At its core, Jason Kenney’s cultivated image as a perfect leader for our times reminds me of the Stepford Wives of Ira Levin’s 1972 satire about a town where the men have made their wives so perfect and compliant that they are like robots.
Watching the www.thetruthaboutjasonkenney.ca, the NDP’s Internet attack on Kenney’s record in politics, that casts him as duplicitous, unscrupulous and ruthless, reminds one of Stepford.
Even taken with a grain of salt, the NPD’s critique of Kenney has the strength of solid research.
Thinking about Kenney, his fault seems to be that he missed the growing up years the rest of us had between 18 and 29 when we graduated from school and learned our trades and professions, married, started families and learned to navigate in the real world.
In those years, Kenney was shinnying up the slippery pole of party politics.
He was first elected at age 29 and was swallowed up in the Stepford-like world of Parliament Hill where what people think you are, is more important than what you are.
So he missed some of the maturing that the rest of us experienced. He’s a part-made man.
However, underlying the United Conservative Party’s infighting over many candidate nominations is the belief that Jason Kenney will win the spring election and form government.
Many ambitious people want to join him in the Alberta legislative assembly, sitting on the government benches and vying for a cabinet post.
As was the case in the heyday of the Progressive Conservatives, it is assumed that a successful nomination as a UPC candidate means a routine election victory.
This means that, if you are an aspiring UPC candidate, your opponents are other UPC candidates.
The hard feelings that nomination battles create are usually washed away by an election victory, but the UPC is an immature party and already immersed in a dispute over erstwhile leadership candidate Jeff Callaway’s role as a stalking horse for Kenney, and allegations of obstruction of an Elections Alberta investigation into Callaway’s campaign financial activities
Kenney needs to walk softly or he will sow the wind and reap the whirlwind.
He has been demanding that Notley call the election.
Kenney needs the campaign to distract from the UCP infighting, something that Notley, no doubt, won’t do in a hurry because she is the election underdog and needs every advantage she can find.
Frank Dabbs is a veteran political and business journalist and author.
