Supplied

Rich Vivone

Rich Vivone couldn’t have timed the release of his new book chronicling the Ralph Klein era any better. As provincial surpluses have turned to deficits and we are seeing some of the repercussions of negligent governance, Ralph Could Have Been a Superstar: Tales of The Klein Era is an engaging read that serves as a reminder of how personality politics bolstered the superficiality of the Klein years.

The now-retired Vivone has written a collection of 12 essays about politics in Alberta drawing upon his three decades at the Alberta Legislature, first as executive assistant to former Education Minister David King and then as publisher of the independent newsletter Insight Into Government.

The book could easily have been called From Glory Days to Lost Opportunity. Vivone describes the former premier as a man who “was fine when he knew exactly what to do — cut the deficit — but when faced with reforming and rebuilding the province’s political institutions to lead it into the 21st century, he was lost.” He levels much criticism at the mainstream media and their “preoccupation with Ralph,” which he claims led reporters to focus their stories on personality rather than the policy decisions. Vivone describes the media coverage as part of a strategy developed by Klein and his chief strategist Rod Love: “They wanted you to read about Ralph,” he says, “not the opposition parties. Ralph had to be the essence of political coverage.” Fifteen years after the Klein era began, public discourse in Alberta politics continues to obsess over personality instead of the policies and decisions that led Alberta back into a financial deficit.

While the book is a scathing analysis of the Progressive Conservative regime under Ralph Klein, Vivone also has strong words for the Liberals and NDP. Vivone describes Alberta’s perennial opposition parties as two groups who sometimes appear to “take greater delight in pounding each other than the Conservative government.” He also weighed the likelihood that a new and fresh moderate party will rise, similar to the Social Credit Party in 1935, to challenge and replace the Tories.

SEE Magazine spoke with Vivone from his home in Kingston, Ont.

SEE Magazine: You write in your book that you had a difficult time finding a publisher in Alberta that would publish a book on Ralph Klein. Why do you think that is?

Rich Vivone: The two publishers I spoke to, one national and one local, they told me that Ralph Klein was not a marketable commodity anymore. Even a book such as mine, that was not all about Ralph but of which Ralph was a prominent part, that didn’t make any difference. They thought that the prevailing attitude in the province was that as far as Ralph was concerned, he was done and they were ready to move on to do other things. My argument was that Ralph is part of what this province has been for the past 15 years. He is part of their history, you can’t just forget about him just like that. He is an important part of history, and whether people liked him or not is a different matter. [Patricia Publishing, an American company, eventually picked up the book.]

SEE: In your book, you talk a lot about the media’s focus on personality politics during the Klein years. How do you believe this has shaped people’s interest and how Albertans engaged in politics?

RV: In all the years I have been in Alberta, people in general have never really been interested in politics. Not municipal politics, not provincial politics. The turnout in federal politics is a little better. But when it came to Klein and how people viewed him, I think it was a matter of “If I can’t vote for Ralph, I’m not going to vote for anybody, because I don’t trust the rest of those guys.”
Klein’s performance at the homeless shelter, some of the inflammatory language that he used over the years, and “This is Ralph’s World” when he was half-gassed on election night, still wasn’t enough to get people in Alberta to vote for an alternative.

SEE: Speaking of an alternative, you devote a chapter in your book to the continuing plight of the Alberta Liberals and opposition politics. With the recent Wildrose Alliance victory in the Calgary-Glenmore byelection, do you think things are changing for the opposition?

RV: It will take some time to find out. Over the years — and Alberta has had a real pattern here — when you come to byelections and you get alternative parties, they might support them. I remember back with Connie Osterman in 1992, the Liberals were barely a few years under Laurence Decore and they won a seat in Three Hills, but come the next general election, they lost the seat. It was the same with the Western Canada Concept in the early 1980s. They won a byelection and then lost it in the general election. Klein’s seat when he retired went Liberal and then they lost it. It takes some time for opposition parties to get traction, but the very first thing they need to do is elect a strong leader. You can see in Alberta that there is a pattern of strong leaders when it comes to winning parties, Bill Aberhart in the 1930s and Peter Lougheed in 1971. Unless you have strong leadership, you’re not going to attract good people. If you don’t attract good people, your party won’t get traction.

SEE: What do you think are the key lessons that we can learn from the Klein years?

RV: Well, I think the very first lesson is that people should pay attention to politics, because Klein got away with an awful lot. Just the other day, I was looking at government spending numbers and the huge spending binge that these guys went on in 1998. I mean, they almost tripled spending over 10 years at the same time as they were talking about fiscal restraint and spending priorities. People believed them, and now we all of a sudden we’ve found out that they are running a deficit and that they’ve been spending like hell for a long time. Second, if people in Alberta cared at all about politics, they would demand a say in how government was run between elections. I’m not saying that MLAs should do polls all the time, but there should be mechanisms for people to have input on important bills between elections. Government is about people and they have a right to know what is going on in government. Government has got to be opened up.

SEE: You knew a lot of the Klein-era politicians. Have you received any kind of response from them since you launched the book?

RV: No. Not a single thing. I’m not surprised. The way Alberta politicians treat stuff they don’t like, and might not respect, is to be quiet and it will go away. They did that with almost everything. The attitude is, “If you don’t talk about it, it will go away quick.” My book is quite subjective; there isn’t much in there that isn’t already on the public record and it’s my interpretation that might be different. If they don’t like it, they will ignore it.

Dave Cournoyer is a political blogger, writer, and pundit, and a former political staffer. You can catch him at daveberta.blogspot.com