Well, that didn’t take long. New NDP leader Naheed Nenshi hasn’t even picked a seat, but Premier Danielle Smith — and more particularly the shadowy people in her party whose names are seldom mentioned, never mind printed — are about to carpet bomb his leadership with a series of attack ads.This, for example, illustrating the cordial relationship between Nenshi as Mayor of Calgary, and Justin Trudeau as Prime Minister of Canada.How cordial? Judge for yourself. To be sure, Mr. Trudeau is famously tactile but dear heavens, the hugs, the smiles, the wrist gripping… Any husband so pictured with a woman other than his wife might as well check into the motel first and take the wrath of God there. It’s where he’ll be spending the night, anyway.But in politics, this is what you do… try to define your opponent before they have a chance to define themselves.It is what the Conservative Party of Canada did with the Liberals, planting firmly the idea in 2011 that Michael Ignatieff ‘didn’t come back for you,’ just as before Stephane Dion uttered a word on the 2008 campaign trail, voters internalised the Tory message that he was ‘not a real leader.’ (Pity the ‘Just not ready’ theme didn’t take. It was — and in my view remains — entirely accurate.)But, you do it because people tend to go with the first thing they hear: Once an idea has been planted in the brain, it is surprisingly difficult to dislodge it. (It surprises me, anyway. But so goes the theory.)Is it fair? Again, the reader can be the judge. But it’s not as if the party of Notley didn’t try to stigmatize Smith as a woman whose sense of political direction was symbolized by their weathervane ‘what will she do next?’ ad. So what's good for the goose etc..Manifestly, that didn’t work. And those who deploy weathervanes especially, must accept that what goes around, comes around.So, now it’s Mr. Nenshi’s turn, his career providing to the UCP a rich mother-lode of things he won’t want you to remember at the next election.For example, in addition to the ‘Trudeau’s choice for Alberta’ ad referenced above, there’s this delightful little piece in the UCP’s cheeky press release about the ‘Polluting Caveman’ who drove an F-350. The message is that ‘Nenshi is just another tax and spend Liberal.’I guess I missed this at the time, but it seems spectacularly ill-advised to slam people in Alberta who drives pickups. Indeed, not even three months later, the NDP that Nenshi now leads lost another election to Jason Kenney whose principal asset during the campaign — other than his remarkable oratory — was (ahem!) the blue Dodge pickup from the box of which he delivered it.So, a little tone deaf?Yes, and also a little bit of 'now you see 'em, now you don't.'Campaigning for mayor in 2010, Nenshi offered ‘8 Better Ideas.’ Some were actually good ideas, that included red-tape reduction, dealing with the city’s budget arrears, investment in public transit, tackling homelessness and hah, get this! Reforming the city’s administration. Fooled me. I thought he was a real conservative.The reality was something else, though. As Dr. Mark Milke pointed out, after just three years of Mayor Nenshi’s stewardship, so far from tackling Calgary’s rising tax burden, “property taxes were hiked beyond the jumps in Calgary’s cost of living, with tax increases that ranged between 4.5 and 10.4 per cent.” Meanwhile psychologists had to be called in to get the aldermen to play nicely with the mayor, and the city administration? There is also some reason to question whether the administration runs council, or as Bill Marriott suggests in this column, it's the other way around? And so on. So much for Nenshi's plans to shake up council, if that's the case.No doubt the UCP has much more to tell us.And that's what validates all this. The public should be able to inform themselves about who politicians really are and what they really think. Some, after all, have much they would prefer was not well known.There is nothing illegal or even immoral about having an affectionate relationship with the World Economic Forum. It does however tell you something about the way Mr. Nenshi thinks, that in 2011 — like Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland a few years later — he was recognized as a WEF ‘Young Global Leader.’ By and large, that's not a popular world view in Alberta. And if that's what animates him, we should know.
Well, that didn’t take long. New NDP leader Naheed Nenshi hasn’t even picked a seat, but Premier Danielle Smith — and more particularly the shadowy people in her party whose names are seldom mentioned, never mind printed — are about to carpet bomb his leadership with a series of attack ads.This, for example, illustrating the cordial relationship between Nenshi as Mayor of Calgary, and Justin Trudeau as Prime Minister of Canada.How cordial? Judge for yourself. To be sure, Mr. Trudeau is famously tactile but dear heavens, the hugs, the smiles, the wrist gripping… Any husband so pictured with a woman other than his wife might as well check into the motel first and take the wrath of God there. It’s where he’ll be spending the night, anyway.But in politics, this is what you do… try to define your opponent before they have a chance to define themselves.It is what the Conservative Party of Canada did with the Liberals, planting firmly the idea in 2011 that Michael Ignatieff ‘didn’t come back for you,’ just as before Stephane Dion uttered a word on the 2008 campaign trail, voters internalised the Tory message that he was ‘not a real leader.’ (Pity the ‘Just not ready’ theme didn’t take. It was — and in my view remains — entirely accurate.)But, you do it because people tend to go with the first thing they hear: Once an idea has been planted in the brain, it is surprisingly difficult to dislodge it. (It surprises me, anyway. But so goes the theory.)Is it fair? Again, the reader can be the judge. But it’s not as if the party of Notley didn’t try to stigmatize Smith as a woman whose sense of political direction was symbolized by their weathervane ‘what will she do next?’ ad. So what's good for the goose etc..Manifestly, that didn’t work. And those who deploy weathervanes especially, must accept that what goes around, comes around.So, now it’s Mr. Nenshi’s turn, his career providing to the UCP a rich mother-lode of things he won’t want you to remember at the next election.For example, in addition to the ‘Trudeau’s choice for Alberta’ ad referenced above, there’s this delightful little piece in the UCP’s cheeky press release about the ‘Polluting Caveman’ who drove an F-350. The message is that ‘Nenshi is just another tax and spend Liberal.’I guess I missed this at the time, but it seems spectacularly ill-advised to slam people in Alberta who drives pickups. Indeed, not even three months later, the NDP that Nenshi now leads lost another election to Jason Kenney whose principal asset during the campaign — other than his remarkable oratory — was (ahem!) the blue Dodge pickup from the box of which he delivered it.So, a little tone deaf?Yes, and also a little bit of 'now you see 'em, now you don't.'Campaigning for mayor in 2010, Nenshi offered ‘8 Better Ideas.’ Some were actually good ideas, that included red-tape reduction, dealing with the city’s budget arrears, investment in public transit, tackling homelessness and hah, get this! Reforming the city’s administration. Fooled me. I thought he was a real conservative.The reality was something else, though. As Dr. Mark Milke pointed out, after just three years of Mayor Nenshi’s stewardship, so far from tackling Calgary’s rising tax burden, “property taxes were hiked beyond the jumps in Calgary’s cost of living, with tax increases that ranged between 4.5 and 10.4 per cent.” Meanwhile psychologists had to be called in to get the aldermen to play nicely with the mayor, and the city administration? There is also some reason to question whether the administration runs council, or as Bill Marriott suggests in this column, it's the other way around? And so on. So much for Nenshi's plans to shake up council, if that's the case.No doubt the UCP has much more to tell us.And that's what validates all this. The public should be able to inform themselves about who politicians really are and what they really think. Some, after all, have much they would prefer was not well known.There is nothing illegal or even immoral about having an affectionate relationship with the World Economic Forum. It does however tell you something about the way Mr. Nenshi thinks, that in 2011 — like Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland a few years later — he was recognized as a WEF ‘Young Global Leader.’ By and large, that's not a popular world view in Alberta. And if that's what animates him, we should know.
