The modern Canadian political campaign is stalked by chaos and does everything possible to avoid it. Administering surprises rarely does a party’s leader any good, so his day is barricaded against surprise. Party leaders who try to do too much are punished with fatigue. They make silly mistakes they can never undo. So the typical campaign day is a work of minimalism, stripped to a few meticulously planned gestures and padded with downtime. A policy announcement in the morning: “This is what we will do if elected.” A photo op or two in the afternoon, cameras only, no reporters, to provide images that match the day’s message. A rally, usually at night but sometimes over lunch, to hearten campaign volunteers and give everyone else the impression that this laboriously constructed artifice, the modern Canadian political campaign, is a runaway train to glory.
Jim Prentice’s campaign for ratification by the people of Alberta as heir to a 43-year Progressive Conservative dynasty is a train to something, all right, but on the evidence of a Monday lunchtime rally at the Calgary Metropolitan Centre, it was kind of hard to tell what that destination might be.