Counting Cats

 

Dancing the bhangra in catface

I wonder if, from the broad view of history. Justin Trudeau’s premiership will look like the Canadian Liberal Party’s dead cat bounce.

I think that the Liberal Party was actually destroyed by Jean Chretien.

Before Chretien, the Grits did not have principles in an ideological sense, but it was the party of the Canadian ruling class, a gentlemen’s club, and it ran on noblesse oblige. As the Natural Governing Party, its mandate was at least plausibly and in the public mind to do what it thought was best for Canada as a whole, in a more or less pragmatic way, with good will toward all. This made sense in a country that, like Canada, was naturally rent by internal divisions.

Chretien broke that mold with his bareknuckle politics within the party. Internally, the party became a dictatorship. Now it was all about power and loyalty to the leader. There was no more room for gentlemen.

Which sacrificed the long-term future of the party to Chretien’s interests. Being a Liberal was all about whether you liked the current leader. The party from then on, and given the structures Chretien created, would stand and fall on the charisma of the current leader. There was no principled reason to be a Liberal.

So they struggled and swapped leaders in and out, the opposite of the longstanding Liberal tradition: Martin, Graham, Dion, Ignatieff, Rae. There was nothing there until they turned, in what seemed desperation, to Justin Trudeau. Surely there was hereditary charisma there?

It worked better than it should have. Pretty decent dead cat bounce. But after his first election, the best JT could do were bare pluralities, while actually behind in the popular vote. Now the body politic’s reflex twitching, partly due to force of Liberal habit, seems to have subsided. Partly due, in turn, to the fact that Trudeau has not been governing in the old Liberal pragmatic way, but has been partisan and divisive. Fully and finally obliterating the Liberal centrist brand. And he has been more dictatorial than Chretien.

Now, as generally with dictators, there is a problem with the succession. The Liberal Party previously always had a leader of the loyal opposition inside the party, a John Turner, a Paul Martin, a Paul Martin Sr., because there was room for it. There was always a reason to be a Liberal above and beyond loyalty to the current leader, and an accommodation for that, with some degree of mutual deference, within the party. This is important to a party’s survival, because, if the current leader is no longer popular, the new leader must not be too closely identified with him, but suggest renewal.

When Chretien left, even with a plausible successor available, the party spiralled into third party status because it lacked any underlying raison d’etre. Preserving a strong centrist party is always challenging, against the natural dichotomy of left and right. The process was not yet as far along at that point. Pulling it out of the death spiral with Trudeau seemed a very close shave then. 

It seems unlikely that the Libs will again come up with someone plausible out of the ether before the party mechanism dissolves, being held together only by a chance at patronage and power, and the country moves on.