solution is to craft a narrative that makes sense. One that captivates peoples’ hearts and minds.

They don’t have one. They just don’t. And they’re out of time.

That, pretty much, is why the Ontario Liberal government is likelier to lose than to win.

They don’t have a story to tell anymore.

 

Comments (28)