The Best Laid Plans (14 page)

“Yes, I thought you’d be pleased,” I responded, pushing my queenside bishop pawn up two squares. Sicilian again.

“What about my fledglin’ campus support? Is anythin’ likely to come of it?” he asked, I think genuinely.

“Your ties to the university will undoubtedly score us some support, and as your chief scrutineer, I may even be forced to take off my shoes and socks to tally your vote total,” I replied. Angus just giggled and shook his head as he slid his bishop into the fray.

“We went to hear the enemy speak today at some chamber-of-commerce love-in. If I had to take every meal with a side order
of Eric Cameron, I’d waste away to nothing. Kills a Liberal’s appetite cold,” I reported.

“Aye, he’s an enigma, that one,” commented Angus. The sun had set by now, and our game was lit only by the light spilling onto the dock through the workshop doors.

“Enigma?” I repeated, not quite understanding.

“Aye, I’ve known a few politicians in my day through my wife, and though many of them seemed slick and shallow on the surface, when I got to know ’em, they turned out to be good, hard-workin’ folks who really seemed to care about their country. But our Mr. Cameron is a paradox. He seems humble, honest, and genuine at first glance, but underneath it all, he is a self-absorbed, conceited, and contemptible blackguard,” Angus observed.

I’d never considered this perspective, and as I turned it over in my mind, I decided Angus might well be right. Before I could respond, Angus stepped in again.

“Aye, the man’s an ass with the Midas touch. His luck has to turn sometime. He’s led too charmed a life until now. I know his wife passed on, but theirs was a loveless marriage, sure as guns. What’s more, he seems to have done well enough as a widower, may God forgive me.”

While I was mulling this over, Angus forked my queen and bishop with his knight. Shit, shit, shit. My chess-playing skills – and I use the term loosely – simply could not support a second train of thought while the game was in progress. I looked three moves ahead and saw his unstoppable checkmate, so I toppled my king in surrender. It was the only honourable thing to do. With magnanimity absent without leave, Angus leaped to his feet and clapped his hands together, accompanied by what I can only describe as a war whoop.

I confess I’ve never really been comfortable in close proximity to a naked man. So when Angus stood in the darkness on the dock and pulled off his clothes, I thought his victory celebration was a bit over the top. When his staid striped boxers hit the planks, the
full moon (in the sky) made his stout, pale body seem even whiter than it already was. He gave me a wink and trotted off the end of the dock into a reasonably competent shallow dive. In a few, strong strokes of front crawl, he was lost from view, except when he occasionally glided through the narrow, shimmering trail the moon had draped across the river.

I waited until I saw him heading back to the dock before I put away the chessboard and pieces and moved the table back into the workshop. I left him standing on the dock, still naked and unabashed, studying the stars. I brushed my teeth, tossed my clothes on the chair, and slid between the sheets. By this time, Angus had returned to the workshop, where I could once again hear him mumbling in one-sided conversation. I listened for the now-familiar descent from talking to weeping, but it never came.

With two weeks to go, our small but committed team had settled into a comfortable routine and rhythm that bravely but barely kept the Liberal cause alive in Cumberland-Prescott. The two Petes sustained their valiant canvassing and managed to bring their own special brand of political punk advocacy to neighbourhoods in every region of the riding. Their presence in some ultraconservative areas was tantamount to two unarmed Nazis strolling through downtown London at the height of the blitz. Yet, they persevered. I’m still trying to divine what kept them going day after day. Perhaps I was just naïve, and they were only looking for better marks in English, but I don’t think so. They were already among my top students. I marveled at their equanimity in the face of, at best, guarded ambivalence and, at worst, naked hostility. I knew how demoralizing it could be to spend two or three hours each day selling something that no one was buying. In most ridings in the country, canvassers would encounter a supportive Liberal voter every few houses. In Cumberland-Prescott, it was more like every few days.

Muriel spent her time working the phones – correction, phone – and annotating the official voters list, which was now available following the enumeration process. Lindsay continued her examination of the polls, using the returns from the previous election to identify any pockets of Liberal support. She also laid out the McLintock pamphlet I’d written. She was a whiz with Photoshop
and had inserted a doctored photo on the front panel that showed a thoughtful Angus deep in discussion with our party’s leader. Of course, the two men had never met, nor even been in the same room together. At least, the leaflet voters crumpled up and tossed back at the two Petes finally featured some local content.

I helped out with the canvass and did my best to keep morale boosted above mild depression. I also stayed in very close contact with the national campaign to make sure they knew we were doing our part.

On E-day minus 14, I parked in the lot on Slater near Metcalfe just behind the modest building that served as the national campaign headquarters for the Liberal Party of Canada. I’d just dropped the two Petes off on campus and was right on time for a meeting of campaign managers for the eastern-Ontario ridings. We had these little get-togethers every two weeks so that the national leadership could keep its finger on the local pulse and so we could benefit from the alleged insight and expertise of the senior campaign strategists.

I took my regular seat around the vast boardroom table with my back to the large second-floor window. I was easily distracted by the human and automotive traffic flowing past and would rather look at the wall opposite and the framed photo of the Queen and Pierre Trudeau, signing the Constitution on the lawn of Parliament Hill. Six other local campaign managers joined me on my side of the table. I knew them all – four women and two men, representing two Ottawa ridings and four more rural constituencies. I liked three of them (idealist policy wonks) and could take or leave the other three (cynical political operators). We left the other side of the table free for the big wheels of the party.

Fifteen minutes after the meeting was supposed to have started, Bradley Stanton, the Leader’s chief of staff and deputy campaign director, and Michael Zaleski, the president of National Opinion and the Liberal Party’s pollster, sauntered in and sat across from
us. I wasn’t Stanton’s biggest fan. He’d been almost solely responsible for the decision in the dying stages of the last campaign to “’go negative” and hammer away at rumours of the Prime Minister’s failing health. The PM had lost weight and had looked a bit gaunt. As it turned out, the Conservatives set us up by starting the whisper campaign themselves, hoping we’d take the bait. Stanton didn’t just nibble at the worm, he swallowed it whole, along with the hook, line, sinker, and half the rod. As soon as our declining-health-innuendo ads hit the air, the Tories rolled out the truth about the PM’s recent weight loss. A videotape released to the press gallery showed the Prime Minister weight training, running, and (wait for it) sparring in a boxing ring as part of his three-month-old fitness regimen. The final insult? Well, with four days left in the campaign, while our reprehensible ads were running, casting doubt on the health of the Tory Prime Minister, he actually ran in the National Capital Marathon, finishing in just over three hours and forty-two minutes, coming in twelfth out of 469 runners in his age category. Overnight, the Liberal four-point lead in the polls evaporated to be replaced by a three-point deficit. Our majority government became theirs because of Bradley Stanton’s “do whatever it takes to win” approach. He gambled; we lost, which for staunch Liberals across the country meant that Canada lost.

I knew Zaleski, the pollster guru, reasonably well and had worked with him a few times when slaving over the Leader’s response to the Government’s last Throne Speech. After all, I wanted to hit the right buttons with Canadians – support the Government on measures enjoying considerable public approval and bash the Tories on those that did not. He seemed a nice enough guy, but I worried that he was better at delivering the advice the Leader
wanted
to hear rather than what he
needed
to hear.

In a glance, they took us all in and then focused on me. Neither of them could stifle the early tremors of a smile. “Addison, good of you to take the time away from your close race in C-P,” opened Stanton.

“Bradley, always a pleasure,” I replied. I thought his sarcasm was a little out of line, given that having me find the candidate and run the campaign had been his idea in the first place. I thought he owed me.

“Look, we might as well get started,” Stanton said. “Thanks for coming. This won’t take too long. I’m going to give you an update on the national campaign and what we’re discovering on the ground. Then, I’m going to ask Michael to share the national numbers with you and how they look on a riding-by-riding basis in the constituencies for which you are responsible.”

When he’d finished this preamble, Stanton sat down for the rest of his talk. “The Leader is doing a great job on the trail. We’ve got the reporters on the bus eating out of our hands. His rural and urban stump speeches are both going over well, and our ‘time for a change, a change for our time’ line is taking root. Nice turn of phrase, Addison,” he commented with a nod in my direction.

I actually thought the line was a little trite and not clever enough when I first penned it, but the Leader had really taken to it. The success of such lines is really all in the context and delivery. The right speaker, in the right setting, at the right point in a speech, with the right crowd, could carry it off. Otherwise, it could go over like a concrete zeppelin. To his credit, not to mention his speech writer’s, the Leader seemed to be making it fly. In what little media coverage of the national tour I’d seen, the crowds occasionally joined him in reciting the line. It made for solid TV in a Barack Obama “yes we can” kind of way.

I considered this somewhat of an achievement given the Leader’s oratorical limitations. He spoke in a rather narrow band of inflection. So narrow that it often approached monotone. We’d coached him for hours on end with clandestine visits from Stratford actors, firebrand preachers, and even a popular professional wrestler known for his emotional and motivational prebout diatribes. Nothing seemed to work. Even when he managed to step up his performance, it was obvious that he wasn’t comfortable
in his own skin. Well, you work with what you have. The Leader did have several other redeeming qualities that I know I could cite if I thought about it for a time.

“That asshole Cameron’s budget is our biggest challenge in the campaign,” Stanton continued. “I’ve never seen such balanced and carefully constructed fiscal virtuosity. Canadians love the budget, and they love Cameron. Sorry, Daniel, but it’s an incontro-fucking-vertible fact.” He finished with his hands up in surrender. I’ve always found the use of profanity for effect to be a practice of the weak-minded. In Stanton’s case, my theory held.

The woman next to me piped up then, mercifully leading us away from any more Eric Cameron idolatry. “Brad, on what issues are we finding traction?”