Review: Harper's Team

Abstract

HARPER'S TEAM Behind Scenes In Conservative Rise To Power Tom Flanagan Montreal and Kingston: McG ill-Queen's University Press, 2007. 326pp, $34.95 cloth (ISBN 978-0-7735-3298-4)Elections leading to change often produce many books, but the 2006 Canadian federal election was exceptional. To date, eight books have been published accounting in some measure for the Conservative party's accession to government, albeit with minority. Tom Flanagan's book is uncommonly interesting in that he writes as both central insider and leading political scientist. Flanagan, on the one hand, references Edmund Burke, Aristotle, Friedrich Hayek, the median voter theorem, and academic election studies; on the other, he discusses the highs and lows of campaigns, the panoply of events, people and committees, and the mundane (how many buses does party need to campaign in the prairies?).Flanagan's account runs from 1991 to 2006, ending with The ten commandments of Conservative campaigning, where he provides template for future election victories. He recounts meeting Stephen Harper and their developing relationship in the 1990s, Harper's election as leader of the Canadian Alliance (CA), successor to the Reform Party, the 2003 merger of the CA and the Progressive Conservative (PC) parties, the election of Harper as the new Conservative party's leader and the elections of 2004 and 2006. Flanagan served as manager of Harper's leadership campaigns; was Harper's chief of staff in his first year as CA leader; was the party's 2004 campaign manager; and worked in its 2006 war room. After the PCs were virtually destroyed in the 1993 election, he was involved in various subsequent unite the right endeavours. eventual coalescing of conservatives broke the Liberal party's 13-year hold on office that had been built on four victorious elections (three majority, one minority) and helped in good measure by the fractured right.There is much here about how modern political party works, especially in the frenzied atmosphere of electronically charged campaigns. organizational depth that is required-and mostly achieved by the Conservatives-to contest an election is clearly revealed by Flanagan's discussion. He works his way through various setbacks and successes with measured manner and judicious eye. He admits mistakes (his and others), such as the infamous charge that Paul Martin was soft on child pornography; and acknowledges organizational, planning, and resource inadequacies. reader senses fair recording of the inevitably subjective and often-undocumented history.Practitioners' expedient decisions and theorists' abstracted justifications for action often clash in politics. Does one argue for advantage or principle? precipitating event for the CA-PC merger was the decision of PC leader Peter MacKay to engage in discussions with Harper, even though at the leadership convention, barely concluded, MacKay had signed an express commitment not to do so. Flanagan reports what happened but does not judge MacKay's actions. Do the practitioner and theorist in Flanagan agree? Flanagan writes that despite a cap on national campaign spending, it is easy and legal to exceed it by transferring expenditures to local campaigns that are not able to spend up to their own limits (188). Easy indeed, but Elections Canada has questioned this in-and-out scheme's legality, to the point of having the RCMP search Conservative party headquarters. …