Election campaign moves along right on script

Every election needs its defining moment—its
too-big-foot-in-too-small-mouth moment, its searing, snapshot
flash-of-insight moment, its accidental, incidental larger-than-life
moment that suddenly careens the campaign off in an unpredictable
direction toward some unknowable destination.

So far, we have not, needless to say, had any such moment in this
blandest of beige provincial election campaigns.

There certainly have been defining moments in elections past,
however.

Remember 1998 when, during a televised debate, supposed third-party
also-ran Tory leader John Hamm asked Liberal premier Russell MacLellan
if he would resign if he didn’t balance the books.

Uh…MacLellan stared silently into the camera for… an…
excruciating…seven…endless…seconds. Though he would later claim
he was expecting the moderator to enforce a rule against candidates
asking each other questions, the silence made MacLellan look anything
but leader-like. His majority melted faster than snow in July.

The next year, with the Opposition NDP sniffing the possibility of
power for the first time ever, its bright young leader, Robert
Chisholm, tripped and fell over what was, in truth, a throwaway
question. As part of its attempt to humanize the leaders, the Halifax
Daily News had asked each one a bunch of puffball personal
questions—“boxers or briefs,” etc.—including one about whether the
candidate had ever been convicted of a criminal offence.

Like his rivals, NDP leader Chisholm quickly offered the expected
“no” answer to the question. But then, voila, a few days later, the
proverbial brown envelope arrived with evidence that Chisholm had been
less than forthright. As a young man, he’d been convicted of driving
under the influence. Although Chisholm very humanly claimed he’d fudged
his answer because he didn’t want his daughter to find out about his
youthful indiscretion, he was political toast. The NDP lost the
election and, soon after, Chisholm quit as leader.

The important thing about such defining moments is that they don’t
have to be about anything substantial, or even to have really happened
at all, in order to worm their way into the public consciousness for
all time.

Take Kim Campbell, Brian Mulroney’s now-you-see-her-now-you-don’t
successor as prime minister. She will always be remembered for
launching the 1993 federal campaign with the dismissive argument that
“elections are no place to discuss serious issues.” Though that was
apparently just a journalist’s paraphrase of a much more nuanced answer
to the effect that discussing a complete overhaul of Canada’s social
policies in all their complexities simply could not be done in just the
47 days of an election campaign, Campbell was already well on her way
to the worst electoral collapse in Canadian political history.

The man who also deserves some credit for taking the air out of
Campbell’s tires, Brian Mulroney, enjoyed his own deceptive defining
moment nearly a decade earlier. During the 1984 federal election
campaign debate, Mulroney sternly informed Liberal prime minister John
Turner that he didn’t have to go along with Pierre Trudeau’s
retirement-day appointment of a bunch of Liberal hacks to public sector
positions. “You had a choice, sir,” he pontificated.

Mulroney’s ostensibly principled pronouncement may have won him
votes, but the reality, as we now know all too well, is that Lyin’
Brian himself ran one of the most patronage-riddled administrations in
Canadian history.

And so it goes.

So far in this dishwater dull campaign, there hasn’t been any moment
defining, let alone memorable.

Photos of Rodney’s awkwardly ditsy trampoline bounce simply can’t
compete with images of Robert Stanfield’s 1974 football fumble. And
Tuesday’s first tightly scripted no-contact TV debate showed only that
Stephen You-Can’t-Do-It-All McNeil, Rodney The-NDP-Don’t-Have-A-Plan
MacDonald and Darrell I-Absolutely-Did-Not-Say-That Dexter know how to
repeat themselves. And repeat themselves.

There’s still time, of course—a full two-and-a-half weeks’ worth
of campaigning and another TV debate to provide something, anything
worth remembering about thiscampaign.

Don’t hold your breath.

Send pictures of fumbled footballs to stephenk@thecoast.ca.

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This article appears in May 21-27, 2009.