Of the things about which I am confident, I can safely state that my weekend and yours was a lot better than Christy Clark’s.
Now, as she awoke Friday, the former 小蓝视频 premier’s world had every opportunity to be her oyster. She had convened a national call of 135 believers earlier in the week and was making the late-stage, toe-in-the-water ritual interviews to hum and haw a bit and say, well, I’m thinking about running for the national Liberal party leadership that would, shucks, make me prime minister – if only for a cup of coffee, then as opposition leader.
She would be situated logically as the longest serving female first minister in the top tier of candidates to succeed Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, alongside the former deputy prime minister and finance minister, Chrystia Freeland, who had been for ages his elected right-hand until she used the left hand to knife him, and Mark Carney, former governor of the Bank of Canada and Bank of England – and supposed outsider who nonetheless has seemingly all of Trudeau’s unelected right hands as his aides.
But Friday did not go according to script for Clark, and no one – not the 135 on the call, certainly not me waiting to watch her campaign – expected inarguably the largest mistake in a career of generally shrewd navigation of political trouble.
It was an own goal, as they say in soccer, and an entirely, completely, emphatically, absolutely, utterly, certainly, positively, definitively, undoubtedly, unquestionably, indubitably preventable error.
Catherine Cullen, a strong but hardly menacing host of the venerable C小蓝视频 Radio show, The House, had a question many of us were interested in but was more of a curiosity than a matter of accountability. It turned out that Clark, who called herself a “lifelong Liberal” when she saluted Trudeau upon announcing his slow-boat departure as prime minister, actually took a detour into the Conservative Party of Canada to support Jean Charest in his unsuccessful 2022 leadership campaign ultimately won by the guy we expect soon to call prime minister, Pierre Poilievre.
Lots of people change parties, no biggie. Hey, Cullen asked, how long were you actually a Conservative?
“Never,” Clark said, beaming with some seeming joy. “I never voted and I never got a membership.”
That wasn’t the answer Cullen, or pretty well any of us, expected. Clark said back then she had bought a membership, supported Charest, and wanted to stop Poilievre. This did not square.
Maybe it was a nervous answer, maybe she was about to say, “Well, I bought a membership but didn’t want to be in the party, I just thought Poilievre was a menace and I wanted to do everything I could to defeat him, and I had a friend running against him and, and, and …”
But no, she went from there into an abyss of historic, perhaps catastrophic consequence for her return to the ring.
She denied what was on the public record with countless conversations. Denied what was recorded on (if you’re a supporter, an excruciating) video with (egads!) the Conservative Journal of Canada podcast. Didn’t mention she publicly said Charest would be a great prime minister. Even went so far – and this was just head-shaking gaslighting and playing into the enemy’s hands – that she even had a membership in the party.
“I wouldn't put it past them to manufacture one of them,” she told Cullen. Oy vey.
You see, political parties are businesses, and the Conservatives had her credit card record, and produced her membership transaction in an instant. She was a member for a year in 2022 and 2023. Foes, one of them former Liberal environment minister Catherine McKenna, quickly noted on social media that Clark was a Conservative at that point. It was the slip other leadership campaigns were awaiting.
Her response hours later hardly put down the hard-digging shovel: a coarser version of how “it” happens, and an “I misspoke.” It is true that you can claim to misspeak to cover up a lie, but if you knew the statement was false, it isn’t misspeaking.
How her confidants could not have anticipated an obvious question like this, and prepared a plausible answer for her, defies reason. With no experience in crisis management except as a spectator, even a journalist can see an easy way out:
- Say, yes, I think Poilievre is the evil incarnate, and I was going to take every opportunity to stop him.
- Say, yes, it required me to swallow hard and join the party, but only briefly. I was only going to stay through the leadership to get his enemy elected. (Note: Leave aside what might be in it for you eventually.)
- Say, now I have set my sights on crushing this guy, and believe me, I can do it.
- Say, next question.
It was unclear Monday if Clark will continue on her intended campaign path. She would be the best retail politician in the race, she would offer the most distinct departure from the Trudeau cult, she is a scrappy campaigner, and she would bring a more authentic western sentiment to the contest than either Albertan natives-turned-Central-Canadians Freeland or Carney. I think Clark and Poilievre in Question Period every day would be a rock show, great daytime TV – as a dinner friend said to me: Thunderdome.
But I fear she has false-started before the race occurs, and in the Olympics these days, and in the merciless and mercenary mess of social media, that doesn’t give you a second chance. Let’s see.
Kirk LaPointe is a Glacier Media columnist with an extensive background in journalism.
