Visionless substitute premier signals demise of the Liberals

Watching elections up close for a half century or more taught me mainly that making predictions about the outcome is foolhardy.

Nevertheless, that long history also tells me not to be surprised if, on the night of Aug. 17, we end up with the Liberals either turfed out of office or reduced to an even more muddled minority that limps on to another election that finishes the job.

It's not just that electoral history is not kind to rookie premiers who replace a long-reigning one at the last minute (the last one being Rodney Macdonald, who replaced John Hamm in 2006, called an election, got a minority and hobbled on until his coup de grâce in 2009). It's also that declaring that they have to rush to the polls while the iron is hot in order to “get my own mandate” is the weakest of political arguments. Mandate for what? Iain Rankin is into the standard replacement-premier problem of separating from the mother ship — the former premier with his inevitably mixed legacy — while tangled up in the wiring.

Further, the iron is almost never as hot as it looks. The polls before the campaign starts — that is, before people actually think about it — usually favour the incumbent. For example, the NDP were still ahead in the polls a few months before being replaced by Stephen Mcneil's Liberals in 2013.

In this case, the last polls have shown the Liberals unusually high — but based on reasons that are unusually flimsy. The Liberals have attached themselves to the popular figure of Dr. Robert Strang, chief medical officer, as COVID comes under control. However, the fact that all four Atlantic provinces have done the same — benefiting from a smaller, older and more spread-out population than in the hotspots elsewhere — tells us that there's little real political credit here. Expect it to blow away amid campaign buzz.

To editorialize, the Liberals' time is actually up and a clean change of government would be the best thing to clear the air. Try as he might, Rankin, like Macdonald before him, or Russell Maclellan (Savage government), Donald Cameron (Buchanan government), Ike Smith (Stanfield government), or Henry Hicks (Angus Macdonald government) before that, is having a hard time convincing anybody that he's a fresh new thing.

The new premier inevitably ends up wearing the old premier's coat, with the bright colours worn off and threads showing. A government's positives tend to be forgotten in the short term, while the negatives keep biting.

In Mcneil's case, the positives included bringing order to a chaotic public sector bargaining system, order to finances, and having found the courage to shut down Northern Pulp. The big negative — along with a tyrannical streak that shut down legislative committees and other sources of information — is making a mess of health care with a misbegotten bureaucratic centralization, which Rankin will wear big-time.

Not that there's a whizbang A-team ready to replace the Liberals. Tim Houston would be the most likely heir. When he was named Tory leader in 2018, he caught some attention by declaring emphatically that he was a “progressive” conservative. Snarling deniers smelling of Trump, such as mar the federal non-progressive Conservatives, needed not apply. Good on him for that, but Houston and his party have been largely invisible since. Never mind. Apparently keeping quiet — then pushing hot buttons at the last minute while the sitting government is in a muddle — works. That's how Mcneil got elected back in 2013. Not ideal for governance, but a fact of life.

As for the NDP, they have that knack for the issues.

They've done it again by getting attention for what is arguably our most pressing immediate issue — a fast-evolving housing crisis — that should be at the top of the debate for all parties. But by pulling out a rusty old tool to deal with it — permanent rent controls which usually just reduce the housing stock over the long term — they raise the usual questions about how practical they are.

Precedent is not destiny, of course. And with COVID, fewer people voting, a midsummer election and whatnot, there might well be a narrow pathway to victory for Rankin. Nevertheless, it would be a technical victory only and would raise the question: after eight years, what's the point?

As speculation rose about an election, my thought this time, as with the several previous substitute premiers, was: If you have something you want done, you still have a couple of legislative sessions in which to do it — the election deadline still being nearly a year away. In that time — if you weren't worrying about getting elected — you might actually achieve something, which would have served you better than a premature election. By pulling the plug early, you've signalled that you don't have a “vision” — whatever that is — after all.