Filibuster CartoonsTitle: R.I.P. Jack (click to view)
Date: August 23, 2011
Jack Layton, the veteran leader of the New Democratic Party of Canada, passed away suddenly yesterday morning, succumbing to a long-running battle with cancer.
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I will admit outright that I never fully understood Jack Layton's appeal to so many of my fellow Canadians. During our most recent election, when his star was soaring higher than ever, I even wrote an
editorial on the subject, begging for readers to explain what the heck was going on. In terms of the things he said, and how he said them, Layton always struck me as a fairly traditional NDP politician, in both virtue and flaw alike. Charismatic he certainly was, but also preachy, grating, and often undeniably
angry in his public persona — the very personification of the humourless, politically-correct leftist always on the hunt for his next source of offense or outrage.
A highly controversial editorial in today's
National Post describes Layton as the politician who was "always on," and there are probably few phrases that more succinctly summarize the essence of Mr. Layton, and the political party he so thoroughly dominated.
Of course, all this is fairly moot when one considers that I myself am a fairly stereotypical western conservative, and precisely the sort of person whom Jack Layton never intended to appeal to. During his eight-year rule of the NDP, Layton was never a man whose political talents lay in any sort of ability to make inroads into ideologically hostile territory. Instead, he preferred to direct his considerable energy towards motivating his party's traditional base — left-wing urbanites and the labour movement — filling them with a renewed sense of empowerment and importance. New Democrats should never be satisfied with third or fourth place, he said, and ultimately defied widespread conventional wisdom in proving that it was, in fact, possible for them to not be. His boundless enthusiasm for a cause and party that so many had written off during the 1990s played a huge role in changing minds; the NDP seemed more viable as a political option simply because Layton wouldn't stop telling people it
was.
I met Jack Layton a few times, something which is impressively easy to do in an underpopulated country like Canada, where there just aren't that many cities for an ambitious politician to visit. The first time was at a student lounge at the University of British Columbia, where I was set to interview him for a college newspaper I was then working for. Upon arriving, Jack thrust a big, hot Starbucks cup into my hand, grinning broadly. I hate coffee and never drink it, but the unprovoked kindness moved me, so I politely gulped down a few sips.
I think the episode captured a lot of the Layton personality — and appeal. The man always possessed a sort of overzealous, fatherly earnestness, like the stereotypical suburban dad who buys his child a Christmas toy he neither asked for nor wanted, yet remains thoroughly convinced will be a huge hit. He was always a paternal figure, but not in the distant, authoritarian,
Leave it to Beaver sense, but rather the hip, accessible "friend dad" model of the Baby Boom to which he belonged. Polls repeatedly showed that Canadians liked Jack mainly because they considered themselves his equal, this guy who spoke, dressed, and lived much as they did, with his rolled-up sleeves, awkward Asian wife, and clearly un-focus grouped mustache.
A dumb critique you sometimes hear in Canada is that our politics have become too "presidential," meaning our federal elections have become too much about the personalities and quirks of the big party leaders and not enough about the parties themselves, or parliament. It's a very ahistorical argument — all evidence suggests Canadian elections have never worked any other way — but even then, Canada has seen few leaders as unabashed in the presidential style than Layton. Under his leadership, the entire New Democratic Party was understood to exist as little more than a Layton delivery system. His name (and sometimes face) appeared on all election posters across the nation, often in bigger font than that of the hapless fellow who was actually running for parliament. Every policy pitch began with "a Jack Layton government will..." and ended with "...which is why Jack Layton is a leader you can trust." Indeed, it's interesting to wonder just how easily Layton would have been elected president of Canada outright, had such an office existed. The polls certainly put it well within the realm of possibility.
Within the confines of the parliamentary system, however, Layton's enormous personal appeal yielded weird results. In the 2011 election, Quebec fell in love with the man to a degree that the provincial party apparatus was thoroughly unprepared for, and the resulting 58-seat "Orange Crush" landslide yielded a thoroughly inexperienced, Francophone-dominated caucus that no one, even Layton himself, really knew what to do with. Overnight, the NDP had transformed into a party vastly different than the 13-seat, Anglo-dominated fringe outfit Jack had taken the helm of in 2003. It was a Pyrrhic victory in the sense that the party had achieved great success at the expense of its own internal coherence, the one thing the NDP used to be able to take for granted, even in their darkest days.
Is this new, heavily French NDP the nationalist successor to the Bloc Quebecois? Or perhaps the beginnings of a truly bi-cultural coalition party in the Trudeau or Mulroney vein? Layton leaves this earth in the ironic fashion history often enjoys; a man who never lived long enough to witness the full consequence of his most famous project.
I never liked Jack Layton, and I'm not convinced many of the dated, socialist ideals he believed in would have done Canada much good had he eventually been given hold of the levers of power. But simply in terms of the results he achieved, and the passion with which he sought them, Layton was undeniably one of the great figures of Canadian political history, and well deserving of all the respect and honor that befits such a title.
Rest in peace.
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