With all due respect to cabinet ministers, you folks come and go. Limousines and expense accounts notwithstanding, most of you are forgettable. But prime ministers are a different matter. You only get one prime minister per government. Theirs are the names inscribed on history's pages. Your team's fate, good or bad, is inescapably tied to the PM. In our system of government, no one else matters nearly as much.
Which is why the job of every minister and staffer is pretty straightforward: Protect the prime minister at all costs. When things go well, all credit should go to him or her. If things go less well, staff and ministers are expected to take the blame. But the main job, most of the time, is stopping the prime minister from doing stupid things. Which brings us to the very stupid thing Mark Carney did last week.
What Did Carney Do?
In a video released on social media, Liberal MP Nate Erskine-Smith and Prime Minister Mark Carney stand facing each other in a well-appointed room, wearing suits and ties. Carney is seen waving his hands around and doing all the talking. "You're going, but I understand it," says the Prime Minister. "Because you're going to be more on the ground. You know, working at the provincial level, working for the folks — I hope, in Scarborough, you know, in health care and education, making lives better, helping to grow that economy. And we'll be right there alongside."
Having had his candidacy for the Ontario Liberal nomination in the Scarborough Southwest riding unambiguously endorsed by the prime minister, Nate released the video on the eve of the vote. He knew that the vast majority of Ontario Liberal "folks" are card-carrying federal Liberals, too.
The Outcome
If you followed politics in Toronto this past weekend, you'd know that the Ontario Liberal nomination meeting took place in Scarborough Southwest, and it was quite the donnybrook. And: Nate lost. He lost to a guy who came to Canada from Bangladesh with literally nothing, worked his ass off, employs hundreds of people, pays his taxes, is a faithful Liberal — and actually lives in the riding.
There are all kinds of reasons why Nate lost. Chief among them is that Nate is rather easy to dislike, and he spared no effort in getting deeply disliked by the Liberals who actually live in Scarborough Southwest (he doesn't). There are other reasons aplenty. But suffice to say, Nate — a self-proclaimed progressive — immediately commenced bleating MAGA-style talking points about how the vote was rigged against him, the oppressed white lawyer with a parliamentary pension. Our hero will now return to richly-deserved obscurity.
What Was Carney's Team Thinking?
Mark Carney, however, is another matter. What madness seized Carney, and those around him, and persuaded them that meddling in a hotly-contested provincial nomination race would be a good idea? Who, and what, convinced Carney to put his finger on the scale, and try and rig the outcome in favour of Nate?
It was dumb, dumb, dumb. Among other things, Mark's miscalculation has ticked off plenty of Ontario Liberals — who, it will be noted, summarily rejected his advice. It has handed the federal Liberal leader a big loss. And, worst of all, it was an unforced self-own.
Nates come and go — and, hopefully and for the love of God, Nate will now go away. But Mark Carney? We only have one of him. And, this weekend, our one and only prime minister revealed something important about his political judgment. Namely: It's lousy.
