Most Albertans only get to know their political leaders though the media’s fast and furious 10-second soundbites, pundits’ columns, and campaign ads. These are constructed images, created by the politicians, the parties, the media, and, of course, their opponents.

Ask someone what they know about Alberta’s politicians, and if they don’t draw a blank, they might tell you that Premier Ed Stelmach is a farmer; Liberal leader Kevin Taft is a distant and overly academic ivory-tower type; and New Democrat leader Brian Mason is a crazy left-wing union-loving socialist.

Kevin Taft recently announced that he’s stepping down as leader of the Alberta Liberals by January 2009. Since he announced his departure, I’ve had time to take a step back and reflect on my own non-media image of Taft, having worked with him both as an advocate for post-secondary education and a party staffer.

I met Taft before he became a party leader. Having just read his book Shredding the Public Interest, I was curious to meet the man whom Ralph Klein had labeled a “communist” for his criticisms of his government’s regressive 1990s cutbacks.

Awkwardly standing at the back of a room packed with volunteers and candidates during the pre-2001 election campaign, it was obvious that Taft wasn’t standing on familiar turf. At the time he was a first-time candidate in his home constituency of Edmonton-Riverview, and his body language showed a hint of uncertainty, as if he were unsure of what he was getting himself into.

That election, Taft held back Klein’s Tory blue wave by defeating his opponent by a healthy margin of over 1,500 votes. The next two elections continued to see Edmonton-Riverview voters re-elect Taft with large margins, giving him the largest margin of victory in the province in 2004.

After three years as a regular MLA, Taft was the only elected Liberal to step up when Ken Nicol left the job in 2004. As if it weren’t enough of a challenge to be the leader of the Liberal Party in a province where “conservative” is an identity, Taft inherited the leadership of a party with a demoralized membership and an overwhelming million-dollar debt racked up during the previous election. Over the next four years, the party increased its membership, paid down half its debt, and elected 16 MLAs in the 2004 election (an increase of nine seats). That was a success, even if most Albertans now only remember the defeat of March 2008.

Looking beyond the official image, many Albertans probably didn’t know that Kevin Taft loves ice cream, enjoys Edmonton’s Folk Fest each summer, owns a lovely dog named Abby, and has played in an Old Timers’ Hockey League.

Likewise, most Albertans don’t know that after joining hundreds of volunteers and supporters at Don Iveson’s Ward 5 election night party at the Black Dog on the night of the 2007 municipal election, rather than hog the media spotlight like a typical politician, Taft joined Iveson’s volunteers as they huddled around a MacBook at the back of the Dog to help them write the victory press release. He was the kind of guy who liked to get his hands dirty and help out.

But good intentions and hard work aside, Taft struggled. Opponents on both sides of the political spectrum labeled Taft as an out-of-touch academic rather than a successful Albertan who, after earning a Ph.D. in business from the University of Warwick in the U.K., returned home to Alberta instead of moving to a big city like Toronto or Vancouver. Taft struggled to shed this image in the environment of political spin.

He brought many progressive ideas, but left no quick 10-second soundbite to go with them.