Every democratic nation has its own version of the story: a competent, admired citizen decides to run for high public office, originally with much excitement about their candidacy, only to fail to live up to the billing. Canada has had a few. Names like Robert Stanfield, Joe Clark and John Turner come to mind. However, we now have the absolute perfect example. For some reason I don’t fully understand, expectations were immensely high for John Tory, and he did not come within a mile of meeting them.

While having immense success in the private sector (bringing about the Rogers monopoly of communications), nearly everything he touched in the public sphere withered and died. After spending much of the 1980’s working in the offices of Ontario Premier Bill Davis and Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, Tory had gained credence in the old Progressive Conservative Party. He was given the task of directing the 1993 reelection campaign for Prime Minister Kim Campbell. Now, granted, I doubt anyone could have saved the PC’s that year. But Tory ruined any slim chance they may have had. Tory was the one who approved the much-criticized ad making fun of Jean Chretien’s facial impairment. With his first crack at taking a lead in politics, John Tory achieved a world record: he was the campaign head for the largest electoral earthquake in democratic history. No incumbent government in any democratic nation has been crushed as much as the ’93 PCs. That was strike one. With that notorious mark on his record, Tory returned to the private sector for a decade, serving as CEO of Rogers and the Commissioner of the Canadian Football League.

Earning a reputation in Toronto business circles as a competent manager and being fiscally prudent, Tory decided to return to his first love, politics, by running for Mayor of Toronto in 2003. His opponent: relatively unknown city councilor David Miller. Tory had the support of die-hard Mel Lastman supporters, the Toronto Police Association, and most of the Toronto financial establishment. He outlined an extensive agenda to clean-up Toronto’s ever deteriorating financial situation. Miller’s entire platform (essentially): stop the building of a bridge to Toronto Island Airport. Miller won by 30,000 votes. Strike two against Tory.

Tory then turned his attention to provincial politics and his sole success in political life: winning the leadership of the Ontario PC Party. He defeated current federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty by claiming that he was just as fiscally competent as Flaherty, while being more centrist on social issues. Tory won the leadership in December 2004, and entered the Legislature in January 2005 after winning Ernie Eves old seat in Dufferin-Peel-Wellington-Grey, referred to at the time as the safest PC seat in the province (so I don’t count it as an accomplishment). Many in the media speculated that Tory was a lock to become the next Premier when the October 2007 election rolled around. The PC Party was Ontario’s historical governing party, and the electorate was furious with Dalton McGuinty over his many broken promises, particularly the health tax.

I don’t really think I need to go into detail about what happened next. In all my research when studying for my Political Science degree, I have not come across an election campaign so utterly mismanaged as Tory’s 2007 effort. I mean, he ran on the slogan “leadership matters”; he was selling himself as the reason to vote PC, and then he proceeded to give the people of Ontario reasons not to trust his judgment. The entire faith-based schools initiative (and what a stupid idea it was. Like the children of this province need to have institutionally enforced division) made the electorate forget all about all the web of lies the Liberal government had spun. Not only that, but Tory failed to even win his own seat, losing to Education Minister Kathleen Wynne in Don Valley West. At least Stephane Dion got re-elected. Strike Three. You’re out. Or not.

I don’t know if I can blame Tory for the disaster of a few days ago. I blame the membership of the PC Party for still having any degree of faith in him. I had many friends who continued to support Tory, and I’ve been telling them for a year that all they were doing was preventing the PC Party from truly challenging the Liberals. Whatever his skills in the private sector may be, it is clear that John Tory is just a terrible politician. From making fun of a facial deformity to losing to empty suits like Miller and McGuinty, Tory just has no idea how to run a campaign. And yet the Party let him stay on without a seat in the legislature for another year and a half, essentially granting McGuinty a free ride in a time when Ontario is bleeding jobs and announcing record deficits. It took Tory a year to convince a sitting MPP, Laurie Scott, to resign and allow him to run in a by-election in Haliburton-Kawartha Lakes-Brock. In 2007, Scott carried the riding by 10,000 votes. On March 5th, Tory lost to Liberal candidate Rick Johnson by a thousand. A party leader losing a 2nd chance at the legislature? That is definitely strike four, and he is definitely out. Now the PCs are starting a leadership race a year and a half too late, leaving an opening for new NDP leader Andrea Horwath to position herself as the real alternative to McGuinty. John Tory will leave the political arena with the tag that for some elusive reason, he is unelectable. The saddest part is that if he had won and had a chance to forget about campaigning, he may indeed have made a good Premier. But as we all know, elections are not always about who is the best person for the job. The most successful politicians have the elusive ability to make people want what they are selling, and I suspect it may take many years for John Tory to accept the fact that he just didn’t have it.

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Tags: Conservative Party, john tory

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 26th, 2009 at 11:48 am and is filed under Provincial Government. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.