WHEN Stockwell Day became the first leader of the Canadian Alliance last July, he said the freedom train was leaving the station and he invited Canadians to climb aboard.
Well, 10 months later, that 18-wheel freedom train is careening down the track on six wheels and the nuts are loose on a few of them.
In the modern history of Canadian federal politics, there have been few more stunning disasters than the decision to select a photogenic, athletic, muscular former Alberta treasurer to lead what was meant to be a new, broad-based party of the right to challenge the Liberals.
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Instead of giving aging Liberal leader Jean Chrétien a run for his money, Day has given him a new lease on life.
Last week’s open revolt by eight MPs, including several members of the core group at the soul of the Reform/Alliance party, was a body blow that Day surely cannot overcome. If party stalwarts with a close-up view do not think he is prime ministerial material, why should voters?
It is a rare gift to get a second chance at making a first impression.
When did the wheels begin to fall off? When he didn’t know which direction the Niagara River flows and blamed his staff?
When, as an Alberta farmer caller to the Ottawa bureau
news said last week, he said dinosaurs and men lived together despite evidence at Drumheller, not far from his Red Deer home?
When he couldn’t tell the difference between a lawyer’s private views and his duty to defend clients under the law?
When he showed he had not learned from that fiasco by accusing a sitting judge of conflict of interest?
No matter. The leadership damage has been done.
Perhaps more crucial for the party is why this debacle cannot be quickly put behind them.
At the centre of the problem is the core of any “populist” party – the politically illogical view that “the people” are always right.
Who are ‘the people’? Who decides what they are saying?
The leader always assumes it is his or her genius to be able to speak in the voice of ‘the people’.
But in this case, dissident MPs say their ‘people’ are questioning Day’s leadership.
Day and his coterie say ‘the people’ elected him last year and to challenge his leadership is to deny sovereignty of ‘the people’.
That presumes that ‘the people’ cannot change their collective minds.
It raises the serious issue of how credible the Alliance policy on setting policy by referendum can be. What if ‘the people’ vote for capital punishment, executions happen, and then ‘the people’ change their minds because of doubts about the foolproof nature of justice?
Sorry. You were executed in error.
The CA dilemma is to decide what the mythical ‘people’ of populist dogma really want.
In the city then called Leningrad 18 years ago, a dissident Soviet writer told a visiting Canadian journalist how the communist system of “democratic centralism” and popular will really worked.
“In North America, you have cowboys and cows,” he said. “Each cow has an opinion. Only the cowboy’s counts.”
Unless the herd runs him off the cliff.
