I can’t remember a holiday season when there have been four Canadian political books on the market, each of them very different, and all of them selling well.
“Maybe a rising tide lifts all the boats,” suggests Brad Lavigne, author of Building the Orange Wave, the inside story of how it took Jack Layton a decade to become an overnight success story in the 2011 election.
Then there’s Paul Wells and his second book on Stephen Harper. In Right Side Up in 2006, the Maclean’s columnist told how Harper gained power. In The Longer I’m Prime Minister, he tells how he uses it.
In Shopping for Votes, the Toronto Star’s Susan Delacourt writes of the marketing of Canadian politicians and their party brands over the last half-century, work driven largely by research and polling, but brought to life by some of the remarkable and talented people behind the scenes, from the Red Machine of the federal Liberals to the Big Blue Machine of the Ontario Conservatives.
And in Welcome to the Broadcast, his signature sign-on to CBC-TV’s daily hour-long Politics program, former anchor Don Newman tells of the eight prime ministers he has covered, from Pierre Trudeau to Stephen Harper, and many other assignments in a half-century in journalism. In the early years after Newsworld went on the air in 1989, it was known as DNN, the Don Newman Network. He had lots of support, but he was the face of Canada’s first all-news channel.
Every one of these books is well-written, and entirely worth reading. Full disclosure: All four authors are friends as well as colleagues.
There is nothing but pleasure in the pages of all four books. There is a common thread, too: While the politicians and political workers in these stories may be all too human, and in the game for a partisan purpose, they all want to win for the right reasons, and they all love our country.
Lavigne’s story of Layton’s 10-year rise to overnight sensation is a classic insider’s account that follows him from Toronto city hall, to the leadership of a marginalized New Democratic Party, to the man with the cane who took the NDP from fourth place to official opposition in 2011.
It wasn’t just le bon Jack, and his gallant campaign. There was also the great campaign team he built, led by Lavigne and Anne McGrath, not to mention Karl Belanger, Kathleen Monk, Ray Guardia, Brian Topp and outriders like Robin Sears. They were so tight they could finish sentences for one another, let alone for Jack, and they did. As in a famous conversation over coffee during the 2011 campaign between Lavigne and Topp. “Ottawa’s broken,” one of them said. “And we’re going to fix it,” replied the other. I’ve forgotten which one went first, which kind of makes the point.
And then, from triumph to tragedy, 113 days, the last chapter of Layton’s life following the campaign. It’s a narrative of Layton’s final months. Lavigne has told interviewers that in the book’s cover photo, a smiling Layton is looking up at his wife, Olivia Chow, giving her victory speech, before his own on election night in 2011. And then, the denouement, a powerful and poignant story of Layton’s final illness. On the last night of his life, there’s a final conversation between Jack and his mom, Doris Layton.
When I read her last words to her son, I put down the book and cried.
Paul Wells has not written an insider’s book, but he offers many insights into the prime minister’s mindset. Not just from covering him for more than a decade, but equally from background conversations with many of Harper’s close advisers.
The one-dimensional Harper as portrayed by the media is a control freak, a divide-and-conquer caricature. Wells sees a leader who is “surprisingly collaborative,” and capable of the grace he demonstrated in offering a state funeral for Layton.
In a broader sense, Wells captures all of the political drama brought on in 2008 by the Harper government’s obtuse response to the global financial crisis, with a budget update that proposed no stimulus and put an end to subsidies to political parties. It was only the prorogation of the House, just weeks after an election, that averted the defeat of Harper’s minority government.
Four books worth reading in the new year.
L. Ian MacDonald is editor of Policy magazine.
