Carole, we never knew ye

Can't say I saw the Carole James resignation coming. 

But now that she's done it, I'm not totally surprised.  I think we're seeing a woman of principle in action. This is her pulling the pound-of-flesh number and saving the baby.

I've been intrigued for a long time about how opinions are formed -- and widely held -- about leaders like Carole James, how they're held resolutely by people who have never met her and often haven't seen more than a 30 second clip or two. But they know they don’t like her. Hmn………

Joe Clark suffered under the same phenomenon. He was basically rejected nationwide as being a geek (in a time when being a geek was definitely not cool) because he lost his luggage on an international trip. 

The negative branding of Joe-Who? was so well done that even though the airlines lost the luggage and everyone knows that, Joe took the fall. 

In the campaign and for years afterwards, he was unable to recover from the media branding of him as a goof.  Then, years later (after he'd stitched the PC Party back together and especially after he  had served a term or two as Minister of Foreign Affairs--and represented us so credibly abroad) people began to see his merits and murmured nationally that maybe he would have made a good prime minister. As I recall that was around year six of the Reign of Ol' Jawbone.

Stéphane Dion is another recent example of how absolutely impossible it is to undo initial negative branding. He simply wasn't able to counter that initial K.O. punch no matter what he did. He could have walked on the surface of the  Rideau Canal in July and it wouldn’t have made a difference.

Similarly, I can see Carole James being appointed to head up this or that public inquiry or commission and people over time coming to see that, wow, she was a woman of substance--how come we didn't see that in 2010? (By then, the media will be able to give her some good press because she won’t be a threat anymore.)

So how does this happen? How does a good person, perhaps even a really good leader, just never get the chance? 

Is it some kind of media bullying?  

I saw her recently talking with Vaughn Palmer and he seemed to think she was okay, so we can't blame him. Michael Smythe? The Sun or Province? CKNW? CBC?

What I fear is that it's none of the above, but rather the untrained, ill-informed quasi-pundits who are looking for glam & telegenics in our leaders, not substance.

That makes me wonder about how much power leader any leader has a political party.

The NDP, like all the parties, has committees and riding associations that feed ideas into vehicles like policy conventions - big huge affairs where people spend a weekend wrangling over policy. And voting it in or out. So how much policy can a leader actually set on their own then? 

I was really shocked at the news that the BC Federation of Labour paid of $72,000 of Moe Sihota's salary as president of the Party. I love listening to Moe take on Erin Chutter on the CBC Radio's Early Edition’s political panel every week, so this was disappointing news to learn about Moe too. Naturally, I don't know all the circumstances around that whole deal, but I’m unable to conjure up any instance in which that situation would not feel very, very icky. Did Carole countenance that?

Was Carole James just one vote on that BC Council that said yes to the BC Fed fund-infusion to Sihota -- or does the leader carry more than one vote on the Council? 

Because if the Council can overrule the leader or the leader is just one vote in many -- then why do we fuss so much about who is the leader of a political party? If it’s truly democratic that should not matter as much should it?

The amount of time we spend in BC (and in national politics) on leadership politics would be amusing if it wasn’t so annoying and essentially shallow.  

Don't the parties and all the party members and all the MLAs or MPs - count for anything? Aren’t the councils and the caucuses the major influence on the directions the party takes? 

IS a leader like Carole James able to abrogate all the work of riding associations, policy conventions, caucuses?  Really?--how?

It's unfortunate that the BC-NDP appeared to be shooting themselves in the foot at a time when they were riding so high in the polls, although polls are a very fickle measurement of anything at all.

I have admired Jenny Kwan since she and Joy McPhail rose in the Legislature and talked nonstop through the night to try and stop a Bill from passing that would send hospital workers back to work during their 2004 job action. 

Jenny seems to be woman of principle as well. I'm disheartened , though, that these two women of principle, and their followers, were not able to get together, iron it out, and work together: it would have been the proverbial test of the pudding wouldn't it? 

And this is one pudding that's kind of fallen in the middle.