Episode 1257: Ups and downs

Zain 0:01

This is The Strategist, episode 1257. My name is Zain Velji. With me, as always, Stephen Carter, Corey Hogan. Guys, it is Thursday, October

Zain 0:12

don't know, I feel like I just give the date now. That's good. It's very CBC to me.

Corey 0:15

me. It kind of limits the long-term appeal of the episode when you do that. I never said the year. He

Carter 0:21

didn't give the year. I

Zain 0:21

I didn't give the year of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Peace be upon him. Jim Caviezel will always be my Jesus. Jim is my Jesus, is what I say.

Zain 0:33

I don't like to say Jim is my

Zain 0:35

Carter, are you a big Thanksgiving guy?

Zain 0:38

No. Yeah. Corey, are you a big Thanksgiving guy?

Zain 0:41

Jim is also my Jesus. Can I tell you

Corey 0:42

you why? Yeah, tell me. Okay.

Zain 0:43

Okay. Can I tell you why? I'm not a big Thanksgiving guy. I forgot it's Corey. He's probably thought through something with his quasi-intellectual... Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead.

Corey 0:52

No, it's not very intellectual, Zane. It's a turkey-based holiday. like how much enthusiasm am i going to have for that carter turkey top

Zain 1:01

top five chutney in my mind yeah

Carter 1:03

yeah i mean you need lots of chutney like no no turkey turkey

Zain 1:06

turkey is the chutney to

Carter 1:08

if you have the cranberry chutney then you put a turkey chutney

Corey 1:11

chutney on your plate and it makes uh everything a little smoother yeah it's

Carter 1:15

it's a tragic it's a tragic holiday hey

Corey 1:17

hey bud what's going on with your microphone yeah it's terrible here's

Carter 1:19

here's the thing do you remember last time when you said to me hey your microphone doesn't work you should probably do something about it no yeah that

Zain 1:25

that was on the train yeah yeah yeah

Carter 1:27

yeah i was on the train and then i thought to myself well what the fuck does cory know and i didn't change it so do a thing no

Carter 1:34

no i mean why would i and it's not like i wasn't at the apple store all last week buying

Carter 1:40

buying myself a brand new computer because that's exactly what i've got does

Corey 1:43

does it take you that long to buy a new computer uh

Carter 1:46

uh well there was multiple mistakes made you

Corey 1:48

you probably shouldn't have worn a blue shirt and khakis when you went shopping there i'll

Carter 1:52

i'll tell you something people were super unhappy with my answers i'm

Carter 1:58

i'm like genius yeah that works for me and uh did not work for them and

Corey 2:03

and yet you came back every day not getting a cord i see well

Carter 2:06

well no not getting a cord and then i had the wrong computer and then uh i went back and didn't get a cord man you're

Corey 2:12

you're really easing into your age that's great that's yeah that's what happens when i get out of the way you

Zain 2:18

you get stories like blue

Zain 2:21

blue shirt and khakis which by the way i'm pretty sure is the best buy uniform that you're referring to just so we're clear i'm

Zain 2:31

just so i would have a

Zain 2:32

chance i don't know wearing a best buy uniform at the apple store which would be very carter of him when's

Corey 2:38

when's the last time anyone needed to go into a physical store you know it just feels like uh let's

Zain 2:43

let's move it on to our first i don't have time fucking time for this my man at 45 percent of my computer let's move it on to the first yeah Yeah, I'm also dealing with a clock of my own. Yeah, this is a mess. We're a gong show. That's good. Give us your money, by the way, people. Keep doing it. Our first segment, Carter, the cost of living politically. I have three topics on hand, and I want to ask you guys the political cost of them. They've emerged in the news. I want to talk about the specific story, but I want to talk about then the broader story as well. Carter, let's start here. The first story. We

Zain 3:13

have Pierre Pauliev now, through sources and reporting by Radio Canada, they've talked to multiple conservative sources that are saying Pierre Pauliev is going to be temporarily mealy-mouthed on the entire gender identity parental rights issue. They really don't know where to go with this particular file. Do they take the lead of some of the conservative premiers and follow their step on defending parental rights? some premiers defending it to the nth degree, perhaps even bringing out that notwithstanding clause? Or do they have a more tame response on it, per se? But Carter, the question I have in this segment called The Cost of Living Politically is, what is the political cost of the public seeing your calculus, or the public seeing you calculate this, of this leak coming out Now, through multiple sources saying you're actually not just engaging in conviction, which was the Pierre Polyev brand, or one of the brands that he said he was going to bring, but that you actually have calculus in you and that you are calculating on this particular file. So the question around cost, Carter, political cost, is around what cost do you pay when people see you making political calculus open in public and see that sausage being made?

Carter 4:28

Well, this is really interesting because I'm, you know, I wanted to respond that some issues are beyond politics, right? Some issues are more important in politics and standing up for children's rights is probably first among them. And then I kind of thought, well, is that my own political calculus, right? Like, am I just taking a position that I know will have certain resonance within the audiences that we're talking to tonight?

Zain 4:52

Yeah, sure, sure. Or that you care about. Yeah, yeah, sure. Right.

Carter 4:55

so my own political calculus has been conducted. My political language

Carter 4:59

language is set so that I offend the least number of people or I inspire a certain subset of it. The challenge is when you allow it to be seen, when you allow it to be seen, then it takes away some of the value of the action. So, you know, weighing it shows to the, you know, the far right that they that you're not a true believer, you know, taking these kind of half steps shows the other sides that you're you know, you're also just kind of waffling for political gain. So most of the time, we don't want to show our

Carter 5:35

our political calculation. We just want to execute.

Carter 5:38

execute. And most of the time, we're able to. But this

Carter 5:42

this one seems to be stumping a lot of people.

Zain 5:45

Yeah, there's a specific question and a general rule, right? And I want to hit on both of them. Corey, your reaction to this? The cost of people seeing your political calculus?

Corey 5:56

You're talking about the cost. I'm going to suggest to you there's also a benefit. I think they want to show the calculation on this one. I think where they're going to end up is a situation where they say something to the effect of the conflict we feel is the conflict Canadians feel. We are unsure about this issue. It makes us deeply uncomfortable how far this has pushed against parents' rights to be involved in their children's lives, but it also makes us deeply uncomfortable to do anything heavy-handed when we know there are children involved and we know there are legitimate reasons for better and stronger protections in this space. And yes, you saw that conflict at our convention. You probably have seen that conflict at your Thanksgiving table as people come to this well-meaning with very different views. So as conservatives, we're not sure. So let's talk a bit about principles. Let's talk about the things that we believe in. We believe in protecting children. We believe that parents know better how to raise their children as a general rule than anybody else does. does. And, you know, I could easily see Pierre Polyev actually spinning out a message track from that conflict. I don't think the conflict hurts him. I don't think the idea that he's going to rag the puck and flip-flop and be mealy-mouthed hurts him if everybody thinks that's the strategy. And so, you know, there are some benefit to the calculation being exposed bare there. So the next round of, you know, articles about Pierre Polyev giving deeply unsatisfactory answers about this they'll say oh yes but that's his internal strategy to manage these forces look how clever the man is right like it's like meta yeah it is it's a game upon a game but i actually don't believe for a minute they don't want us to know but a game upon

Zain 7:36

upon a game only if you

Zain 7:40

that that they land on this they land on this deeply conflicted quasi-empathetic or fully fully empathetic response if they don't and they pick one of the two lanes being contemplated

Zain 7:55

it's a different outcome is it not carter well

Carter 7:58

well i mean cory is imagining this scenario where they think like this um i mean it is compelling i

Zain 8:03

i have to i have to agree that is very compelling cory like i could i could i could buy that just but that's me it's

Carter 8:09

it's just not you don't think so it's no because sometimes well because sometimes complicated things are actually really simple and they

Carter 8:17

they just generally don't know how to do this. There's a large subsegment of the population that they want to get in the next election that feels that this is a bad thing. There's a large population of people that they currently have that think it's a bad way the other way. So sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. It's a simple problem with a political calculus attached to it. Pierre Polyev's not trying to game

Carter 8:43

game the system to come out ahead of it. He's simply trying to figure

Carter 8:48

figure out what's in his best interest, as Pierre Polyev always does. And

Corey 8:52

And you don't think for a minute that he would see it in his interest to have people think that his lack of satisfactory answer for either of those sides is actually him doing some brilliant Solomon-style balancing act? Like, you don't think –

Corey 9:07

I mean, literally, it's a Solomon-style balancing act here. like like people have been doing this for thousands of years the idea that they're they're the ones who are like geez it's tough you know i guess i'm just gonna have to cut that baby in two yeah

Carter 9:19

yeah i mean oh that's the that was the point of

Zain 9:21

of that story yes that's right like yeah i know it's like flipping through my quran here i'm like why solomon i don't think i know that character good

Zain 9:31

story guys yeah no i by the way um it's fine cory i was going to mention some new merch based on the quran but i don't know if i'm gonna that's gonna get me in trouble um whoa

Carter 9:41

at you showing restraint yeah

Zain 9:43

yeah that's amazing on the patreon signed versions of the crime will be available the strategist.ca will of course all three of us will be will be happily citing the front page uh cory i have to ask you on this though is there a general rule on showing your political calculus because you've made a very compelling case carter would disagree but you made a compelling case that perhaps there isn't that that you know the the conventional wisdom around any time you show your calculus to carter's point there is a bit of a downgrade there's a bit of a, they're not doing it out of a place for conviction. Do you think there is like a set of rules or parameters around showcasing your political calculus? And if so, what are they?

Corey 10:19

Well, we have talked a lot in the past about how the process story has become such a part of political reporting.

Corey 10:27

reporting. People want to talk about how things happened. You know, maybe we'll get to Webb Canoe's massive, well, massive, historic victory. I mean, massive in the historic sense in Manitoba. The process stories that came out instantly about that and how our friend Brian Topp was involved behind the scenes and all of that and how it works. People, there's a certain class of political observer who wants to read it like a sports match, right? They want to understand the conditioning that went into it, the strategy that went into it, the X's and O's of it all, right? Even though the majority of people who watch sports are just sort of watching it and getting wrapped up in the excitement there or capturing the thrust and the parry. And I think that people have sort of decided, and it's become normalized over the past many, many decades at this point, that we don't hold it against politicians that they calculate, unless

Corey 11:18

unless that calculation in some way, shape or form betrays them as an overt hypocrite, right? So it would would be one thing if you were sitting and calculating like oh geez do we put our health care policy in the window or do we put in the window our policy on education like we could do either and you know we could go after voter segment x or we could go after voter segment y but if you're saying uh geez i don't know if we should say that the you know the country will fall apart if we don't have private health care or if we say the country will fall apart without public health care you know like when you start like making such dramatic and mutually exclusive exclusive decisions and it all becomes about the calculus that's where you run into trouble here and you can make a case that this is Pierre Polyev trying to do that but I think he'll actually try to find a middle ground we live in these absolute times and people do tend to immediately go to a corner and say it is impossible to have any view but my view but

Corey 12:12

but I do believe and the polling somewhat backs this up and we've talked about this a few times Canadians

Corey 12:18

Canadians are actually a little little conflicted on this particular matter. And there are very strong righteous positions that get taken. And frankly, I take them too. I think we need to protect trans kids. And I'm not morally ambiguous about this particular issue. But when you look at most Canadians, most Canadians do not have moral clarity on this issue. So I don't feel that this falls into that category. And I actually think that's the opportunity for Pierre Poliev. And I think that's the trap for his opponents. Because that moral clarity that so many of his opponents have is not going to work for them in in the court of public opinion. You

Zain 12:49

You make a good point, Corey, around that lack of clarity Canadians may have. And it's not from one Canadian to the next. To illustrate the point, you're probably talking about like an internal conflict that people have themselves. It's not just you and

Corey 13:01

neighbor or you and your partner.

Zain 13:02

partner. It's the internal conflict, yes. I'm

Corey 13:04

I'm not saying somebody is like madly on one side and their next

Corey 13:08

neighbor is madly on the other. Right, right. That's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about, you

Corey 13:13

you know, and just as Suleiman ibn Dawud would say, right, like Sometimes you've got to find that middle ground. He would say it a

Zain 13:21

a lot. He would say it a lot.

Corey 13:24

people could see Zayn smile right

Zain 13:25

right now. I mean, we're going to sell that one passage from the cron.

Corey 13:32

Yeah, that's good. I like that, Carter. Hey,

Zain 13:33

Hey, Carter, Corey makes a compelling point. I think he does. No, he doesn't.

Zain 13:39

I was trying to get the rules. I was trying to get the rules of political

Zain 13:44

political calculus. Is the rule to constantly minimize it and not showcase it? He's actually changed my mind and the bias I came in asking the question.

Carter 13:54

I don't think that there's ever a time to show a weakness on a moral issue. And a weakness is to be like, well, there's good people on both sides, right? Right. Like Corey's taking me. There's good people on both sides argument. And I just don't think that in this particular case, either side. And

Carter 14:13

And keep in mind that this isn't

Carter 14:15

isn't you know, this isn't a situation where he's trying to appeal to just one side. He's trying to appeal to both sides and both sides are going to be put off by his argument because his argument fundamentally betrays the values of the sides that he's trying to to to speak to. And that's where, you know, this I just think that it's simpler. I just think that it is a simple calculation designed to try and figure out how they

Carter 14:40

they can get the most voters and, you

Carter 14:44

know, play the issue the best possible way for them. And that's that's

Carter 14:52

that's Paul. And you're saying,

Zain 14:53

to be clear, you are saying even if that calculus lands him in that exact same balancing act that Corey alluded to, that

Zain 15:02

that that is still not going to get him the political points that Corey was saying that he would get as a result of that internal confliction that he's been talking about. I

Carter 15:12

don't know who this mythical audience is. I mean, who's

Carter 15:16

who's the mythical audience that Corey's alluding to? Who's the group of people that are doing it like three-dimensional chess? I mean, sure, our

Carter 15:24

Patreons are doing it. But

Carter 15:26

But I mean, everybody else is looking at someone who can't find a moral position to save his life. No,

Corey 15:31

No, look at the polling on this. People aren't really sure what their moral position is. And insofar as there's any clarity from the polls, it's probably that the idea of parental rights is more popular than we would perhaps like to believe. believe and so what this is would be pierre polliev offering himself an out and an ability to deprioritize this issue and we talk about sword issues and shield issues and this would be a shield issue this would be him saying i'm

Corey 15:56

i'm damned if i do i'm damned if i don't honestly he may find it personally conflicting and complicated himself and so why in the world would he not actually just sort of speak that out put it to the side and say this is all we're only in this position because Justin Trudeau has moved us into this era of distraction politics meanwhile it's harder than ever for you to buy a house meanwhile this country's GDP per capita has actually declined in the past 10 years meanwhile meanwhile let's talk about how we get rid of the gatekeepers get this country back on track because the dream of Canada has to be one available for the next generations we're sitting there and arguing about uh you know this particular issue Meanwhile, the the issue of children coast to coast to coast living in a poorer Canada than their parents is being unaddressed. Like, I think that's very compelling to many. Sure,

Carter 16:45

Sure, that's great. But that's a that's a decision. What

Carter 16:48

What you're saying is you're holding up the process of not reaching a decision. Right. Like it's not a binary decision. There's three decisions on the table for Pierre Polyev.

Carter 16:57

First decision, support children's rights. Second decision, support parents' rights. Third decision, this isn't our issue. we're going to go a different way. What you're trying to do is portray a lack of decisions and indecisiveness between option one and option two. And

Zain 17:14

And hence, like Corey believes, exposing this strategy publicly is part of the account.

Carter 17:20

account. It undermines even the example that he's giving. I quite like his strategy. But by showing how that particular sausage was made, by showing how he is avoiding the issue and going after things that he thinks are more important he is undermining his position regarding the first issue he's making the first issue the the first step to the second to to the to the positioning that cory created just go there don't show the fucking sausage wheels

Corey 17:48

wheels no no no no so this is where i let me try to bridge this back here i believe he wants people in the pundit class including us to be talking about the fact that they're conflicted in the the conservative party so that when he makes a bunch of unsatisfactory statements and doesn't go there because he doesn't want to go there right now we can all say ah yes that's pierre working on his strategy not i pierre doesn't know what the fuck he wants to do personally right now and so it all feeds into a broader view of how he can approach this issue i i am fairly

Corey 18:17

fairly convinced they don't mind at all that we think the conservative party is a nonsense that is

Zain 18:23

interesting i'm going to leave this

Zain 18:24

i've got a second one i want to talk about in this banner of cost of living politically. Corey, I'm going to start with you on this one. Leslie Church, who's the chief of staff to Christopher Freeland, has left. She's got a new chief of staff, former Kathleen Wynne person, seems eminently qualified to take on the position. That's another story we'll talk about. Andrew Bevan,

Zain 18:40

Yeah, we'll talk about that later.

Zain 18:43

I want to talk less about Leslie Church. She seems very qualified for what she's about to do next. She wants to seek the nomination in Toronto-St. Paul as a liberal, of course. She's been with the Trudeau government since 2015, longtime liberal. I want to talk, Corey, about the cost of having staffers, especially senior staffers, run as candidates for your party.

Zain 19:06

And we've probably seen this cycle in our universe of Alberta. I'm trying to actually recall some examples, and I couldn't think of any. I'm sure you probably have some. Rod Love immediately springs to

Carter 19:16

to mind. Oh, okay, sure. And

Carter 19:18

And Spencer worked for Shane Keating. Ryan

Corey 19:22

Ryan Topp, who's already come up this episode, ran for leader of the NDP.

Zain 19:25

You guys have gotten more examples than I was racking my brain for four seconds before the show started.

Zain 19:33

there's obviously benefit, but there has to be a cost. And I want to explore the cost of what the cost is of having senior staffers at senior levels of your government wanting to be humble candidates at some point. And you may even get where I'm trying to go in some ways, Corey, but give me your take, because you might diverge with me a bit. So

Corey 19:55

So this is super fascinating. I used to think that the parties really diverged in their views on this. And I often thought of staffers becoming candidates more of like an NDP thing, frankly, right?

Corey 20:05

perceived it as, well, you do this and you move up in the organization, you become more of an organizer and then you run and it's all part of a continuum of social democratic politics. That was much more common in my view in the NDP and it was far, far less common with the liberals in my view. And I'm sure people can find counterexamples all over the place. But generally speaking, if you wanted to have a liberal nomination be taken seriously, you wanted to go and do something. And maybe it was just, I say just, but maybe it was be a lawyer. Maybe it was be a business person. Maybe, maybe, maybe. But you'd go do things and you'd come back and you'd get a liberal nomination. And so the arc for the liberals was much more often staffer, career,

Corey 20:44

career, come back to be a politician.

Corey 20:47

so much so that when a very good friend of mine in 2015 was

Corey 20:51

was thinking about going to work for the liberal government he

Corey 20:55

he said to me like hey do you think i should do this and i said well you you want to run at some point right he said yeah and i said well i don't know it doesn't seem like if you want to run you go and do this right like yeah people like to think it comes i now think that advice was totally wrong we've seen that with marrying we're seeing that with leslie church We're seeing a change in the way the liberals approach this particular issue. And that is probably a little consistent with their leftward shift. And I think even more so than spectrum stuff, it's consistent with how we've changed our view of politics over the years, right? It

Corey 21:28

used to be a thing that particularly, I think, the liberals and the conservatives saw as you do some service, you come in. And by the way, particularly the conservatives, you do some service. We don't want career politicians, you come in. But now, Jason Kenney, Pierre Polyev, these are career politicians who went from staffer to politician.

Zain 21:48

Staffer, maybe even like third party group that was intellectually aligned and then back in and out. If at

Corey 21:53

at all and barely. But the

Corey 21:55

is, like, this now seems to be the norm in politics. And it seems to be a professionalization of politics and this view of an MP as a step on a ladder rather than a representative. And that's not all great, in my opinion. But it's an interesting phenomenon that has occurred that I think we should all take note of. I

Zain 22:12

I want to get into that's not all great in a second, Carter, but I want you to react to this. The framing is the cost of having senior staffers run as, I'll insert the word again, humble candidates to be elected representatives. What is the cost?

Carter 22:28

I mean, I think that actually this is

Carter 22:31

is the cost of multiple or, you know, multiple rules have been brought in. So if you want to remain in the political field, if you want to, I mean, we have taken away certain options. If you're a staffer,

Carter 22:44

staffer, you now have to wait years before you can lobby the government. You have to, you know, your career path has been limited by constraints that we've put in front of you. And one of the options that's still available is to just be a candidate. So

Carter 23:03

So you go from being a staffer to being a candidate because, well, what the hell else are you going to do? You're not going to take four years out of the game. Right.

Zain 23:12

Right. To be clear, you're talking about the lobbying freeze at the federal level for senior staffers, right? I

Carter 23:17

mean, and it's ridiculously long. I mean, and, you know, there's ethics commissioners and there's laws and it's just convoluted. But where there is no law and where it's not particularly convoluted is you can become a candidate. You couple that with the green light process that we have put in place for virtually every party, you know, in Canada and arguably, I mean, there's no green light process in the United States. yeah

Carter 23:42

but in the you know you've got this green light process now that gives you a tremendous leg up because

Carter 23:48

because they all know you right

Carter 23:49

right they know you they know your their foibles they know and depending on the senior

Zain 23:53

senior you where you probably you know some way may have even hired them or had a

Carter 23:58

been vetted or the prime minister really liked you or you know whatever i mean but basically you've got your your you're halfway through the vetting process already ready and because there's everybody in the party knows you everybody in the staffer set knows you no one wants to piss off christia um you know like it's a tremendous leg up for that for that staffer now what is the cost um to

Carter 24:25

to the individual you know like it it it's it's

Carter 24:29

it's not that bad to the individual and i don't think there's much cost to be truthful to the um to

Carter 24:37

to the system either because now we're getting politicians

Carter 24:40

politicians who are just better trained i suppose the negative of that would be politicians that are relatively indoctrinated to existing process but

Carter 24:50

at least they know where the fucking bathroom i

Zain 24:52

i have not come in here with preconceived notions i i say humble candidates simply to kind of illustrate that for many staffers cory and this is not just a liberal thing or an NDP thing. Candidate and elected is kind of seen not at the top of said hierarchy, to be totally clear, especially if you're not in cabinet or you're not a minister. Being a humble elected person, you're kind of seen as, oh, like, you know, the third-ranked PMO staffer, fifth-ranked PMO staffer ranks significantly higher than you, you know, so to speak, in the ecosystem. So the reason I phrase it that way was to try to get a reaction, but I don't come here with preconceived notions. Corey, you did say, though, all is not great and i want to kind of refer back to that uh when you have senior staffers run for for candidacy yeah

Corey 25:35

yeah well look um steven's talked about why it actually might even work for the party in many cases you have people who are you're not going to have the

Corey 25:44

the counter example of somebody who knows nothing about politics comes in and steps on both their feet inexplicably at the same time right like they don't know what the fuck they're doing get off message contradict the the leader. I'm creating a very extreme example, but these are things that a staffer who has become a senior staffer is for sure not going to do and is going to understand the pecking order and the political machinery and what they need to do. And they'll understand the things that provide value in politics too. Like, guess

Corey 26:11

guess I better go knock doors. Guess I better identify my vote. Guess I better get that vote out. You know, stuff that sometimes with somebody who has no political experience, you

Corey 26:19

you pull your hair out trying to explain to them the importance. They're they're like, well, I think I'll just write a really powerful op-ed and everyone will vote for me, right?

Corey 26:26

That shit drives people crazy. But

Corey 26:31

outside perspectives are good and healthy, and they are good and healthy for a political party. And if being a candidate in a political party is just another step on the ladder, you're going to get increasingly insular political parties. And sometimes that insularity is a strength and a value, right? Like we're all together, we're here in the cause. And that's, you know, maybe that's in part why it was historically something that i would identify with the ndp it's like they were the people keeping the light on they were going to be there every time they were going to fight the fucking fight they were going to get it done and they were on a crusade but if you are the liberals and you are a party whose entire reason to exist is to kind of communicate

Corey 27:06

communicate back to canadians what canadians already are and triangulate towards the middle which is i'll describe the liberals as that other people might have different descriptions that kind of insularity is lethal because all all of a sudden, you're not getting those outside views as much. It becomes ideological, in

Corey 27:20

sense. It becomes ideological. And if you don't have an ideology, and you become ideological,

Corey 27:25

well, I guess you have the modern liberal party, right? I mean, that becomes the challenge. Well,

Zain 27:29

And for some of us, this is why we like the modern liberal party, because it's become kind of ideological to the left. But I hear you, right? Like, the reflective mirror aspect of it is less so. That mirror's dirtied up in some ways. Well,

Corey 27:41

Well, and so that's one of the challenges. And that's why I think it's not all good.

Corey 27:45

historically you also kind of thought that a candidate from outside especially in like a safe seat like that's an opportunity to bring in kind of new perspectives new blood somebody at the top of their game a star candidate and

Zain 27:58

and this should be a relatively safe seat if not an ndp liberal switch 100 and

Corey 28:02

and um and the idea is like if you're uh justin trudeau and you need to say shore up your economic side go find yourself a vice president from a bank like a senior vice president from a bank go find yourself somebody who's like the head of a think tank in this area that you really respect mark carney you could have mark mark carney although he's running edmonton center

Zain 28:22

sure i forgot about that yeah yeah but

Corey 28:23

but this is my point zane like you know you use the safe seats to get people in and in the marginal seats you use somebody who means something to the community right so they are like a business leader or they're a big community organizer or something like that and a staffer is neither of those things now i do think realistically over over time, on that second example of like the community leader, who the candidate is just matters less. People are much more just voting for the party. But those are some of the downsides there. Can

Zain 28:51

Can I ask you a sidebar question, Carter? And this is to both of you. It's literally just reacting to what you've said, Corey, which is, you know, a staffer is neither of those things. You just kind of said that right now, right? In terms of community leader or like the outside heft. If you are a political staffer, do you get to ever wear the other part of the identities that you had or your resume that you had prior to being a political staffer? Or is everything else left away?

Corey 29:15

away? No, you can. Carter, you're laughing.

Corey 29:20

I'm not sure you

Zain 29:21

can. I thought you guys were going to diverge on this. Yeah. I

Carter 29:24

I think you become the staffer, right? And the staffer is a caricature. I mean, you kind of hit upon it, right? That's the fourth ranked person in the PMO has more power than the um than

Carter 29:40

than the candidates and and and that guys

Zain 29:43

guys would even mean the 40th person in the PMO if I wanted to right like that's kind of what I was trying to illustrate it

Carter 29:47

it builds some resentment right like it builds some some

Carter 29:50

some pushback from others and I think that there is a a risk

Carter 29:54

risk and Corey and I may differ on the size of the risk but I do think that there's a risk that once

Carter 30:00

once you've been a staffer you're always a staffer

Carter 30:03

staffer and you think like a staffer You behave like a staffer, and it is fundamentally different than how you would behave if you were a, you

Carter 30:13

you know, just a candidate from the street. With all of that experience that you would have had before, everything that you were up until the time you crossed the line. I think there's a truth to that. You can't

Zain 30:21

can't unknow what you know, for sure. But also, like, how you're defined, right? I'll be honest with you guys. You guys ask me all the time why I never go inside. side. One of the reasons is because I don't want to be labeled with something that is so big in the eyes of the public, but that is so small to me, which would be you're a one-time political staffer, right? And I speak personally, because I know you guys, we've had this conversation offline. But Corey, you think you can. You can wear the other parts of your resume or your three-dimensionality after you get labeled as a political staffer. Because Leslie Church, I don't even know what she did prior to this. She's had a whole life prior to 2015. I'd even even bother looking at it. Because I'm like, well, she's Krista Freeland's Chief of Staff. That's how she's ever going to be known. And I mean, that's no small role. She's Chief of Staff of the Deputy Prime Minister. But why do you think there could be, you know, the other parts of your resume could still rise?

Corey 31:09

Because it's all about storytelling. And if you're worth your salt in political communication, you're going to tell a story about who you are and why you did the things you did and where you're going to go next. And you've got to keep in mind, not everybody's going to take such a jaundiced cynical eye and and most people don't understand the system and the power dynamics that exist internally to a government and most of the public will just see mp is a more senior role than senior staffer right

Corey 31:36

so when you're there you say hey you know i i worked in job i like just you know i worked in job x and at job x i i i did these things for my community and i was really frustrated with the inability to get things done from the harper government so when the Trudeau government came knocking I really wanted to get involved and I really excelled there and I did it but ultimately the things I want to do are not about just helping what the people there are doing it's helping my community do the things I always got into politics to do so I am you know I'm from this background I'm going to do these things Stafford was just an attempt to do those things but now I really want to do those things right and you can kind of pull people back to your origin story and you can make your origin story the origin story for your mp job and your staffer job and kind of treat them in that particular fashion even though we may view these roles a little bit different and you know there's a storytelling component to it all here and i i think ultimately it's

Corey 32:31

it's maybe not that convincing to people on the inside but i don't think it's like unconvincing to people on the outside that you would try to find different ways to serve and that this is the next big way to serve carter respond to that you you want to I

Carter 32:43

I mean, did he take his optimist pills today? Like what is like what happened to our cynical Corey Hogan that we've all known and modestly disliked? What happened to that guy? This is this is not well, they're

Corey 32:59

they're not going to put on their brochure like I was a staffer. and it's no no i'm not

Carter 33:03

not even i don't think that the media every time they write the fucking story isn't going to say former christia freeland staffer every time until that you know unless until leslie churches won 15

Carter 33:14

fucking elections i guess i that's going to be the lead line in every in every article about her i'm

Zain 33:20

i'm even talking about outside of like running for office like right you You know, like a staffer, like

Zain 33:26

like that identity is so overpowering, regardless of how limited the

Zain 33:33

the months or the years were on your resume. I think, Carter, you and I might be saying the same thing, right? It's overpowering in a positive and a negative

Carter 33:39

negative way, though, Zane.

Carter 33:41

I think that you have a tendency, and this

Zain 33:43

this is us having our battle

Carter 33:44

battle about you and your professional life again in the public eye now, which I think is way better. And we should have done it from the beginning, hey, Corey? Yeah, we should

Corey 33:53

know, look, I mean, like, it is very funny to me. It is interesting. Like, I feel like I met Leslie Church when she was at Google, which is the role she had before there. Right, right, right. And I still kind of think of her more as that than I do as a staffer, even though I'm sure she's been longer. Oh,

Carter 34:09

Oh, look who's so connected.

Corey 34:11

No, no, no, no, no. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying, like, if staffer was your, you

Corey 34:17

you know, absolutely no question best job, okay. I take what you're saying, but that's not true with Leslie. you know, I just, that's not the case. So I just think that there's some storytelling that can be done that can make it just part of a way to serve. And if staffer

Corey 34:32

staffer is by far the best thing on your resume, well, then yeah, you've got a problem, then you are branded as a staffer, but that's not necessarily the case. Carter,

Zain 34:39

Carter, I'm going to finish off on this second one in our list of the cost of living politically. What about the knowledge and the power that you had as a staffer?

Zain 34:50

Is that come, is that, and then not having that as potentially a backbencher. Like, you know what I'm trying to, or how you got treated, or how much proximity you had to them. You'd know that a staffer would know that. They'd know that, of course they would, that this is a different type of job. But there's also that, fuck, I used to have this before, and while this might be a step up on the ladder to our earlier conversation, it's kind of not in some ways, depending on how you look at the gig and the power that you had. So talk to me about both the power, the proximity to power, which may not ultimately exist as a candidate, but did if you were a very senior, successful staffer like she was.

Carter 35:33

I get running for leader. I get running for, you know, like Brian Topp ran for leader when he decided to succeed. And

Zain 35:38

And to be clear, this is Brian Topp who was an organizer, campaign manager, strategist, then ran for leader of the NDP back in 2012, I believe. You

Carter 35:47

You know, and I kind of get that because I think leaders have so much power in our system. And we've argued that perhaps they have too much power in our system. But right now, we're not in the place to change that. But,

Carter 35:59

you know, I just kind of look at this and think, you know, I'm

Carter 36:04

I'm not sure that this would be the thing that I'd be pushing for if I were her. Because unless you're in cabinet, the average backbench MLA is not a great job. It's

Carter 36:15

It's just not a great job. and it

Carter 36:18

takes a special type of person to think you know what i'm going to be in cabinet and most

Carter 36:23

most of those special types of people that we knew and that we know don't

Carter 36:27

don't make it to cabinet because um

Carter 36:30

um you know it's almost like saying well i'll be in cabinet is some sort of disqualification from being in cabinet unless you know

Carter 36:39

know the leader really well there's so many there's so many calculations that go into that dynamic. So I'm not sure if Leslie

Carter 36:46

Leslie Church had picked up the phone and called me, and let's be honest, we were all surprised that she didn't. If she picked up the phone and called me, I'm

Carter 36:54

I'm not sure I would have said, yeah, Leslie, this is your next play. This totally makes sense to me. I might have been, you

Carter 37:02

you know, probably asking the question that maybe Maybe Christia Freeland asked, which is, are you sure? Are you sure you could be, you

Carter 37:11

you know, I think this also sends a signal that Christia Freeland is not going to go for the liberal

Corey 37:17

Oh, I completely agree. Oh, that's a good point. In some ways, that's the bigger story. Yeah, that's

Carter 37:21

that's probably the bigger piece. I didn't even consider

Carter 37:24

strategists, Zane. Yeah, no, it's good. That's why we're here as strategists.

Zain 37:27

So I've been hosting the last several episodes. That's right. I've been downgraded again. You

Zain 37:32

want to go on this power question? Well,

Corey 37:34

I think Stephen has said a version of what I want to say. I think one of the reasons staffers often do this is because, let's be really clear, and it's especially the case in a city like Ottawa, more so than a provincial capital, but it's true everywhere in politics. There is still a caste system to politics, right? There

Corey 37:53

There are the electeds and there are the staffers, and the staffers support the electeds. Now, if the elected you support is the big dog, well, you've got an awful lot of authority, But that

Corey 38:04

you know, could go away in a minute, right? And you have to say the things that they tell you to say. You have to do the things that they tell you to do. And staffers have a ceiling.

Corey 38:13

That's the simple reality. You can't be promoted from chief of staff to

Corey 38:16

to leader. You've got to run a political contest for all of that. And a lot of people look at that and say, boy, we're not all Brian, like Brian Topp almost won against Tom Muller. Which is quite

Zain 38:28

quite something when you kind of look back at what that

Corey 38:30

that would have been. Yeah,

Corey 38:31

Brian's a force in the NDP. But yeah,

Corey 38:34

yeah, it is quite something. You're

Zain 38:35

correct. Like when you look at the career thereafter as well, and before, it's just like the

Corey 38:38

the chief of staff

Zain 38:39

staff and now running a successful campaign. It's quite an impressive, like across the board. Yeah, one

Corey 38:43

one in 2015 here in Alberta, one to, you know, yesterday in Manitoba. Like that's very impressive, but enough pumping Brian's tires. We don't want to give him an ego. He doesn't listen. Does

Corey 38:55

listen? He's a very humble fellow. We'll make him pay for the Patreon. Yeah, I don't know if he's a patron. Yeah,

Corey 39:01

I doubt he is. So look,

Corey 39:03

look, I think the point I was trying to make, though, is a lot of staffers say, I don't want to be the second class in this caste system anymore. I would rather be kind

Corey 39:13

kind of on the lower rungs of the top caste than the top rungs of the bottom caste. And at least then there's the opportunity to speak my mind and do things on behalf of the community and maybe make a play for the bigger jobs down the road, cabinet and leader. leader and a lot of this is also the psychology of staffers it can be very frustrating as a staffer i

Corey 39:33

i know you two know this where you are preparing a candidate and then the candidate sucks in some way either just in that moment or generally yeah right

Corey 39:42

right they're they're not delivering the lines you wrote brilliantly they're not executing the strategy you crafted with any intelligence god you could do it so much better you're sitting in the corner in that meeting and he is fucking up that meeting what is he doing you know like that's sometimes

Carter 39:58

sometimes cory they take a 20 million dollar problem and solve it with 500 million dollars you know i mean that that has happened

Carter 40:05

sometimes in my life those

Zain 40:07

those are very specific numbers wow yeah

Zain 40:10

yeah i mean it's you know

Zain 40:14

carter thank you yeah

Corey 40:16

i think that there's also a little bit of that that too like you don't like there's an emotion to it too that says like i i want to go for it i don't want to be in this position anymore and especially a city like ottawa very hierarchical very wild i

Zain 40:31

want to go to our last one and it's a broad one around

Zain 40:34

around the cost of living politically but it does celebrate what happened in manitoba and i say celebrate because i've clearly an ndp supporter and in the provincial scene and what they did in manitoba wab canoe historic victory as you talked about it, Corey, and a pretty sizable victory when all was said and done. You know, they increased vote share, they increased seat share, they got a pretty comfortable majority here.

Zain 40:59

What's the cost of winning, Corey? We've talked about a few of these in the past, right? Like, everything you did gets enshrined as being successful, right? Like, I'm already seeing, I'm already getting personal tweets around, look, this is what a positive campaign can do. And I don't want to take anything away from the Manitoba NDP, from Brian, from the whole entire team there, to Wab Canoe in particular. But what is the cost of winning? I actually, I don't think we've ever talked about this larger topic on the show. And I don't want to take 45 minutes because I'm at 7% battery, which I'll have to rectify. I'll rectify that while you guys speak. But I want you to get started on this. Around when a victory happens, a lot gets kind of molded in a certain way. Talk to me about the cost of winning.

Corey 41:44

cost of winning we

Corey 41:46

have talked about this in different contexts here the cost of winning is when you've won everything you did was brilliant and sometimes what you did wasn't brilliant and so it becomes very difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff you also have the cost of winning being all of a sudden everybody is there and wants to be involved and not everybody's good enough to be involved going forward and

Corey 42:07

and so the enthusiasm the

Corey 42:09

the honest enthusiasm that people can going to have uh

Corey 42:11

uh when they see a historic victory like we've seen in manitoba i would wager that from coast to coast to coast you had an awful lot of people saying hey what's winnipeg real estate look like like how

Zain 42:25

how expensive is it yeah that's funny that's funny yeah yeah oh

Corey 42:27

oh my god i can buy a house like that for three hundred thousand dollars why could i live in winnipeg i wonder maybe i should make a call you know like i could imagine that's happening a lot pretty middle of the country can get to both sides oh

Zain 42:40

oh you can get anywhere on

Zain 42:42

hop on a plane

Zain 42:44

every weekend i go vancouver i go to toronto i go vancouver i'm saving so

Zain 42:49

so much money on a house i might

Corey 42:50

might as well go to both but

Corey 42:52

but you know one of the costs of winning is that uh it's

Corey 42:55

it's so romanticized and it's it is such a romantic thing that people can make dumb short-term decisions and they can lock themselves into weird things and people can get swept up in it and so you know there's lots Lots of costs of winning, Zane. That's just a few. I

Zain 43:09

I like those ones. And we've put some of those on the board in the past. I felt like this would be a moment to, once again, Carter, to not like, you

Carter 43:15

you know. I'm here too, you know. Yeah, to not like

Zain 43:18

like put a knife in the tires of a victory.

Corey 43:19

victory. But, but. No,

Corey 43:20

mean, it's, again, historic Web Canoe victory. Really.

Zain 43:24

I think it's a great moment. And I would have brought this topic up if the PCs won anyways, right? Like, which is, what is the cost of winning, Carter? Corey put a few on the board. I really like the one, by the way, of not everyone is good enough to get involved. I want to talk about that in a second. Not to save any stories, but I'm sure both of you kind of do. Carter, what else to add to the list there?

Carter 43:45

I want to kind of go back to, you

Carter 43:48

you know, everything you did was right. You know, like the

Carter 43:51

the idea that you're getting telephone calls saying, see what a positive campaign could do. I mean, you weren't up against someone who, you know, threatened,

Carter 44:00

threatened, you know, said that they wouldn't dig out the landfill, who said, you know, you're voting alone in your voting booth. I mean, there were some spectacularly bad things done by the

Zain 44:10

the other side. Own goals, you mean. Yeah. Yeah.

Carter 44:11

Yeah. And now you're going to look like, oh, yeah, you did great. Everything you touched turned to gold. You guys are the best. That's not true. They're not the best. They made significant errors in the campaign. everybody makes significant errors in the in a campaign um

Carter 44:28

um and but their shit ain't gonna stink for a little while and

Carter 44:32

and then on top of that the chances of being a one-term wonder is super high because one-term wonders are you know they happen quite a bit in provincial politics especially from the ndp side and there

Carter 44:45

there has to be some sort of collective understanding of what it it means to actually govern and what it means to govern with that leadership and reflection that I talk about so often in in a balance that your people may not want because they may be saying we won this is our chance to be to be new democrats to be the real new democrats to show everybody how new democratic we can be here in Manitoba and that may not be your best play if you want a second term.

Zain 45:18

The one-hand wonder thing is interesting, Corey. I might kind of take that point and expand it into the historic nature of a victory. The Nahed Nenshi, the Barack Obamas, now neither of them were one-term wonders. They left on their own terms, right? Yeah,

Zain 45:32

No, no, no. But this is why I'm kind of expanding it into something else, which is the risk of the historic moment, right?

Zain 45:40

right? The risk of the... Because his star is shining extremely bright today. Extremely bright, right? The whole story, you know, a young man who was, you know, had some trouble with the law, found family, found politics, right? Became a community leader. Like, he even talks about it on stage. His star shines incredibly bright. Is there a cost there in the sense of, like, maybe being too high to deliver? Like, it was one of the Obama criticisms was, like, they were expecting the world, and they got a very pragmatic, iterative, thoughtful, but like, like, hey, I'm just two links in a long multi-generational chain of presidents sort of person. And so I'm kind of, and I don't really have a question other than to kind of put that on the table to maybe get you to react to. No,

Corey 46:22

No, I think that's what I was trying to drive at at the end of what I was saying there about the romanticism of it. Like people get swept off and they think like, oh

Corey 46:30

oh my God, it's the arc of history and we're telling a story and we're turning a page as a civilization and look at us and look at what we can now do. And now everything everything is going to be wonderful forevermore. And then reality comes in. And you could have just as easily on your list had Rachel Notley, you could have had Dave Barrett in BC, you could have had Bob

Corey 46:51

Because many of them swept in with the same kind of energy of like, look, look what this means. Look what this means for our province. Look what this means for the future of our communities here.

Corey 47:01

it's not so easy, right? There are hard decisions that need need to be made and there is a choice that any government that comes in that sweeps in on such a change mandate has to deal with which is how much change do you do do you do a little bit do you try to be incremental about things or do you go all in do you try to just change the entire world as it is in front of you both have their drawbacks i

Corey 47:26

i would say you try to change the whole world more likely you're going to be a one-termer you try to be more moderate incremental barack Obama, more likely people will become disillusioned with you that yet before had all of those ideals about you and thought you were kind of the second coming and just like really a remarkable individual. And that's because, you know, nothing in life is as good or as bad as you think it's going to be, including your politicians, except Donald Trump was as bad as we thought, but everybody else is not as good as you think it's going to be. And that's just the reality here. And so, you know, that's tough for some people to digest. And this is the—Wabkanu will never be as popular as he is right now.

Zain 48:08

Let me take that and ask another strategy question. Let's get out of our mold of cost, Carter, because I think there's a strategy question here. If you were helping Wab Kanu today, would you tell him to lean into the historic aspect? Or would you say, it's time to dial that down?

Zain 48:22

And you've had to do the similar thing with Nahid Nenshi. The morning after, we've heard the story, right? 30-plus interviews across the world. Wab's getting that type of attention, too, right? right? Do you dial that up in the moment? Because there's probably benefit around galvanizing staffers, galvanizing attention, drawing focus on your province, where you are, etc. You know, leaning into the history? Or do you kind of do the opposite and say, let's temper expectations? Let's not get way too high right now, because this will actually maybe not be so great for us a couple weeks, couple months, couple years down the road?

Carter 48:57

I mean, keep in mind, I've been involved in a few of these. Yeah, sure. sure i i watched nenshi's uh redford was the first woman premier in alberta uh her popularity soared after she was elected uh jyoti gandek you know the first female mayor of calgary all of these things create unbelievably high expectations do a victory lap and then get the fuck off the track right like you you get

Zain 49:25

get is that your lesson is like is that is that yeah Yeah,

Carter 49:28

Yeah, you cannot, the bitterness and resentment that follows the stardom, right? We talked about this in the context of the celebrity arc versus the politician arc. And when you have the celebrity arc, which is, you know, Wab Kanu is right now, is in this celebrity arc. He is the new guy. He's the it guy. Well, that doesn't work particularly well for politicians, if we're honest, right? Right. If we're honest with ourselves, most politicians who wind up in celebrity arcs wind up in celebrity scandal. Get

Carter 50:02

Get out of the celebrity arc. Stay in the politician lane. Downplay, downplay, downplay, because this the celebrity arc is designed to destroy people. That's what it's there for. We love watching Kim Kardashian go up and down and up and down. And I'm sorry, I'm describing her porn tape. um anyways jesus

Carter 50:33

got into it and then i didn't know i'm

Zain 50:35

i'm coming to you on this in a second um that

Zain 50:37

that also yeah i get it for sure uh carter's smiling like he's 12

Zain 50:45

how do you know you've actually gone too far you said take your victory lap you don't ah

Zain 50:50

so how do you have you gotten burnt on this you've done three history you could argue three historical campaigns that you've had to work on i think every time you

Zain 50:58

you have gotten burnt you think you've gotten burnt how how well i think that

Carter 51:02

that nenshi i think nenshi doesn't get the same bump if he doesn't have the flood um

Carter 51:07

um you you recall that we had the flood because he was actually you know he was starting to go down in the polls already um and then the flood came he said nenshi nouns and everybody loved them again for a bit um but the the you

Carter 51:24

how long were we at the top of the world until january or or so with redford january i think we were in october election

Carter 51:30

election i'm not mistaken

Carter 51:32

oh yeah we got elected in january

Corey 51:34

people were legitimately that was the legislature i believe was 83 seats at the time and people were legitimately talking about 75 to 80 yeah

Carter 51:42

yeah i mean we had like everybody

Carter 51:44

everybody was like you guys are amazing and then we almost lost the next election because the up and down of it like you just you

Carter 51:51

you can't say well we're really high now let's try and get some things done because

Carter 51:55

because anything you do in the period of this will be resented later

Carter 52:00

later there is a resentment that follows the the stardom and

Carter 52:05

you're better off not to use it and there's not a lot of people who've been there who've seen the ups and the downs like um

Carter 52:13

like Like even even top hasn't seen that many of these kind of like star situations. The

Carter 52:20

population does not like it when you get they love to elevate you and then they love to tear you down.

Corey 52:26

Yeah. And honestly, there's just an expectations thing. Like you pour so much into these more transformational change focused leaders, these these leaders that represent something bigger than themselves, Whether that be WAP being the first indigenous premier of a province or Rachel Notley being the NDP elected in Alberta. And the governing's tough. Governing's tricky. And governing means making choices. And you disappoint people. And the disappointment hurts so much more and drags you so much deeper when you had those high, high, they would never expectations that you put on leaders like this.

Zain 53:04

It's so interesting, because during a campaign, all you're trying to do is get to get them to cover you positively. And then you win. And there's a floodgate of positivity from across the world. And you have to show a type of restraint, which you haven't had to before. It's an entirely different muscle in some ways that you're having to operate. Would you not agree, Carter? Yeah,

Zain 53:24

think that's the right

Zain 53:25

phrasing. Corey, react to that. I'm just thinking out loud. I think that's true.

Corey 53:28

But I think the other thing is you also, like, let's be honest, it feels great like all of a sudden you're getting all of that and it's coming much easier than it ever did during the election no no effort and literally yeah and

Corey 53:39

and you tell yourself but this is actually good for me because now i'm building capital i can use to do the things i want

Zain 53:45

want to do right that is

Corey 53:46

is a school of thought no doubt that it's not just a school of thought it's a i think i would argue it's what most would do it's probably true but it's also really tied to a story you want want to tell yourself right like it feels great i could see some benefit down the road of course i should do this media of course i should elevate expectations of course i should have this conversation and can i be honest i'm not convinced they shouldn't right

Zain 54:10

right this is what i want to try to get so i haven't gotten your answer yet right

Zain 54:12

right like this is what i want to tell me tell me what you would advise i'm putting you in the same chair that i would put carter in you get shipped out to winnipeg and you have to advise wab canoe and campaign guys the next week could be we've got got 150 requests we're

Zain 54:25

we're taking all of them are we inflating expectations are we flooding the zone what are we doing look

Corey 54:29

look there's things you need to do and you need to make sure people are doing them but then yeah i think my answer is yes you are because this is not going to happen again and whether you think that this moment has a lot of value or a little value you certainly think it has value and it's not coming in six months this moment exists in this moment and so you might as as well do it and frankly you've earned it you did a thing and i think it's awesome especially with a guy like bob who gets to then you know display on the highest stages international media the representation of of an indigenous man who has a redemption arc who has come from some very dark places and has risen to this place where he can be an inspiration to people across the globe and there is there is kind of like an intrinsic value in that beyond a political value you and i i think it would be nuts to say actually i'm i'm too busy right now i got to meet with the transition team on what um you know what dog licenses are going to look like in winnipeg like that's you know obviously not an actual thing but that's you gotta you gotta pick your best use and you are the only person who can do these things at this moment and you've got a team that hopefully has been working and if i know brian and i do know brian i know they've been them working and they're ready for this transition so go

Corey 55:46

go out there carter you look uh you know make your statement you look worried i just think

Carter 55:49

think i don't disagree with cory in terms of what he's saying you know you've got to go out and take advantage of this but you have to do so in such a fashion that you're not blowing yourself up too much then

Carter 55:59

then you know um my my

Carter 56:01

my recommendation would be emphasize team emphasize uh the amount of work that needs to be done um be humble oh

Corey 56:11

oh don't be be braggadocious i agree for sure i wouldn't want to be misunderstood i

Carter 56:15

don't model me uh

Carter 56:16

uh when i did it uh it's

Corey 56:18

it's not the wob show it's not you know like

Carter 56:21

yeah i mean it

Carter 56:21

it was the stephen carter show and it was pretty spectacular so wait

Zain 56:25

wait wait tell me about that like in the sense that when there was process stories about you and there's of course stories about the candidate is that what you're talking about just so i'm clear yeah i mean after

Carter 56:35

mean essentially i got fired on election night right so no i'm

Zain 56:38

i'm talking about you you win the leadership though when you say don't model leadership but

Carter 56:41

but i'm now asking leadership was really tough for us because she'd lost her mother right like so we

Carter 56:48

we had we were battling all kinds of problems um

Carter 56:52

and she didn't take much of that victory lap because she was in mourning she did a bunch of

Carter 56:59

interviews to be sure but we didn't capitalize on it very

Carter 57:03

very much at all because she was can i we had real issues can i

Zain 57:06

i ask you this to both of you what would your what would your 2023 rule be if because we love the process story as we just discussed in the previous sort of uh story right cory that we were talking about yeah what

Zain 57:18

what would your rule be for for a campaign manager like like brian or or others right like if this was the pc campaign manager if they wanted to talk about you

Zain 57:27

right how you did it would you do the one and done the classic is to do the one and done one-and-done paper of record, right? We've seen that already. The one-and-done paper of record. Would you do multiple interviews about the victory? How would you think about it? What's the 2023 rule? The reason I say that is I think the rules may have changed. I'm curious. I'm so sure

Corey 57:46

sure that Carter and I will see this differently, because I just don't. I don't like those things. I don't. I mean, I'll read them. I like them as a consumer. And

Zain 57:54

And we've read the one in the Winnipeg Free Press, so there is one that kind of walks you through the campaign, who was brought in when, etc. It's great. Like, we love to read that sort of stuff. Corey, keep going.

Corey 58:04

Yeah, I think that we do tend to tell this hyper-fictionalized version of the campaign, right? It ends up having all of the same beats as a medieval fairy tale, right? And this is when the dragon came, and this is how I slayed it, right? This was

Corey 58:20

the dark moment where we had to walk through the forest. My

Zain 58:24

My favorite one is the Alberta one. If anyone wants to read the Alberta Bird of One, written by my friend Jason Leder, in the Globe and Mail. Oh, it's exactly that narrative, Corey, right? Like, Danielle Smith was like, she didn't even know how to walk straight. And

Zain 58:37

And then we gave her a gift. And she rose up from the ashes. She said, I can win with this. I think I can win with this. That's just not... But

Corey 58:45

But like, you know, this is... We joke a lot about how I don't like the West Wing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I don't. I don't like the West Wing. I don't like the West Wing because of, like, like the rising violin music and the dramatic moment where everybody does the thing that they want to do and the stars in their eyes. And we'll get back to the idea of like this romanticism of this particular business. And, you know, often it's like, they'll sit there and they'll have like a high-minded argument with each other. And then somebody will say something brilliant and they're like, and

Corey 59:14

and that's the answer, you know, and then everybody goes out and their souls are lifted by all of the things that happened. And it's as though, you know, Moses has parted the red sea and they can walk through now right but in reality what it is is it's guys like me and steven in a room going

Corey 59:30

going fuck fuck you got any ideas i don't know like somebody throws an idea we beat the ever-loving shit out of the idea we come back to that idea five hours later when we realize that was actually the best idea after we've beaten the ever-loving shit out of every other idea and we cobble something together which is not as good as optimal and in fact we probably wrote wrote optimal down at some point but then we have to pare it back to reality here and then we forget to do part b and then part f comes along and we fuck it up but then we get to tell the story afterwards about how steven carter was in the room and he said this thing and yeah and i hate that shit i just like you know why i hate it because

Carter 1:00:07

because you know why cory it's

Corey 1:00:09

misleading though like that

Carter 1:00:10

that is not how politics works well here's the thing i'm gonna jump

Zain 1:00:13

jump in with you you've

Carter 1:00:14

you've never been in the room with me i did this you'd see this is how i did

Zain 1:00:22

many rooms with you steven

Corey 1:00:22

steven i know exactly how this fucking works okay

Zain 1:00:25

okay carter i did this after the nenshi election in 2017 our friend rob from from cbc brought me into the studio they played the clip being like and the person you saw on the stage there that's the guy who helped nenshi win the campaign i'm like yeah okay well we were supposed to win by 20 we won by eight so i'm here uh but okay what do you want to lose what do you want to talk about you lose

Zain 1:00:44

Oh, trust me. No interviews after that campaign, Carter.

Zain 1:00:49

Still waiting to be called. No one asked the Globe and Mail from our side. We asked. They're from the Globe and Mail. Carter, what do you think? What's the rule? If you were running Wobb's campaign, there was a bunch of interest in you, how you did it, what's the story. You could think of it this way. This is a great time to elevate those around us who rarely get any part of the spotlight. Or it's a time to say, I'm going to shut the fuck up. We'll do our one standard, what's become conventional wisdom, paper of record story, and all the attention goes back on Wobb. How

Zain 1:01:18

How are you playing this? If this is you as a victorious sort of group that won this campaign?

Carter 1:01:25

Are they going to write the story whether I participate or not?

Corey 1:01:29

Great point. That's why you do it. then

Carter 1:01:31

then you participate and

Carter 1:01:33

you say the words i couldn't have done it without this fantastic team that we built the candidate i

Carter 1:01:39

mean really uh best candidate i've ever worked for i mean you've never heard me say anything like that before have you guys not

Corey 1:01:48

candidate i've ever worked

Carter 1:01:50

you know like i mean we gave her words and she made them sing it was amazing amazing and everything

Carter 1:01:58

wasn't a perfect campaign but because we had such a good candidate we were able to paper over those mistakes um and i learned a tremendous amount about politics from in certain candidate name yeah

Corey 1:02:12

think you're way too comfortable giving that interview yeah

Zain 1:02:15

i get the i don't actually you don't actually win anything yesterday just so you could clear i'm

Carter 1:02:20

i'm telling you i i'm putting myself back in the zone

Carter 1:02:23

familiar familiar with the beats yeah oh

Zain 1:02:26

you're familiar okay i'm done with this let's move it on to our final segment or over under our lightning round stephen carter we do this for you as you know um hey listen tell me this is a serious question overrated underrated indian

Zain 1:02:38

indian misinformation about justin trudeau and what it means to the canadian diaspora man

Zain 1:02:43

man that's a heavy question but

Carter 1:02:47

doing a full segment well we

Zain 1:02:48

could but overrated or underrated give me just your your initial sense of this like so just for to fill people in indian media is a very broad brush stroke i'm painting this with a lot of misinformation and disinformation about justin trudeau domestically the relationship he had with the the now deceased individual uh that was murdered here in canada uh cocaine use on the plane all this sort of ludicrous shit coke yeah

Zain 1:03:13

overrated underrated in terms of what its domestic political effects could be carter it

Carter 1:03:17

it is It's completely underrated. I mean, all

Carter 1:03:20

all of a sudden you've got governments with, you know, with government style resources, with

Carter 1:03:26

with willing audiences that are willing to listen and hear these things. Because it turns out the media sources are oftentimes very specific to the audiences that they're trying to reach. We've talked about this in the kind of the downfall and the changes in media. media so these are highly highly targeted media outlets with a significant audience that wants to believe what is said and they will believe what is said I mean but

Carter 1:03:54

I mean I can't even begin to tell you the misinformation and the challenges that were we had in Surrey during that mayoralty campaign um but

Carter 1:04:04

this is way worse and there's

Carter 1:04:07

there's not much in the way of checks

Carter 1:04:11

checks and balances when it's another fucking government that's coming in to do this to the to the leader i'm i'm very very concerned this is this is russian interference china interference is you know all the different interferences all coming uh in full visibility home

Carter 1:04:28

home to roost in canada cory

Corey 1:04:30

cory overrated underrated in your mind i

Corey 1:04:32

i i do tend to agree with steven it's hard being a country of 40 million people standing up to a country of what 1.3 1.4 billion

Corey 1:04:42

people like that's just a reality we have to contend with here and we can't really go it alone this is why we have alliances with europe and america but europe

Corey 1:04:51

europe and america don't seem that keen on you know having like these for

Corey 1:04:56

for all of the reasons we have already talked about right the geopolitical consequences vis-a-vis china and all of this here so boy fuck we're in a tough jam here and i don't actually see this thing softening in any way shape or form and we talked about this too i continue to not see a very elegant out here in fact we saw escalations this week with more of the uh consular staff being kicked out of india and sent back to canada it's

Corey 1:05:20

it's escalating if anything and that's the formal escalation and the informal is this like just absolutely laughable

Corey 1:05:28

laughable stream of of rumor

Corey 1:05:31

rumor and innuendo that is ridiculous like the suggestion that somehow like trudeau is like a lover of you know

Corey 1:05:39

it's like i don't even know what to do with some of this stuff but the problem is we laugh

Corey 1:05:42

laugh at it at our peril like these things tend to have this corrosive effect over time They're going to be shared by opponents of the prime minister. Everything gets murkier. People start to doubt everything. And there is a significant language component here, too, where we're not seeing as English media consumers all of the stuff that's going on. We have to wait until we get like that one person who's relayed the one fact. But it's very problematic. And it is part of a bigger challenge that we have, I think, not just in Canada, but in the Western world with misinformation and this asymmetry and how relatively easy it is to cause great pain with relatively little resource if you're outside of a country and you're willing to do whatever.

Corey 1:06:28

But yeah, it's a problem. It's a huge problem. Carter?

Carter 1:06:32

Yeah, I mean, I would just add that back in the day, we used to have kind of

Carter 1:06:37

of a simple, I'm going to say a rule. I'm not sure if it was a rule or not. But, you

Carter 1:06:44

the parties stood together against foreign entities.

Carter 1:06:47

entities. And I just don't think we'll see that. I don't think that under little PP, you know, he doesn't have the the

Carter 1:06:55

chops to stand against India to to say this shouldn't happen and stand beside Trudeau because he

Carter 1:07:02

he will take the cheap points and

Carter 1:07:05

say, oh, I'm not touching them. You

Carter 1:07:07

You know, he'll say I'm not touching them, but

Carter 1:07:09

won't refute them. He won't stand against.

Zain 1:07:12

Carter, Krista Freeland's got a new chief of staff, Andrew Bevan, who served as principal secretary and chief of staff to Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne until she was defeated in 2018, is now going to fill the shoes for Krista Freeland's empty post left by Leslie Church for chief of staff for both the finance and deputy prime minister office. Carter, are you in or out on this appointment? Longtime loyal liberal? In or out? uh

Carter 1:07:36

uh it seems totally

Carter 1:07:38

competent and qualified to me again i remain upset about not getting a telephone call but thank you for bringing it up cory

Zain 1:07:45

cory in or out on this particular hiring

Corey 1:07:48

is a very serious operator uh and liberals going back i know we said hey leslie church leaving is a suggestion that uh christia freeland is not sticking around this would be the counter argument andrew that

Zain 1:07:59

that he's coming in serious

Zain 1:08:02

Interesting. Corey, I'm going to start with you on this final one.

Zain 1:08:06

Newfoundland MP, liberal MP, Ken McDonald, for the second time has voted against the liberal carbon tax. He's siding with the conservatives. He's saying that Stephen Gilboa is a poor messenger on this particular file. He's too ideological. That's me using words, but I'm not far off. And the liberals need to rethink their approach on this climate incentive or whatever we're calling it.

Zain 1:08:28

overrated or underrated the political damage something like this could do uh to the liberals he's a backbencher i mean he's not someone that that that we know not a household name but this is round two that he's voted against one of you'd argue the signature policies of this government yeah

Corey 1:08:45

yeah i i don't know i think i will say underrated but maybe just rated about right i don't think people are saying this is not a big deal like not a thing people are saying oh wow okay this is weird it

Corey 1:08:57

could be the first cracks in um in a in a broader chiseling away of the dam and then the water might just pour out on this particular matter i've said this before and i'll say it again it

Corey 1:09:10

it is not inherently a position of progressive politicians to support a free market mechanism like a carbon tax with like a you

Corey 1:09:19

know like incentives on the back end And it was something that seemed to make an awful lot of sense. And that's why people did it. But it's really tough for people to kind of sit there and pay more. And I think in some ways, this MP might be a little bit more in touch with some of the voters and be feeling a nervousness that other MPs should be feeling too. And if that's the case, well, you know, if they start making the calculation that he's right, well, then I think Trudeau's got bigger problems.

Zain 1:09:50

Carter, Ken McDonald, Liberal MP, voting against his government on the carbon tax.

Carter 1:09:58

this just simply can't happen, right? This is, these things are too important and you can't create opportunities for people to undermine your government like this. The fact that he's still in the caucus, you

Carter 1:10:17

you know, he should be gone. Should absolutely be gone.

Zain 1:10:21

We're going to leave it there. That's a wrap on episode 1257. As a strategist, my name is Zane Velge. With me, as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter, and we'll see you next time.

Transcript