The Promise of Poilievre

 

Last fall, when Pierre Poilievre won the Tory leadership, all the talking heads were saying his stewardship of the party was doomed. He had, after all, ru to the right in the leadership contest. Now how could he move to the centre to win an election?

I found this assumption that deceit was simply the way to do business disgusting. The first time I heard this idea, that you ran as an ideologue to win the nomination, then moved to the centre, was from Richard Nixon. I realized then that he was a crook. It is the reason I can no longer bear to look at a picture of Erin O’Toole without a sense of physical revulsion.

Besides the gross immorality, it is bad practical advice. If you make your programme indistinguishable from that of the party in power, why vote for you instead of the party in power? If they like what the other guys are doing, they will vote for them. If they don’t like it, why vote for you and just get more of the same? And then there is the inevitable suspicion, and accusation, that you have a “hidden agenda.” You are asking the people to buy a pig in a poke. For the leadership, you did not govern on the platform you ran on. Why would it be different if you came to power? How can anyone trust you?

Leadership is not about finding a parade, and rushing to the head of it. It is not about parsing the polls.  If it were, one leader would be just as good as another; anyone can do that. Only a narcissist would think that way: all that matters to him is that he is in power.

Leadership is about communicating, and convincing people. This Poilievre seems exceptionally good at. And he has already, according to several polls, opened up an eight-point lead over the present government. Proving my point: but for a bad stumble over Christine Anderson, he has not yet betrayed his principles doing it.

If Poilievre comes to power, the same rhetorical skill, the ability to bring people along with him, could make him an exceptionally good prime minister as well. This ability to communicate and inspire was the core skill possessed by Reagan, by Churchill, by Zelensky, by Thatcher; by Ralph Klein in Alberta. Although few seem to realize it, by Donald Trump, a brilliant comic performer. By Martin Luther King; by Lincoln.

It seems less common on the left. JFK had it. Pierre Trudeau did. On the left, it is called “charisma.”

To be fair, Diefenbaker too had the knack, and Bill Clinton, and Boris Johnson. None of whom I would consider exceptional leaders. Which demonstrates that it is not enough. There are other elements to a great leader; empty rhetoric is still just empty rhetoric.

Canada may be exceptionally lucky, as if protected by God, to have Poilievre emerge at this moment, when our society and perhaps our civilization seems to be falling into chaos and despair. If it can be pulled back together at all, that is a job for a master rhetorician.

No guarantees; but there is cause for hope. There is cause for hope if, two years from now, Poilievre is in charge in Canada, and Trump in the USA. That might be enough to turn things around.