Premier Dalton McGuinty has won everything in an election but respect.
The Liberal premier has a second successive majority government, which is rare in Ontario, and vanquished the leaders of the opposition parties so they are as good as gone.
Progressive Conservative John Tory wants to stay, but is handicapped by being without a seat in the legislature for the second time in three years.
New Democrat Howard Hampton has led in three elections and lost, and his party may feel it cannot do worse trying a different leader. Hampton also may feel he has battered his head against a brick wall enough.
McGuinty seems to be master of all he surveys, but the truth is, and most people know it, he won not because of anything he did, but because the Conservatives handed him victory by promising to fund private faith-based schools, which the public overwhelmingly would not accept.
McGuinty’s only contribution was to react effectively by saying children of different faiths learn to understand each other when they are educated together and should not be divided more than they already are.
Since the election, McGuinty’s back-room advisers have claimed jealously he would have won without the religious schools issue, and it was only one factor in his victory.
They argue voters already were starting to recognize McGuinty has matured as a politician, but this is at odds with polls that showed voters to the end of the campaign felt Tory would make a better premier than McGuinty.
The backroom experts contend also McGuinty helped himself win by promising attractive new policies such as an extra statutory holiday workers will get with pay, but this has not earned McGuinty respect.
It was the most blatant bribe-with-others’ money election in decades. It avoided being seen as this because the Conservatives, who normally protect business, were preoccupied with disputes and reluctant to get into more.
The NDP would never oppose any bone tossed workers and would give them an extra month off with pay if it had the chance.
McGuinty’s back-roomers included public relations executives who worked free for his party so they could increase their knowledge of government and sell it to business, and are anxious to prove they performed well enough for the politicians to call them back.
But the bottom line to this dispute over what won for McGuinty is the Liberals held only a slight lead in polls over the Conservatives and certainly were not within reach of a majority until Tory dropped the bombshell he would fund faith-based schools – another indication the Liberals did not win and the Conservatives threw it away.
McGuinty also should have lost respect because of his shifty footwork that ensured in his travels he met only people who were Liberal sympathizers.
The premier was not forced to the indignity of meeting ordinary voters, who might have the bad manners to ask difficult questions, which would have been reported in newspapers and seen on TV and shown everyone is not enraptured by him.
There was one notable exception, when his security screen slipped and he came across a patient dissatisfied with health care who gave him an earful.
Tory naively talked to anyone he bumped into and McGuinty’s back-room gurus chortled he ran a poorly organized campaign in which he encountered many hostile voters. What sort of campaign allows a leader to talk to average voters?
McGuinty in his first term as premier was not shown much respect and called a Fiberal because he made promises he could not keep, and now he is a premier seen to have won an election because an opposition party made a mistake.
Comedian Rodney Dangerfield used to complain he “got no respect,” and Dalton McGuinty is on a path to becoming the Rodney Dangerfield of politics. Sometimes he deserves it.
Eric Dowd is a veteran member of the Queen’s Park press gallery.
