The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - THE MOORE BUTTS CONVERSATION #12 -- THE IMPACT OF POLLS

Episode Date: December 12, 2023

James Moore and Gerald Butts are back with us for the Moore Butts Conversation #12. We talk a lot about polls but what happens behind the scenes when the polls are released? What do the public and the press not see when the numbers cause chaos in one party or another? These conversations are one of the reasons The Bridge continues to be ranked #1 by Apple in their lists of which Canadian political podcasts Canadians listen to.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. It's Tuesday. It's the More Butts Conversation number 12. This is a good one. You're going to enjoy it. Coming right up. And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. It's a Tuesday, and it's one of those special Tuesdays because it's time for a Moore Butts conversation. It's number 12 in our series that started, well, you know, more than a year ago. Moore Butts, who are they? James Moore is the former Conservative Cabinet Minister under Stephen Harper,

had a number of portfolios. The last one he had before he stepped away from politics was Minister of Industry in the Harper government in 2015. Gerald, he's now currently a Senior Business Advisor for Denton's, and he lives on the West Coast.

He's in Vancouver. Gerald Butts, former principal secretary to the Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau. Jerry Butts is now the vice chair of the Eurasia Group. Now, both these two are partisans, and if you've seen them or heard them on other programs over the years, you know that they can get pretty partisan, because that's their nature, a liberal and a conservative.

They fought over elections, but these two have a lot of respect for each other, and their friendship goes back some time. What they agreed to do in this series we call the More Butts Conversation is try and check the partisan nature of their lives at the door, the studio door, when they hook up to do our Zoom calls and have a chat. And for the most part, they do. Every once in a while, it kind of leaks through, but not very often.

And as a result, we all gain knowledge and information about what happens on the other side of that often closed door in the world of politics. Today's conversation, number 12, is an interesting one. It's about polling. We see the polls. We see them all the time. What happens behind those doors, behind the scenes? How do they handle polls? What impact does it have on individuals and on parties? So that's one half of today's conversation. The other half is kind of related in the sense that it's that decision that elected

members and those who want to be elected members have to make at some point about whether or not A, jump into a race, or B, stay in a race. And that can be a complicated decision. And so we want to try and get at that as well. There's a lot of MPs from all parties who are trying to come up, come to grips with that decision right now. So let's get underway. As I as i said uh this makes uh this makes the full dozen of conversations that we've had so far and they're they're fascinating to listen to so you know you always go back and listen to others but today the more butts conversation number 12

and i'd say let's get at her gentlemen okay. Okay, gentlemen, we've seen for, I don't know, the last couple of months, this kind of parade of polls at a hectic pace. I don't think I've ever seen so many different polls from so many different polling companies. But I want to try and get an understanding of the impact that has inside a party, whether it's the government or the opposition, whomever it may be. So first of all, it's kind of in a very general way. How do polls impact the politicians? James, why don't you start? I think it depends on where you are in sort of the life cycle of your career as a politician. I think if you're first elected, I think you have a sense that you're a first if you're first elected I think you there's give

a sense that you have a lot of fight in you and you can keep going you can recover from all of this Hillary Clinton kind of uh breathed a big gush of fresh air into skepticism about polls because until about an hour before the uh you know they called Wisconsin and Michigan she was for sure going to be the next president. So people can kind of push back mentally against polls and say it doesn't really matter until it really matters and all that. But I think if you're a reasonable and thoughtful person and you're diligent about sort of your station in life and your obligations to your family and your obligations to yourself and being honest about the trajectory of things, and you think about that in the current Canadian context, then I think you need to take full measure about where you're at and not just sort of treat any poll as kind of no big deal. Liberals have been behind nationally now, as you know,

by five points for well over probably a year and a half, by 10 points for probably six months to a year, and now creeping up to 15 points for the past three months. When you get that kind of a sense of kind of the inevitable end of almost a nine-year uh run i think when you see those polls that has a demoralizing effect on you your family your team your staff and people start breaking away right the the um the um i was once told in political parties when you when they're coming and they're building from the ground up, when the Liberal Party started at 34 seats with Justin Trudeau as leader or the new Conservative Party with Stephen Harper back in 2003, you start off with kind of a floor and you're going to build up from there.

The first people who come on board are the idealists who want the party to be in a certain way and they're going to be in the fight. They're movement conservatives or movement liberals, or they just want the party to be in a certain way and they're going to be in the fight they're movement conservatives or movement liberals or they just want the party to have certain values and then as you grow and you get closer to power the opportunists start jumping on board you don't like the opportunists because they're the last people to come on and they're the first people to leave but you kind of need them part of it because they're a sign that things are going in the right direction well they start breaking away and then the the idealists start leaving because you've put a put too much water in your wine over time and they start leaving and then you're kind of left with a sense of who is still around

the table here to kind of keep pulling this wagon forward and then that's when you start thinking about whether or not you want to be there for the ultimate demise um with stephen harper in 2015 they didn't get to that because we still held a good chunk of the caucus and a good chunk of the number of seats. But I have to think that a lot of people in Justin Trudeau's team are starting to look around now and wonder, you know, are we down to the idealists now or are they going to start breaking away? Jerry, in a general way, let's not get too specific on what's happening right now. We're going to, but in a general way, the impact. Well, it's the hardest times, Peter, are when

there's a big delta between what you think you know about the general political situation and what is being reported in the newspaper every day. The times when I've been most frustrated by public polls is when I'm in possession of better data that shows a very different trajectory for the party or for any given policy initiative. I don't think that's the case right now. I don't have, I'm not privy to what any of the parties are saying internally or what data they're collecting internally anymore. But it seems to me that when you get a kind of, not collision, but a coalescence of a variety of polls from a variety of sources telling you the same thing, then you can generally hold it out to be true. Now, what does that mean in a general sense without addressing the specific

instance that the government's in? It's very frustrating. And politicians will try and put a brave face on it. The only poll that matters is on Election Day. Polls are for the Diefenbaker, the rather spicy quote from Diefenbaker. You hear those thrown around a lot, but it's mostly nonsense. That's what they are saying to people in your profession in order to get through the day. The truth is, everybody in politics, was to remind people in caucus in particular, but staff as well, that we had come through a period where there was a huge delta between our highest polling and our lowest polling. And whenever we would, when I was on the cesspool that is now Twitter, X, whatever Elon Musk calls it these days,

I used to tweet whenever we'd get a particularly good poll to remind people that we'd been as low as 18 in the polls. And we had been, right? So they're very difficult situations to manage. They're demoralizing, as James says. And I think in some ways, really good polling is just as bad for you, in some ways worse than really bad polling, because people, they naturally ease up, they think they've got it made. And it's harder and harder to get people to work when you're at 45 in the polls, than it is when you're at 35 in the polls. Let me back you up for a minute and get both your thoughts on this but jerry you started because you entered it um how do you how can you have an internal poll that's showing a very different kind of situation than the public polls um you know i assume it's based on some of the questions

that are asked or i i don't know you you tell me, how does that happen? Well, first of all, most parties will do a lot more polling than the polling that's released publicly. But polling is only one data point that you use to assess the overall political health of the party. For instance, we had a pretty sophisticated set of instruments invented by a guy named Sean Wiltshire and Tom Pitfield that it took into account everything from, you know, millions of door knocks, phone calls, assessed sentiment locally, and that laddered up all into an overall national number. So for instance, you see a kind of pale imitation of these in the seat projection models that have become more popular since Nate Silver popularized them in the United States. But the parties, or at least the

Liberal Party in the time I was there, had a very sophisticated, very expansive and very diligently maintained assessment of what was going on in the country from in every single riding of the country, and especially in the ridings that we held or targeted. James, do you want to enter that? All that's true. And it's more sophisticated than just, you know, who would you vote for? You know, you know, they I know that it was true that stephen harper and our government at the time was they're more interested in focus scripts than they are just raw data and raw numbers because you you want to know the inflection the intensity the chosen adjectives the descriptors

when you present um visuals and language about a policy is as important as the policy itself and the narrative around things. So there's more nuance in trying to find that out. It's, you know, as is often said about U.S. politics, it's not that Ohio is trending red as opposed to Democrat blue. It's the suburbs around Cincinnati. So some parties don't spend money in Ohio. They spend money in the suburbs around north cincinnati and around toledo to try to to get particular kinds of cohorts of voters out to vote it's not ohio it's those so i remember in that when they started doing a lot of focus groups in coquitlam right next door to where i live i thought oh this is this is wait a minute you're

doing why are you doing focus groups near my riding? What's going on out here? So I thought we were good. But no, we didn't. Because Coquitlam at that time out here, suburban British Columbia was right on the beachhead between orange, red and blue. It's kind of where all three of up in the air about how they're voting and trying to get a sense of the kind of internal language that we know is happening in all of our heads to try to get them to externalize it. Then you can craft a message that would align with their internal dialogue, not their external dialogue. Yeah, I think that's a great point, Peter. If I could just add one thing to that, I'm a huge believer in focus groups, and there are a lot of people in politics who are not, but I am. They cannot be generalized to quantitative data. Focus groups are not polling, but there's no substitute for them because you get a sense from... I'll give you a story that illustrates my point. At the time when the Harper government was running, probably to that point, the most expensive ad campaign in Canadian history, the Just Not Ready ad campaign that they were running

against Trudeau in the run-up to the 2015 election, we were watching our numbers, our horse race numbers, go south incrementally. I think we lost something like when they were at, when that was at its peak rotation, we were losing a point or two a week. And we started that year, 2015 and first place competitive, but in first place. And by the end of June, we were in solid third. And it was largely because of that, um, campaign. But I remember we did a lot of focus groups during that time. And I could tell from people's body language that it had planted an answerable question in people's minds, which in my view was a huge strategic mistake because we if we were in a good campaign, we could answer that question. And I can tell you, especially in the 905 and in Vancouver, that people wanted Trudeau to do well, and they were a little bit annoyed that this seed had been planted in their head

and they wanted to hear an answer from it. There's no way to get to it. There's no way to get an answer like that, a finding like that from a poll. So it was the question of whether or not he was ready. Totally. So how do you answer that? What does the focus group tell you or the body language tell you that you can do to challenge that? Well, ultimately, we answered it with our own advertising campaign and with the then leader's performance in the campaign itself, right? That we had a plan to kind of, to use the martial arts analogy, to use a kind of judo move and use the weight of their own advertising against them by answering

the question directly with advertising of our own. And it all centered around the need for or the expectation that the leader would do better in McLean's debate that kicked off that campaign than people expected them to. And we had bought out as much advertising as we could to get ourselves back in the game with what we called the ready ad, frankly. And it worked, right? It worked because people wanted to hear it. James, I know you're not supposed to tell us anything. Neither one of you are supposed to tell us anything that happens in caucus meetings.

But have you got any anecdotes that relate to polling where the party's either doing extremely well or poorly and the leadership, caucus leadership, party leadership, have to try and respond in the room to those kind of concerns. Yeah. I mean, so I was first elected in the year 2000. I was 24. And I was elected, and I was like, wait a minute. We went from 60 to 66 seats.

Everything is good. We're showing progress. And, of course, at that time in 2000, when Stockwell Davis was our you know everybody else who had been there since 1993 and and when mulroney left you know 92 and so on that they had this they're like no we've been in the wilderness now and we're frustrated and stockwell they didn't do well and so i came in there completely sort of ignorant and blind to the emotions of my colleagues in the room and i remember it got so bad you'll remember back you know then the canadian alliance like we just we never got off the ground and it didn't go very well in the beginning then we had a civil war over stockwell day's leadership and i remember

this is absolutely true i've looked for it like trying to find somewhere a screen grab but there was a banner headline an extremely torturous large font on the front of the Globe and Mail that said Alliance sinks to six percent nationally the big bold headline and I was like all right we're the official opposition and we're like we were literally at six percent in the polls nationally and Don bujji I remember he was sitting in the House of Commons holding up six fingers the whole question period just sitting there holding up six fingers like this because it was the story of the week. It was all anybody was just laughing at us and how bad we were doing. And I remember heckling over to Don. I said, Don, there's a 4% margin of error. And then he held up two fingers. And it was just,

because what are you going to do? Right? You're just like, what can you do? It's just so far gone at that point. We're in a civil war. We're at 6% in the polls nationally. And some people decided to take that energy of frustration, embarrassment, humiliation, disappointment, and focus it all on destroying Stockville Day. And then some of us who are younger, who are looking for a more, you know, I want to be here for a while and do something.

I'm not burnt out. We took that energy and we threw it behind Stephen Harper to try. And so people like myself, James Rajot, and others who are younger members of parliament, we were just all in for Stephen Harper to come in and save the party and then unity and away we went. But it was torturous. And then there was a meeting. It wasn't a caucus meeting, but there was a meeting. And Stockwell there, I remember, stood at the front and he was being pressured by Deborah Gray and Chuck Stroll and some of the stalwarts in the party who eventually left the caucus over frustration on his leadership. And they said, Stock, we need you to show us a plan. We need you to tell us that you have a vision, that you have a purpose.

And he stood up and he said, you guys are my advisors. Caucus, you guys are my advisors. And you could hear just the thud in the room. It's like, oh, my God. This is not good is this is not good this is not good this is not going this is this is not good and i'm i'm your fail safe like i don't even believe in you and i'm your fail safe this is not good so so i just remember that and then we all just kind of laughed and it was just like like, wow, it's really that bad. So the good news is we were down to 6% nationally. You can't go really any lower,

I don't think. But I mean, like we were, we were competitive in Lethbridge. Like we were like, are we going to hold on to Prince George? Like, are we in Prince George? Who's running in Prince George next time? It's like, wow, like this is not good. But you know, but things eventually turned around because we got so desperate that some people either gave up or people really got into the core of why they were there. And we rallied around Stephen Harper and the rest was history. Can you do anything to compare with that, Jerry? Oh, it's hard to compete with that. I mean, I think the lowest point in the time I was there in federal politics was it was probably after Rachel Notley won the Alberta election. And I remember there

were a lot of people around. I mean, there weren't a lot of people around. There were only 34 of us at the 34 members of caucus. And we met in this depressing room in the basement of Senate block. That was our caucus meeting. And I just remember most people being in a total state of denial that it wasn't going to matter federally. And I was like, this is going to cost us five to 10 points in the polls within a month. Because our theory at the time was that the country had sort of made up its mind that it wanted a new government and it was going to be a contest between us and the NDP as to who was going to be that government. And the shocking story of the NDP forming a government in Alberta, of all places, was the opening that they needed to close the deal nationally. Just lucky for us, they never did. Can polling affect what supposedly is the lifeblood of politics, which is money.

Absolutely. Absolutely. In fact, there's probably nothing that affects fundraising more than polling. And polling affects everything, Peter. Again, people say it doesn't, but it does. It affects your ability to attract candidates, first and foremost. And I could see when we were high in the polls in the run up to 2015, we attracted all kinds of impressive people to run for office who had either been a member of provincial parliament or a mayor or had their own standing in their own community. First Nations leaders had their own standing in their own communities and didn't really need to run for office. But they saw an opportunity. They thought they might get a chance to have a cabinet position and they all stepped forward.

But it dried up that spring. There were, I won't name them because I don't want to embarrass them, but there were a couple of three really prominent Canadians who were seriously considering running, all of whom backed out in the spring of 2015. And it was all because of the polling. And they would say it wasn't, but it was definitely because of the polling. And fundraising dries up, it ebbs and flows with how you're doing in the polls. Well, in 2014-15, Stephen Harper won a majority.

Things were going well. Things were good. It looked like we were going to be on a run for a while. Stephen Harper committed he was going to run again. We still had the full weight of the team behind him. Justin Trudeau was coming up, but he's definitely not ready. And the NDP were the official opposition. So at worst, they were going to probably split the votes. Conservatives were for sure going to win. That was the mindset. And they were like Jerry had a couple of high profile mayors. His regional minister in British Columbia, part of the mandate

sort of unwritten is to try to do candidate recruitment and mentorship and all that. And so I remember meeting with one particular high, very high profile mayor who was really thinking about it and wasn't quite sure, but he'd always kind of thought about it. And, you know, I think I can do well. And he was going to run in an area that would have been competitive for us. And he might have been the balance of two to five points in the polls that would have been competitive for us. And he might've been the balance of a two to five points in the polls that could have tipped us over all that and everything was good. And then as soon as things, things weren't very good. Well, you know, my wife is starting to have doubts. I said, Oh really? Okay.

Well, we've seen the poll. We're still a little bit. It's just, it's okay. Like you, we get it. Like things are not what they seem like. It's I'm not going to ask you to like, okay. So everybody turns into a, as John Baird used to say, everybody turns into a chocolate soldier under the weight of the sun at certain times. And they melt, feet start melting underneath them and they start, okay, I got you.

Well, these are the opportunists again. They're the last on and they're the sign that you're doing well, but they're the first off. I said, I got it. Thank you. You're the first to run out of a foxhole. I got it. Yeah, just leave your gun behind. Maybe somebody else could pick it up

and start shooting next to me. Cause you can go ahead and run. John, John McCain, Peter had one of my favorite lines and I've ever heard in politics. God bless God rest his soul. When George Bush was down in the teens and approval rating, he, he, his fundraising speech was, I think they were at 16 or something and the approval rating. And, his fundraising speech was, I think they were at 16 or something in the approval rating. And John McCain said, when you get to that level, you're down to blood relatives and paid staff. What is happening? The last question on polling before we take our break, what's happening behind the scenes? I mean, how do you keep your cool if you're ahead? How do you keep your cool if you're in trouble and you're in one of those key positions? You're either the leader or you're in a senior advising role or in a senior cabinet role.

How do you keep your cool? Don McGinty used to have this saying that anyone who worked for him heard it so many times, it made them physically ill to hear it one more time. But he used to say, never too high, never too low, just relentless. We're ahead in the polls, we're behind the polls, none of it matters. We just keep the same attitude every single day. And he was almost monkish in his discipline about that because he knew, I think he had this conviction that I certainly learned from him that Canadians don't get their say in politics very often. And when they do get their say, they really want it taken seriously. So they hate to hear leaders

take it for granted. I remember vividly walking to the subway during i think it was the 04 election the one where you guys were ahead james and then uh martin he did out in the end by a strong with a strong showing in ontario and there was i was getting on the subway to go to work at queen's park and that was this was in the day when there were still such things as newspaper boxes right and the front page of the globe and Mail said, confident Harper predicts conservative majority. And I looked at, and I don't know whether it was an accurate depiction of what Mr. Harper had said, but I looked at Jody, my wife, and I said, you know what, that's going to cost them the election because people do not like to be taken for granted. And I think that's a huge risk for politicians

if they pay too much attention to polls because it seeps into their body language that day. Dalton was religious about not reading anything during the campaign, not anything, any news during the campaign and certainly no opinion writers during the campaign. And he didn't want to see the polling either. So, you know, I think that's the best way to conduct yourself in politics, because if you have this knowledge, whether you're far ahead

or far behind, it's going to show up in your body language that day on the campaign trail. I'm not sure that Paul Martin in 2004 eked it out in Ontario so much as Randy White eked it out in Ontario in 2004. I'm just going to go ahead and say that. Those of you who don't know what I'm referring to, do indeed. Google. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, you know, when polls are too high, polls are too low.

I mean, there's sort of an internal psychology to it as well. But there are more than enough stories out there, right, of people who blew it at the last minute or who won at the last minute. And so I think, you know, you have to pay attention to the polls. You can't be too obsessed by the polls, but you're going to be obsessed. You can't let it affect your game plan. You have to react to them. You have to respond to them, but you can't react to them. You have to be methodical, not emotional, like all those things are true. But I think, you know, when times are really tough, you kind of have to remind yourselves, like, wait a minute, we're in office now. We have a privileged position now, whether you're in government or in opposition. We can do stuff now that you will be very proud of, and we can influence to the benefit of the country and our worldview now.

We will fight the next fight, but right now, let's take advantage of this moment and do something substantive and meaningful now and let's not lose lose that um reality if you're if you're up when you think about where justin trudeau was a couple years ago repair probably is now you know i'm always reminded of that kobe bryant he did a press conference i think the the lakers were up something like three one in a seven game series series. And a reporter was like, you know, you guys lost game one. You just won three in a row. You must feel good. Things are good, right? He said, job's not done.

Is the job done? Job's not done. And he was very stoic about it. There was a bit of an act to it. But I think he sort of willed this mentality into reality. That was sort of the Mamba thing about Kobe Bryant. It's like, job's not done. And if you think it's done, it's not

done. You just got to keep focusing. You have to be relentless and disciplined. And I think the Pierre Pauly Evan, where the team is at now, I think they need to be relentless. Like it's not done. Like you, you, the voters haven't voted. Not a single vote has been cast and you have to be disciplined and responsible and measured. You want the part, you got to look the part, you got to act the part, you got to be the part and be judicious in your language and be thoughtful in your strategy and be relentless in your implementation and just earn it. Earn it. And don't ever think that you're not being judged and act accordingly. That almost sounds like advice, Peter.

It sounds like James. I think for both of them. Only to conservatives. advice, Peter. It sounds like James is only too conservative. No, but the advice to those who are trailing is pretty good too. So that was great. That was good. You should all get some form of payment for that free advice you've just given. Okay, we're going to take a quick break, and we'll be back with another kind of the flip side to this question. That's right after this. And welcome back. You're listening to The Bridge, the Tuesday episode this week. More Butts Conversation, the latest of our conversations between these two icons of Canadian politics,

Jerry Butts, the former principal secretary to Prime Minister Trudeau, James Moore, the former cabinet minister in a number of Stephen Harper governments. Okay, we talked about polling. Now I want to talk about the individual politician, the person who's deciding whether or not, A, whether or not to run for politics, or B, perhaps even more importantly, whether or not to go for another term in politics. In terms of the decisions you make, obviously the landscape has some impact on that,

but there's more to it than that. Jerry, why don't you start us on that, but there's more to it, more to it than that. Jerry, why don't you start us on that? Oh, sure. As someone who, I feel like James should kick us off, but I'll jump in, Peter, as someone who's never even seriously considered running for office and never was because I've been around enough. But you'd have advised many about whether. Yeah. Yeah. And I've certainly recruited a lot of people or took part in the recruitment of a lot of people. I think ultimately it's a super personal decision, right? Politics is a team sport and you succeed as a team and you lose as a team. But at the end of the day, it's really about whether you can, if you're getting into office, whether you can handle all of the

unexpected surprises and put yourself in the headspace that you're kind of stoic about them. And if you've been in politics a while, you know what it takes to be in politics a while. And I think a lot of people are still close friends of mine who ran in 2015. They've been there now for the better part of a decade. And that's a long time in politics. The old cliche that a week is a long time in politics is true. A decade in politics is longer. And they've, you know, they're different people than they were when they started. And they've had a decade away from their families. They've had, um, you

know, both the, the stunning successes and, uh, uh, really difficult times of politics. And there's no profession in the world that takes more out of you more quickly. It's, uh, an internet meme to look at us presidents the day they're sworn in and the day they leave office and they all look like they've aged 20 years. That's true in microcosm for anybody in elected office. It's a very difficult life and you have to have the cliche is you have to have the fire in your belly. I think the best closing, I guess, on a career press conference I've seen in recent years, and I'd commend it to your listeners if they haven't seen it before, is Jacinda Ardern's. I thought that was an incredibly open and she was ultimately positive, but a really honest way of

describing why she was leaving politics. And ultimately it's about you and the relationships with the people who are most important to you and whether you can give it 100% every shift on the ice, because if you don't, you're going to get killed. And that's the hard truth about politics. It's two very different conversations, like when to get in and when to get out so the first one which we're talking about now um you know a couple of times i've had colleagues come to me and ask about um them running for leader whether or not they should they should think about and i think this advice that i offered to them about whether or not to

run for leader is true of any individual is thinking about whether or not to run for office at any level which is i remember asking questions about fundraising and organizational, and he sort of had the answer to say, well, I think this, and I think that, and I said, no, the answer to the question of, are you going to run or are you not, is not yes or no, it's yes or hell yes. And if you're not hell yes, then you shouldn't do it because you don't have the energy and the sense of, I will prevail and I will weather the storm and I will go through it and I've thought through this and I'm really good about it. When I was 24, well, 23, when I started my campaign,

I was young, the best advice I got right out of the gate, which was enormously helpful to me, was my grad supervisor, John Young, who gave me an article from the Canadian Journal of Political Science that showed in the 1993-1997 elections, 97 point something percent of Canadians voted the way that they did in an election because of the party, lead brand, the leader, and national issues. And 2%, it was like 2.4% of Canadians voted the way that they did because of who the local candidate was. The other 98%, 97 and a half percent

voted for party, leader, and issue. 2% voted based on who the local candidate was. And so he gave me this article. He said, I'm giving you this because I just want to make sure you know that if you lose, it's not because of you. It's not because people rejected you personally. It wasn't about you. So don't take it that. And also, by the way, if you win, it's not about you. They didn't love you. The moment was right. The party was right. The leader was right.

The issue set was right. And you happened to be part of it. So don't take it personally if you lose. Don't take it personally if you win. Be humble and be responsible. And here's the data, by the way, to show that that's my view. And I just thought, and that stayed with me forever. So when times were really good, my ego didn't get blown up. And when times were too really low,

my ego didn't get blown up. I was part of a much bigger national conversation with national leaders and bigger issues and people voting based on their personal needs. And it helped me survive a lot of ups and downs, including the 6% nationally and all the way up to a majority government, Stephen Harper, that it was a very healthy ballast for me internally. And it stayed with me through my political career. So anybody who's thinking of running, believe me that that's true, A. And believe me, B, that keeping that in your mind will keep you healthy and sane through it all. If you're going to run as well, there are two other things that I did that were very helpful to me very quickly. One is saying John Young, my, my professor, as he said, write a letter to yourself about why you're running and what you're doing. It sounds hokey,

but it's, but it was meaningful. And he said, write a letter to yourself and reflect on that. Maybe rewrite it again every year, but write a letter to yourself, but keep the other ones, write a new letter every year, but keep the other ones and don't let them go about why you're running, what you think a success looks like, what are the motivating factors to why you're running, and what will you consider a success so that you can feel a sense of purpose here. And then finally, to reinforce those two things over time is you need a kitchen cabinet, which are people who are going to look out for peter man's which is going to run people who are looking out for peter because we're looking out for your not not the not your party not your leader not the country but you personally what's good for your mental health what's good for your physical being what's good for your financial future what's good for you as an individual people who will rally around you because they care about you not that yes the country yes the part but you as a person so have

that sense of ballast about perspective number one number two write yourself a letter to keep yourself focused and give yourself a north star and then third give yourself put a proper kitchen cabinet around you who will who will properly look out for your best interest because you will go into a fog of political war that will blur blur distinctions between what matters and what doesn't. Wow. That's great advice, too. And John Young, he sounds like he was a hell of an advisor on a lot of fronts. Good man and a good friend. All right, let's go to the other end of things.

When do you know it's time to get out? What should be the factors in making that decision? Jerry? The toughest call that most politicians have to make in their careers personally is when to leave, right? And my own rule of thumb is you shouldn't get into politics in the first place unless you're going there to do something. Right. My aunt and sister Peggy Butts, who you knew well, Peter, back in the day, I think the first time we ever met, you were coming to a function for her at the Savoy Theater in Glace Bay, Nova Scotia in my hometown.

Many, many, many. Men of the deep. Men of the deep. Exactly. Men of the deep. That's right. And which is still going strong by the way um a great christmas concert by the way if uh anybody gets a chance to hear it so she used to say i remember asking her advice when i was getting involved in politics the first time and she said remember this there are two kinds of people in politics and i think this is true of, by the way. There are people who want to

do something and people who want to be something. And the people who want to do something, you should support them. And the people who want to be something, you should stay away from them because they're going to end up unhappy and make everybody else unhappy. I think that most people who get involved in politics, and they can only judge this for themselves, there's an arc. Even the ones who go into it to get something done, at some point in their career, they end up staying there just to be there. And they start to entertain all these fanciful notions that they're the only people who could do the job and they need to, they kind of tricked

themselves into thinking there's a public interest reason for them to continue. And usually they end up staying too long and they get hurt very badly and it takes a long time for them to recover from it. And those are the people I think who end up... I've seen it happen to probably 15 to, probably 15 to 20 people in politics, people who went against their own better angels, their own gut instinct to leave and stayed and stay too long and staying too long in politics is a recipe for a really unhappy aftermath.

All that's true. And also there's a financial component to it that doesn't get spoken about by people in politics because, you know, all that. But the longer you're, I remember David Emerson said this to me, another mentor and a good friend. But mentors are key in politics, by the way. You know, if you think you're going to go into politics stoic and you know everything, you're going to crash and burn. So I had Johnny Young in the front end when I first got in. And then when I got in, I sought mentors and people who had been through it. Monty Solberg was one. David Emerson was another. And I remember David Emerson saying to me, because he'd been a deputy minister in British

Columbia and federal government as well. And then he was a politician. He elected Paul Martin in 04, reelected in 06, and then crossed the floor. But he said to me, he said, James, always remember this. The longer you're in, the harder it is to get out. Because this is how you will be seen. You'll be seen as just a politician who will just run and run and run. So get in and have a good run, make a contribution. But this is always temporary. And he reminded me, I knew it, but he told me the story, reminded me of the story of a guy who was the mayor of Bone Island in British Columbia.

And he insisted always in starting all of his speeches and saying, hi, I'm the temporary mayor for Bone Island. And then he would go on to his presentation or his announcement or whatever. But he put out front that I'm here temporarily, but I'm here today temporarily as the mayor now to do this thing. And this is why we're doing it. So he was sort of very upfront about his populism, but that's okay. He was properly centered. I'm also reminded of Gerald Ford when he said when he about politics, he said politics from the outside looks kind of it's like a hammock. It looks really interesting and kind of fun from the outside.

And it's kind of fun while you're there, but it's very hard to exit gracefully. And and he's not incorrect about that um you know and I think if you when people are thinking about this or whether or not to run again you know if the heart the longer you're in the harder it is to get out because your your mentality and all that is is blurred by it all but for me there was I remember reading a piece by um David Brooks right in the New York Times where he's he was it was a philosophic piece but it had a human impact for me where he talked about, and I'm not a religious person, but he talked about the concept of sin. What is sin? And he said, sin, when you sin, and this is from St. Thomas Aquinas, he said, you sin when you get your moral priorities out of order.

For example, somebody tells you a secret at a dinner party, kind of a personal secret. And then you take that secret and you tell somebody else, you kind of gossip about it. You're putting, you're creating sin because you're putting your desire for popularity above that piece of information above the priority of true friendship. So you put popularity ahead of friendships. Now you've sinned. That's a sin. When you're in public life and you put the aspiration for higher office, I'm in the fourth row, I want to be in the front row. I'm in the front row. I want to be in government. I'm in government, but I want to be in cabinet. I'm in cabinet, but I want to be one of the good roles. And when you start putting

that ahead of public service, ahead of your family, ahead of your personal health and your well-being, your mental health and the people around you, you've sinned. You've lost focus. And I think people need to be mindful of that i think at that point you made about mentors is so important and i've been blessed with some truly excellent ones in my life probably in my political life uh i mentioned dalton mckinty uh but jim coots who tragically died uh just before the the year he died on new year's Eve, actually, 2014. So he never got to see the Trudeau election. And that was a real shame for you guys both know who Jim is. But for your listeners, he was the principal secretary to both Lester Pearson and to Pierre Trudeau,

which I think is a feat that nobody else has achieved. But he also knew when to get out of politics. And he said to me that you should always, a couple of pieces of advice about exits. Go when more people want you to stay than want you to leave. That's number one. And when you go, try to make your exit useful for the people you leave behind. But most of all, if you're going to get into politics, you're making a five-year commitment,

but it shouldn't be longer than seven or eight. Because if you stay any shorter than five years, including opposition years in this, then you can't get anything meaningful done. But if you stay too long, you're kind of out of touch with what's going on in the real world because all of those cliches about there being a thick impermeable bubble around political life, they're all true. They're all cliches for a reason. They're cliches because they're true. So, you know, it's a different calibration for just about everybody in politics. But James, you're a football fan. You know what i mean when i say every quarterback has

the clock in his head uh you drop back to take you drop back to throw a pass you don't need to count out loud before a linebacker smokes you you know when you need to get rid of the ball yeah and i i've often had the analogy as well when i was in is like that that being in politics especially in the cabinet rule and if you're if you're a person of any profile it's it's like riding a bull if you have a great view and you have an opportunity to steer this thing but at any time you can get thrown off and trampled and it can go very badly as soon as it's over it's over right and and it's over but while you're up there it is very dangerous and it's one strike and you're out. And all those things are very, very true.

And also, as the saying goes, you know, when people stay around for too long, you start thinking, well, you know, we have to stay. They're going to trust somebody like who else can ride this bull? And as the saying goes, you know, graves of the world are filled with indispensable men. Sure. Listen, this has been a fascinating conversation. All of these conversations have been great. This one is right up there near the top, if it's not at the top.

But it does lead us to perhaps one of our next conversations, which would be about whether or not, and I don't want you to answer this now, whether or not term limits is a good thing. Because you both were talking about exit moments and how long people can stay, but there have been some great examples of people who stayed a long, long time. The first guy I covered when I was a local reporter in Winnipeg was Stanley Knowles.

I used to stand outside the CP rail yards in downtown Winnipeg when he'd campaign, 72 campaign, I think. And, you know, I followed him through his career, as you all did, and had enormous respect. And he was, I don't know how many times he was reelected, many, many times. I mean, Pierre Polyev, he's a seven-time MP. Now, most of those were minority governments, so they've been short in years, but that's all experience.

And, you know, there are many others, you know, like him from different parties. So it's a good question about, you know, length of time and whether or not, you know, too long is, you know, what the definition of too long is. So I think that's a good conversation to have. And whether we go as far as looking at the issue of term limits for MPs or what have you, I don't know. I would tend to, you know, I don't like copying the americans on anything so why why would we start there anyway we'll um we'll pick this up on our next opportunity but it'll be in the new year that's it for the more butts conversations for 2023 they've been fantastic

you can get the box set for christmas you can get them you can order it online well it's a real it's a real pleasure peter and just to wish your listeners a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays, however you choose to celebrate it. Hope everybody gets some time with their family. And it's an ongoing thrill to be associated with your work, Peter. So thanks for having me. That's very kind of you. And James, too. It's great to have you. Yeah. Well, 2024 is a big year. British Columbia election, possible federal election, American election, lots of politics ahead. British election.

Yeah, lots of reflection on who we are, what our values are, and it's a good time to keep the conversation going. And we will. Thank you both, gentlemen. We'll talk to you again soon. Of course, didn't mention how, you know, 2024, that'll be the year the Leafs win the Cup too. So all these different things are happening.

It's pretty exciting. Hope you enjoyed that. The More Abouts Conversation number 12. And we'll look forward to many more in the new year in 2024. But that will be it for them for this year, 2023. Tomorrow, it is one of the last editions of Smoke, Mirrors and the Truth. We've got more to tell you about some of the changes. And I got stopped a lot over the weekend at various book tour events.

People saying, what's going on? What are you talking about changes? Well, they are changes. They're significant, but overall in the big picture, they're small. So don't get too concerned there. And we'll get to announcing those probably next week. Tomorrow, Smoke, Mirrors, and the Truth. Bruce Anderson will be here.

Thursday, Random Renter Time. And your turn. So if you have thoughts on, especially what you've just heard now. I've got a ton of comments already about Christmas trees. It's amazing from the end bit yesterday. But if you have comments on what we've heard today, don't be shy. Drop me a line at themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com. themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com.

That's it for today. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening. We'll talk to you again in 24 hours.