So What's Wrong With Adrian Dix?

Anyone who reads this column regularly knows that I have always given Adrian Dix FULL credit for everything that he has done right. He is, quite simply, the purest political animal and most professional politician in the NDP caucus. Futhermore, the selection by the Liberals of their own ultra-politician as leader might encourage some New Democrats to think that Dix is the best person to do media battles with Christy Clark.  This line of reasoning makes me feel uneasy, as the NDP looks set resume its dysfunctional lurch cycle from nice-guy (Harcourt, James) to no more-nice-guy (Clark, Dix). 

To quote former French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau (1841-1929), war is too important to be left to the generals. As a military advisor, Dix represents a welcome presence. But as a leader whose claim to leadership rests on his ability to wrong-foot his opponents, to control information and to drive policy according to the dicates of media and communications strategy, the NDP would almost certainly find itself further removed from the moral high ground that it once occupied prior to 1996.  We would become further ensconced in a politics of  private interest and public appearances instead of  a politics of  personal substance and  public values.   In this respect, the Dix NDP would be the mirror image of the Clark Liberals.

Take a step back and  think of the NDP's leadership as a torch being passed from generation to generation: from Tommy Douglas to Allan Blakeney and Dave Barrett,  to Mike Harcourt and Bob Rae to..... Adrian Dix?  Can anyone think of that as anything other than a descent?  A flight away from moral and intellectual substance and a succumbing to the logic of politics, pure and simple. The steady ascent of Christy Clark and Adrian Dix, over more balanced and substantial characters in both cases, reminds me of those science-fiction films where the robots and computers decide to push their more human mentors aside because of their inferior technical efficiency. 

I had that same  feeling back in 1998, when I realized not just that the NDP al a la Clark-Dix-Gunton was failing, but that I didn't even want them to succeed, on their own terms: highly centralized, top-down media-driven governance and an explicit attitude of "Process is for Cheese"--an anachronistic attitude in the Age of the Charter, if there ever was one. Even the ostensible over-arching purpose of maximizing well-paying jobs was pursued unintelligently for the most part, and clearly subordinated to political optics most of the time.

Consider all of the best arguments for choosing Dix currently being mooted within the NDP, and you'll realize that they each  contain the seeds of their own rebuttal:

1. He was probably the NDP's most effective Opposition Critic between 2005 and 2009.
Oh sure he was. But why did he stand out? Because all but 2 or 3 members of the NDP caucus were complete political novices who probably couldn't have found  their way to the washrooms of the Legislature, and who were unaccustomed to the politics of television. And why was that ? Because the NDP had been all but wiped out in 2001, reduced to just 2 seats. And why was that? Because of the way that Clark-Dix-Gunton ran the premier's office, in particular the fast ferry and casino gate scandals. In other words, Dix was the beneficiary of his own misdeeds.  Clark and Dix had built their own safe bunker in Vancouver-Kingsway, but others were not nearly so safe from the holocaust that they unleashed.

2. Dix is better at getting on television and at using the media to articulate the NDP's position.
Oh sure he is.  But why is he so media-savvy? It is because of all of those years of practice as Glen Clark's right-hand man, making sure that every action of the government was vetted for the six o clock news. The result was stultifying for the most talented cabinet ministers during the Clark years, and ultimately contributed to some bad public policies being made.  Both Corky Evans and Paul Ramsay have opined that the Harcourt government was better than the Clark government, largely for that very reason.

3. Dix did a great job on the Children and Families child death scandal.

Oh sure he did. Did you see how he anticipated every information-concealing and accountability-avoiding move the government made? But why did he display such uncanny clairvoyance? Because for three years as Glen Clark's principal secretary he had been the NDP point man for information control and accountability avoidance. "It takes a thief to catch a thief" is a great-sounding rationale for appointing an oppostion critic or hiring a political advisor; but it is a lousy reason for choosing a premier.

4. Dix has earned the support of the trade union movement.
He certainly has!  Especially the ship-building trades, the  fishers and the forestry sector workers,  who appreciated the efforts of Clark and Dix on  the fast ferry project, the ridiculous linking of U.S. torpedo testing and fishing, the downgrading of the environment,  and the ineffective Jobs and Timber Accord, to say nothing of those public sector unionists who like the idea of Dix and the NDP once again negotiating higher-than -the -rest-of Canada  pay and benefits for health care workers.  But these feats were accomplished at the cost of hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars, and for the most part they have been rightly criticized as  not being in the broader public interest.

I prefer both Leonard Krog and Mike Farnworth  for the balance and humanity and reasonableness that they represent.  They are the true alternatives to the shallow politics of image that Christy Clark represents, and to the costly subordination of policy to politics that she will surely entail.  I  hope that the NDP will choose to fight fire with water, shallowness with substance, and extremity with balance.  And if either Krog or Farnworth do fail to win the next election, it will prove far easier to replace them with Gregor Robertson than it would be to remove Adrian Dix. Do you remember how many sticks of dynamite  it took to get Glen Clark to resign? (John Horgan presents a similar problem as does Dix, but in a much milder form. He's an acceptable compromise.)

To paraphrase Clemenceau:  democratic politics is too important to be left to the ultra-politicians.