Liberals must learn from losers

Here’s some recent political history that’s relevant to the mess the federal Liberal party finds itself in today.

In 1985, the Ontario Conservatives were in much the same boat as the Liberals are now, except their fall from grace was much faster.

Like the Liberals federally until the 2006 election, the provincial Conservatives in 1985 saw themselves as the natural governing party of Ontario.

But their 42-year political dynasty suddenly collapsed in that year’s vote, when the Conservatives under Frank Miller, who had just replaced Bill Davis as leader, finished barely ahead of David Peterson’s Liberals, 52 seats to 48.

The Bob Rae-led NDP, with 25 seats, supported Peterson in a Liberal-led minority government, tossing the Conservatives from power and relegating them to official opposition status.

In the ensuing 1987 election, Peterson won a majority and the Conservatives were reduced to third-party status, behind the NDP.

The federal Liberals’ decline has been more gradual.

Their 11 years of majority government under Jean Chretien came to an end in 2004, when Paul Martin was reduced to a minority.

The Martin-led Liberals lost power in the 2006 election — reduced to official opposition status — which resulted in a minority Conservative government for Stephen Harper.

In the 2008 vote under Stephane Dion, the Liberals lost more ground to the Conservatives.

And on May 2, Harper finally won his coveted majority, while the Liberals, under Michael Ignatieff, were reduced to third-party status, behind the NDP.

Like the federal Liberals following their fall from power in 2006, the Ontario Conservatives post-1985 arrogantly believed voters had made a mistake in turfing them from office and would soon come to their senses.

When Miller’s government formally fell in 1985, the Tories jokingly, but significantly, posted a hand-made sign on the premier’s door saying they’d be right back.

“Right back” turned out to be 10 long years of wandering in the wilderness, eight of them as the third party in the Ontario Legislature.

Still wandering

Similarly, the federal Liberals have been wandering since 2006 when they lost power, and, arguably, since 2004, when they lost their majority.

What the Ontario Conservatives eventually learned — and what the Liberals have yet to learn — is the public didn’t think they’d made a mistake in tossing them from power.

Nor did they much care who the next Conservative leader was, as long as he sounded like the previous ones.

The Ontario Conservatives only started their climb back to power after they elected Mike Harris as leader in 1990.

He figured out what still escapes the federal Liberals.

That is, that the only way back to power was by listening to what the public, especially the party’s grass roots, wanted, rather than telling them what they wanted.

That led to Harris’ Common Sense Revolution (CSR), a collection of easily-understood promises which he released a year before the 1995 Ontario election.

Harris was mocked by his political opponents at the time, who said he’d blundered by giving them a year to attack his collection of simplistic, right-wing ideas.

Voters fed up

But as it turned out, enough Ontarians, fed up with what they viewed as Rae’s spendthrift NDP government of 1990-95, elevated the Conservatives from third-party status to a majority government in just one election.

When it was over, I asked one of Harris’ senior advisors how Harris knew the public was ready for such controversial measures as a major clampdown on welfare.

He told me when the Tories started talking to ordinary people, even they were surprised by how strongly the public felt about the need for major welfare reform.

“We found out you basically couldn’t go far enough on that issue,” he said. “People were just so fed up.”

It’s a lesson the federal Liberals have yet to learn.

That is, that whatever the specific policies you end up supporting, you have to begin by listening to what voters want, not telling them. Who knew?