Paul Wells: Mackay A "sucky Baby"...

[sir_springer]

I don't generally agree with Wells on much...

But I sure do on this one.

From this weeks MacLeans magazine...

I've highlighted the good parts.

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September 24, 2003

PAUL WELLS

The struggle to unite the Progressive Conservatives and the Canadian Alliance is moving fast, and it has come down to two crunch issues, both of them potential deal-breakers: political theory and stupid pride.

The issue of political theory is (only slightly!) less fun, so we'll start with it. It's the eternal problem of the decision rule for highly-asymmetrical binary confederations. Let me translate that into English.

Every time in history that two populations of very different size have tried to get along, their leaders have faced a fundamental question: how do we make our decisions? There are only two possible answers: equality or representation by population.

There was never any chance of the Tories and Alliance avoiding this question. The likelihood they'll resolve it is close to zero. The Tory caucus is one-quarter the size of the Alliance's. The grass-roots Tory membership is certainly even smaller by comparison with the Alliance hordes. So how do they pick their policies and their leader?

Peter MacKay came storming out of this morning's Tory caucus meeting to insist it's got to be "equality." By this he means, naturally, equality of parties: The Progressive Conservative party must have equal weight with the Alliance. This is, self-evidently, a direct violation of an equally valid idea of equality: equality of each individual Canadian, be she a Tory or an Alliance member.

By insisting that the tiny Tory party not be "swamped," MacKay is effectively demanding that each Tory's vote be worth four or more times as much as the vote of each Alliance member. I'm not saying this to blame MacKay, although I plan to get to that soon enough. His position is the inevitable position of the smaller partner, just as Stephen Harper's is the inevitable position of the larger. (The decision-rule problem of highly-asymmetrical confederations, incidentally, explains why an equal partnership between a separate Quebec and the rest of Canada was always a fantasy. All this and much more is explained in Robert Young's classic book, The Secession of Quebec and the Future of Canada.

So much for theory. On to stupid pride. You -- would -- not -- believe how whiny Peter MacKay is about the news leaks surrounding the Tory-Alliance negotiations. He is, not to put too fine a point on it, being a sucky sucky baby about it all.

"The key issue is trust," he said, his quivering little chin sticking out as he faced the scribes. Mommy, make the bad Alliance man stop talking to reporters.

Three things about this. First, none of the reporters I know who's covering this story is getting all his information from the Alliance side. MacKay's glass house has sprung its share of leaks.

Second, it is simply not true that "trust" in Ottawa translates as an absence of leaks. Since Tories leak about their internal affairs all the time; and Alliance members leak about their internal affairs all the time; and that doesn't mean they don't love each other; then it's just barely possible that Tories and Alliance members might leaka bout this, too.

Finally, grow up. MacKay's party has, in the past, led by a couple of fellows named John Macdonald and Brian Mulroney. Macdonald's Ottawa and Mulroney's Ottawa leaked like frickin' sieves. And no force on earth could stop either man from winning elections.

Joe Clark used to lead the Tories too. He is famously obsessed with propriety and process. He has believed all his life that doing everything right is the same as doing the right thing. He ran a demonstrably tighter ship than those sloppy blowhards, Macdonald and Mulroney. And in the 2000 election, Clark won the smallest share of the popular vote in the history of his party.

Now here's the thing. Peter MacKay is the son of a Mulroney-era cabinet minister, but he makes a virtue of the fact that he paid little attention to politics until the mid-1990s. Good for him. But he needs to wonder now whether he learned all the wrong lessons at the feet of his de facto mentor, Joe Clark.

Let me put it more bluntly. I have long believed unite-the-right talks were a waste of time. I have long believed there was no point speculating on the two parties' chances of reconciling, because the Tories' sucky-sucky-baby routine would guarantee failure. Peter MacKay is free to prove me wrong.

[Mr. Chater]

hmmm, this is pretty deep stuff. Though it is kind of siding with the Alliance is anything else. There are points to be made against that, which i will make when i am back from school. No time now to say much, only to say that a minority of that Essay is true..and there is much to talk about and argue.

[Pellaken]

my responce to the idiots article:

give me one good reason why the smaller party would unite with the larger party, on anything but equality?

I doubt MacKay wants caucus equality, that would just be silly, but equality in picking the leader is required. we are not talking about a merger of people, we are talking about a merger of parties. so dont go all "but each person is equal" on me now. we are not talking about individual members, we are talking about parties, as a whole

the only way a merger will work is to get the right leader in. the only way to get the right leader, is to give each party one-member-one-vote, and to weight each party's vote to equal eachother. that means if the alliance has 120,000 members, and the PC's have 60,000 members, that yes, PC votes will count for 2. in the end, everyone acts in his or her self interest. explain how it is in the PC's self interest to be taken over by the alliance. taking 12 seats in the east, again and again, with the off-chance hope that when the liberals fall, people will turn PC seems to me like a much better option.

Nethier side wants to see things fail. unfortunatly, the Alliance is very short sighted. sharing power with the PC's for 3 months is just that. 3 months. due to its larger membership, the Alliance will eventually win out. I cannot see why the Alliance cannot offer a leadership race with 2 equal parties. they survived stockwell day, surly they could survive whoever the PC's throw in there.

a better option for leadership is thus:

each member of each party casts 2 ballots

one for their leader-of-choice

and another, where they have crossed off all "acceptable" other candidates.

the candidate who takes the most votes for leader-of-choice

AND

has the highest average "acceptable" votes in both parties, becomes leader.

as for MacKay wanting his mommy, what does that have to do with anything. perhaps he does, but who cares? I'll tell you who cares, someone who wants to see these talks fail.

[Rob1963]

The best way to have a leadership contest (in this case at least) would be a delegated convention.

The CA has far more members signed up than does the PC Party, but their numbers are concentrated in the west. In a one-member-one vote contest the CA would overrule any chance a PC Candidate would have.

With a delegated system, the CA would likely still take the western delegates (where their membership is strongest) while the PC's would likely take Atlantic Canada. The rest would likely be split up in some proportion (I'd venture a guess that there would be more PC than CA delegates in those areas, but maybe not)

However, I hope this dosen't come about as I have discussed in the "Letter from Peter MacKay" thread. I will not be a part of it.

[sir_springer]

Pell, I could not disagree more.

The "party" is its membership...or more precisely, its people.

I have been listening to the pathetic leadership of the PCs, and the likes of Wayne and Crosby, for years preaching to anyone who would listen that the Progressive Conservatives are truly the only "national" party...to which anyone with more than three functioning braincells would immediately call bullsh*t.

If they're so bloody "national", and so damn sure that they're the only "alternative with support across Canada to the Liberals", then they can GD well put it on the line and we'll see just how damn "national" they really are, won't we?

While I don't often agree with Paul Wells, he hit this one right square on the head.

If Peter MacKay wants to be leader of a national Conservative Party, then he can GD well get out there and earn the bloody right just like everyone else, including Harper.

BUT NOOOOOO....

Instead we get more of the usual convoluted PC sniveling and whimpering about how suddenly they're obviously not so bloody national that they could go head to head with the CA, eh?

If nothing else comes out of this, the one thing that's for sure is that Harper has exposed MacKay and his party for the narrowminded, pathetic, self-centered, petty little frauds that they are...in spades.

These people have an opportunity to put aside all this crap and do something for the betterment of the entire country.

And all we get from the PC MPs and their leader, for the most part, is more of the same old sniveling and stalling and excuse making, yada yada yada yada yada yada until hell won't have any more of it.

These people couldn't make a decision if their GD pants were on fire.

I hate to even imagine them running our country! Again!

Harper's "let's get to it and get the job done, we've got other more important things to handle" attitude is so totally refreshing...and thus completely foreign to Ottawa and the old line party hacks...one can only savor the spectre of him running this country.

You hear Paul Martin today?

"We're going to do this...no matter how long it takes!"

He can't get through a promise on anything without a disclaimer tacked on, can he? How typically Liberal. How typically old-line party in thinking and action...or the lack thereof.

Like I've always said...

The only difference between the PCs and the Liberals is in the spelling of the names.

Whether the PCs get sucked up into the much greater CA, or blown off the political map by Martin, makes no difference to me.

The good news at the end of the day, as far as I'm concerned, is that the PCs will be history.

Whatever it takes, it's worth it.

[Mr. Chater]

heh, i'm with the PC's and CA. Though i'm more of a "PCer". Though all you talk about is Mackay or Harper becoming Leader. There are other people such as Mike Harris and Ralph Klien and so on that probably both parties wouldn't have much of a problem with. You said that Martin might blow them off and at the end PC's will be history..i don't believe so, i believe that Martin himself will be blown away by the power of the right wing once it is merged and deep in its work. Though the name Progressive Conservative will be no more..it will only make their history better of making this their best move (merging.)

Who knows...