An early scene from Kevin Taft’s political life is illustrative of the Liberal Party leader’s four-year tenure and why, after a humbling defeat at the hands of Ed Stelmach last spring, Taft announced last week that he will step aside to allow someone else to guide his party into the next election.
Around the time Taft was assuming the reins of the provincial Liberal Party in 2004, Premier Ralph Klein was creating the sort of inelegant commotion upon which his legend is predicated. Having raised some umbrage by suggesting that Chileans kind of brought the whole brutal regime of Augusto Pinochet on themselves, Klein refused to apologize and, as proof of his expertise in international affairs, pointed to a B-minus essay he had written for a course toward his communications degree from Athabasca University. Close examination of the paper showed that the great majority had been reproduced in its entirety from the Internet without citation of sources.
In the midst of the tumult, Taft remarked at the Leg, “The last couple of months here have been like living in a Doonesbury cartoon strip.”
Even this might have been too brainy an allusion for a certain segment of Alberta’s electorate, but there’s plenty of proof besides that Taft, a former academic and policy analyst for the Alberta government, was out of step with prevailing political tastes in this province. The man who ran things couldn’t be bothered to crack a book to write a university paper, while Taft had gained public prominence because of a book he’d written. When Shredding the Public Interest was published in 1997, Taft was thrust into the public sphere for his criticism of how Klein’s government scape-goated and gutted public spending on social programs—even though Alberta’s spending had long been below the national average—while heavily subsidizing the public sector. Klein responded by calling Taft a communist.
Four years later, Taft officially entered politics by winning the MLA seat for Edmonton Riverview, one of just seven provincial seats the Liberals held at the time. When he took over as leader from Ken Nicol in 2004, the party’s fortunes immediately improved and Taft is often credited with the Liberals’ surge to 17 seats in that election. Taft came off as articulate, principled and unafraid to call bullshit on the increasingly imperious, increasingly secretive Progressive Conservative government.
But the flap over Klein’s ostensible defence of Pinochet—invoked during a debate on insurance, no less—was just one instance of Taft’s inability to turn the premier’s frequent gaffes and nakedly unilateral governing style into political capital. Taft sided with the people on issues like controlling insurance rates and rents, protecting the environment, managing resources in a sustainable way and providing equal access to education and health care. But while Klein maintained the air of a man you could share a beer with—even after he claimed he’d quit drinking—Taft never successfully projected a human side to go along with his policy positions.
In fact, despite Alberta’s clear preference for opportunistic, intellectually lazy politicians, Taft would write two more books during his tenure as leader: Clear Answers: The Economics and Politics of For-Profit Healthcare (with journalist Gillian Steward); and more recently Democracy Derailed, an analysis of the systematic erosion of accountability in Alberta politics. While both books were well reviewed, neither got as much attention as the copy of Liberal health care policy the increasingly erratic and cranky premier threw at a legislative page in March, 2006. Maybe instead of setting forth clear-headed analyses of public policy, the Liberal leader should have developed some unappetizing quirks to imbue his excessively earnest public persona with a little “character.”
That Taft should ultimately be laid low by a block of no-name margarine like Ed Stelmach is perhaps the final irony in his relatively brief career as Liberal leader and the reversion of Liberal seats back to pre-Taft levels a final, stinging nut-shot. What’s worse, the provincial PCs have scavenged planks from the Liberal platform, including the impending elimination of health care premiums and improved environmental protection legislation. No one ever said the man didn’t have good ideas—there was just never anything fashionable about the way he put them.
Taft said he plans to be done as Liberal leader by January 2009, but will continue to serve as MLA for Edmonton-Riverview.
