SHADES OF '68

I gotta say, this Liberal leadership convention is the most exciting one I have seen in years, certainly at the national level. The last time we had excitement like this was, well, 1968 when Pierre Trudeau got in.

Looking back at the most exciting conventions in Canadian history, certainly the Liberal convention in 1968 stands alone as the only Liberal convention in living memory that was exciting. Richard Gwyn says of it in the Toronto Star:

That convention had drama, melodrama, style, passion, rage, anguish.
Best of all, and most un-Canadian of all, it had sex — the generalized, "Peace and Love" sexiness of the 1960s. The flamboyant sexiness of all the mini-skirted hostesses of most of the candidates, Trudeau of course having the sexiest hostesses. And the sheer raw sex appeal of Trudeau himself, cool, ironic, mocking, detached and teasing Canadians into getting into a mania about him. He was our way of carrying on the sophistication and spirit of Expo '67, and also our way of having our own John F. Kennedy.

I read somewhere that you can tell the parties apart by how they act at these conventions. The Liberals have sex, the Conservatives get drunk, and the NDP bury you in lots of pamphlets. What's interesting is that the Reform conventions were even worse than the NDP as far as burying people in literature were concerned. Those conventions had to be the most boring ever, which is probably the main reason that party ended up out of business.

Anyway the Liberal conventions seem more like my kind of convention, with lots of girls in miniskirts. Why I ended up a Conservative I don't know. Certainly the Tory conventions I went to had less girls and more booze. And more food. If you want good eats, attend a Tory leadership convention.

Back to exciting conventions. I'd nominate the 1968 Liberal convention as the most exciting. Certainly the ones that came after were quite dull affairs: the 1984 second-ballot John Turner cakewalk, and 1990 one-ballot Jean Chretien win, and the even more one-sided 2003 Paul Martin coronation. As for the other parties, the NDP have staged some pretty wild conventions; I won't forget when Svend Robinson threw in the towel despite leading on the first ballot to hand the leadership to Alexa McDonough even though the final ballot wasn't even finished yet. That was bizarre.

But the wildest conventions at the national level were held by the PCs. 1967, when they kicked John Diefenbaker out to make room for Robert Stanfield, who won on the fifth ballot. 1976, when Joe Clark went from third place to victory on the fourth ballot. 1983, when the anyone-but-Clark forces knocked out Joe and elected Brian Mulroney. No one forgets the attempt by John Crosbie to swing a deal at that convention that would have seen Joe drop out and endorse Crosbie to stop Mulroney. Brian Peckford was on national television pleading with Clark to withdraw.

And of course the most infamous convention was in 2003, when Peter MacKay did the deal with David Orchard in order to prevent Jim Prentice from becoming PC leader. That was the most infamous deal in the history of Canadian politics.

That was great stuff, and I'm hoping to see more of this this weekend. Maybe that's why there's so much grudging admiration from these jealous Tories on these Conservative blogs, seeing the Liberals fight it out in Montreal, because it's been a long time since we've seen an exciting leadership convention at the national stage. Especially from the Liberals. At least we've seen some dramatic second-ballots out of the PCs and out of the Canadian Alliance. But the Liberal races have been blowouts. The only Liberal conventions that were exciting were their provincial conventions in Ontario. I know that in Ontario they had quite a few that went five ballots and one was decided by a margin of nine votes! Another was decided by something like five in the morning! But their national races were over by the time Hockey Night in Canada aired.

Not this time, it looks like, and that's fun to see.