On the way to the London, Ont., airport early Sunday morning on her way back west from the Reform party convention, a tired young delegate asked the cabbie to turn on the radio news.
The lead item was about a loud party the night before at one of the convention hotels. In the middle of the night, the police had to be called to quiet it down.
The cabbie figured she’d be disappointed that the news was negative.
“No, that’s great,” she said, bleary-eyed from partying until almost dawn.
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“A lot of people think we’re all old white-haired guys. This will let them know we like to have fun too.”
Political success often is closely tied to image. Reform, after years of plowing some strident policy fields with little regard for the public image those hard-line positions created, seems to have heard the message.
Soften your image. Broaden the appeal.
Last weekend’s convention as usual was filled with sombre policy talk and support for some very conservative or populist positions (more political control over the courts, for example, and more support for the family).
But as the party tries to expand with a “united alternative” campaign to challenge the Liberals, there also was a visible moderation in the debate, compared to earlier days. A resolution supporting a constitutional amendment to declare Canada “indivisible” once would have been a platform for some serious Quebec and separatist bashing.
Instead, the proposal was soundly defeated after a delegate warned that declaring the Quebec separation option illegal would not kill the idea but would send its true believers out of democratic politics and underground.
“Let Reform take on the BQ (Bloc QuŽbecois) and the PQ (Parti QuŽbecois), not the FLQ” (the terrorist Front de Liberation du QuŽbec), he said to applause. Seventy-five percent of delegates agreed with him.
Moderation and image were evident elsewhere as well. When the inevitable gaggle of anti-Reform protesters showed up outside, delegates were advised to stay inside and not confront them. The cameras were denied the scene of a burly Reformer in a cowboy hat telling a body-pierced anarchist to get a job.
Delegates also were told to be wary of what they said to journalists.
And during the debate on supporting the family, one delegate faced groans from the audience when he said he did not want his tax dollars supporting sodomy. Many probably agreed, but couldn’t it be said more positively?
But perhaps the nicest image touch of all came Friday evening when leader Preston Manning was to deliver the keynote, nationally televised speech.
Manning and his wife Sandra were introduced by an attractive, blonde Quebec City lawyer who could barely speak English. And they were serenaded onto the stage by a Black a cappella group singing the spiritual: “Waiting for the Light to Shine.”
Did you fellas with the cameras catch Preston and Sandra shaking hands with those singers and that French gal?
Who can say Reform is hostile to minorities and Quebec? Who indeed.
