Four years seems like such a very long time ago.
Don Cherry, pinkos, and then a lengthy, nausea-inducing ride on the roller coaster of Rob Ford’s version of politics — past the early scandals, the Newtonian counter-reactions, the newspaper wars, the major scandals, the waves of global opprobrium. We careened towards the mid-campaign switcheroo that no self-respecting screen-writer would have ever committed to paper, and finally lurched towards the finish line, and that moment when the gravely diminished man who presided over the weirdest episode in our civic politics exited the vehicle with scarcely a murmur. So here we are, still breathing hard. Say this much: it was a hell of a ride.
John Tory, the man who officially becomes Toronto’s new mayor today, is in many superficial ways the antithesis of Ford — a blunt-instrument populist who began his term, lest we forget, by brazenly abusing his powers literally the moment he arrived to work on day one.
Rather, to watch Tory operate over the past few weeks has been to observe a well-appointed man of a certain age arrive at a dinner party: he has warmly greeted everyone in the room, always pleasant and convivial, offering himself up as a guest very much preoccupied with the goal of making a good impression.
As he sprinkles goodwill around the city, he has sought to project an image of leaderly, corporate competence. Much listening has been done, or so we’ve been told. But Tory’s silver spoon breeding has also been very much in evidence, as well as what I assume is his sincere conviction that good manners are an indispensable lubricant in the business of making things work out the way you want them to.
Torontonians, to be sure, didn’t need to be re-introduced: we knew the public Tory, having watched his past political outings and then listened to him debate the countless guests on his CFRB show. He engaged, debated, gently joked, and played the devil’s advocate, but always made a point of keeping it civil and acknowledging the multiplicity of perspectives, even if not necessarily agreeing with them all.
But the John Tory who assumes the mantle of office tomorrow afternoon will soon learn that good manners and an ability to give people the sense they’ve been heard is merely necessary in the transactional world of municipal politics; none of that stuff, however, is sufficient.
Tory, who learned his trade at the feet of long-time Progressive Conservative premier Bill Davis (I’d say watch for a cameo appearance in the days to come), clearly believes that politics, as the old saying goes, is the art of the possible: “You’re over there, I’m over here — let’s split the difference and say everyone’s a winner.”
Initially, his mandate, his powers of persuasion and his role in the dispensing of council favours will take him some distance down the road towards his mandate. But Tory’s two big stated goals — building an immensely complicated transit project, and finding ways to reduce the social divisions in Toronto — won’t yield easily or quickly. Consequently, it will require enormous discipline on the part of him and his advisors to stay focused in a job where each day is a daisy chain of distractions.
There will be many tough and contentious choices ahead, and Tory, as the pundits will remind him regularly, won’t be able to cast himself as a mature leader and then duck responsibility for unpopular positions.
What’s more, we have no idea how Tory exercises executive judgment when it comes to dealing with the most difficult or intractable problems (all we know is how he exercises campaign judgment, which is very different). We have no idea how he responds when his tribe threatens to turn against him, or when the idiots on council (we all know who they are) gleefully throw monkey wrenches into his best-laid plans. We have no idea what he does in the face of scandal, crisis, or defeat. We don’t know whether he will try to pass off spin as accomplishment in the absence of the results he failed to deliver. And we don’t know whether he can be genuinely tough, in the way that all political leaders need to be at some point in their careers.
I’m prepared to give Tory the benefit of the doubt at this point — I believe he genuinely wants to move the needle when it comes to transit and sees it as a kind of civic legacy — and I also think Tory himself believes that the inclusive, feel-good ideology of Civic Action, which has sought to mentor young leaders from marginalized communities, can be scaled up to the larger canvas of the city.
Yet Tory doesn’t live in a cave, nor does he strike me as naïve. Therefore, he surely must wonder what happens when Prime Minister Stephen Harper decides to jerk him around on his transit funding ask, or when Premier Kathleen Wynne offers only a half-a-loaf to his pleas for cash for affording housing.
And the rest of us, in turn, must wonder how far he’s genuinely prepared to go in advocating for meaningful improvements to the fearsome social, cultural and economic rifts that have divided Toronto into a polarized place of extravagant wealth and bracing poverty. After all, the reforms required to reverse that story fall well outside the political ideology that Tory has called home for his entire adult life.
Today, in sum, marks the beginning of Tory Nation. We’ll soon discover whether the double entendre applies.
