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|Monday June 2, 2003 | BACK | NEXT MACKAY, HAS HE THE RIGHT STUFF? by Angelo Persichilli Unlike mainstream daily pundits, I believe that in politics there are no devils and, even more importantly, no surprises. There are only ambitions, naked or not. Leadership candidates head into a leadership convention with one thing in mind: victory. There is a lot of room for complaints and homilies about decency, coherence, credibility and principles. Surprisingly, all usually come from the losers, or from some columnists who assign themselves to the role of Tomás De Torquemada, the monk in charge of the Spanish Inquisition who ordered the torture and the killing of thousands of people suspected of being witches and immoral. Ambitions in life are legitimate. Ambitions in politics are a must. Recall what the late John F. Kennedy did to win the presidential elections in 1960; through his ambitious father even Mafia leaders like Sam Giancana were involved and Kennedy, the young ambitious opportunist politician defeated his puritan, honest opponent. His opponent was Richard Nixon who was forced out of the White House in disgrace 14 years later. Political leaders create a "big tent" to increase the size of the political party. The Progressive Conservatives were able to take Quebec by storm only after they had another "agreement with the devil" signed by Brian Mulroney and the separatist Lucien Bouchard. Peter MacKay can repeat in the West what Brian Mulroney did in Quebec, especially in rural Canada where the support from David Orchard can lure votes even away from the NDP and by attacking the Liberals now from the left. You all know how the agreement Mulroney-Bouchard ended up, but it was because of the opposition from people like Pierre Trudeau who derailed the Meech Lake Accord which deepened the wounds in Quebec. Kennedy won by a whisker. Then an unknown, Pierre Elliott Trudeau in 1968 also won by a whisker. Later on, John Turner and Brian Mulroney, stormed the country. Who cares how they won? All built their legacies after the victory. This doesnıt mean that Peter MacKay will be a Trudeau or a Kennedy, it only means that he will either be a great leader or another Kim Campbell and not because of what he did in Toronto, but according to what he is able to do after he won, from here on in. MacKay has all it takes to be a phenomenal leader: he is intelligent, hard-working, honest and also has the "physique du roll" to satisfy the vanity of the always-more demanding cameras. Some media pundits concentrate on the semantics of an agreement and other fringe considerations like age, for instance, Peter MacKay is too young, Paul Martin is too old. But if John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton were fit to be presidents of United States at 43 and 44, Peter MacKay can be the leader of the fourth party in Canada. Furthermore, Ronald Reagan was re-elected U.S. president when he was well over 70; Paul Martin, who will be 65 in August, might be a good or bad Prime Minister for many reasons; none of them is written on his birth certificate. Peter MacKay has a huge opportunity ahead of him: "If he is able to work on the wide foundations he has given to his leadership, he can blow us out from all the central Canada provinces," a Liberal MP told me after the Toronto convention. Can he fail? Absolutely. Especially if he lets some of the old backroom trombones I saw wondering in the hallways of the Metro Convention Centre in Toronto to be in charge of the ship. Definitely he cannot go forward with that deadwood on his back. What I saw in Toronto was a party with a great past and a great future: whatıs missing is a workable present. MacKay has a chance to create it. |