The scene: Just before Christmas 2001 at the Legislative Press Gallery’s Holiday “Gala,” a conversation takes place amidst of a swirl of intoxicated journalists, politicians, public relations flacks, lobbyists and other political hangers on.
The cast: Ralph Klein, premier of Alberta, clearly feeling no pain; your blogger, only on his second beer, then the PR guy for the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees, the provincial civil service workers’ union; and Peter Elzinga, Klein’s chief of staff.
Offstage but nearby, Larry Booi, president of the Alberta Teachers Association, then in an increasingly snarly round of negotiations with Klein’s government. Dan “Buff” MacLennan, the affable jail guard who was president of the civil servants’ union.
RALPH (Effusively, waving his arm): Hey Dave, how are ya?
DAVE: I’m fine, Mr. Klein. You?
RALPH: Doin’ fine, fine… Wush ya doin’ now?
DAVE: I’m working for AUPE…
RALPH: Yer workin’ for Buff? I like Buff!
DAVE: Yeah, I like Buff too. He’s around here somewhere…
RALPH: I like Buff! I like the way Buff negotiates…
DAVE: Speaking of negotiating, Larry Booi’s around here too. Maybe you should have a chat with Larry…
RALPH: Larry Booi? I don’t like the way Larry Booi negotiates! I like the way Buff negotiates!
PETER ELZINGA: Uh, Ralph, I think we’d better get going…
Actually, this scene happened, pretty much the way I’ve described it here. A few days later, in a similarly well-lubricated state, Klein — who died at 70 in Calgary today — famously showed up at an Edmonton men’s shelter and, as the CBC put it in his obituary, “got into a heated argument with a homeless man.”
It was soon the talk of the town that the premier had thrown a pocketful of change at the man before his driver hustled him back to the limo. Like a lot of us, Klein could be tetchy when his desire to be liked was thwarted. Or maybe he just mistook the guy for Larry Booi!
To me this short conversation cast a lot of light on the principal reasons for Klein’s political success and his principal flaws, which paradoxically contributed to his success.
He was congenial, often very warm. He wanted to be liked, maybe desperately. If he wasn’t responded to the right way, well, things could turn stormy. In other words, he had a contradictory nature — as most of us do.
He had friends in unexpected places — like Buff, with whom he had a genuine friendship, to almost everyone’s astonishment except the two of them, and maybe Ralph’s brother Lynn, who was a union activist in B.C. That friendship did no harm, it is said here, to AUPE’s ability to recover from the thrashing Klein gave the union’s members in the years before MacLennan appeared on the scene.
Klein also liked his former colleagues in the media, and met them almost daily in the halls of the Legislature. When he did, he was prepared to answer whatever questions were thrown at him. What a contrast that is to tightly controlled and secretive Conservative politicians nowadays like Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Alberta Premier Alison Redford, for whom message discipline is the sine qua non!
Klein also drank too much, as is well known. This, it is said here, impaired his judgment in bigger ways than just his conduct in the foyer of the men’s shelter. But that made him an entertaining fellow to hang around with, which is to say that there was something to the popular perception he’d be a good guy with whom to have a drink.
Two days after the brouhaha in the men’s shelter, when the story became general public knowledge, Klein gave an emotional news conference at which he promised to foreswear the bottle and behave himself. Whether or not he really did so was long a matter of speculation. I’ll say this for him, to my knowledge, no one ever saw him intoxicated in public again.
Not surprisingly, a majority of Albertans admired him for his honesty — and some of them loved him for it.
They loved him a little too much, it could be argued, because they overlooked some pretty dubious policies as a result — but his willingness to man up and admit fault was a big part of Klein’s appeal, and a significant part of his success. What a contrast, it must be said again, to Conservative politicians like Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, when faced with the same kind of revelations.
Indeed, it’s easy to assail Klein’s polices, which were in many ways a catastrophe for Alberta notwithstanding the steady stream of propaganda to the opposite effect, but let’s leave that argument for another day, shall we?
Klein was an entertaining and engaging character, well liked because he was genuinely likeable. Like all charming people, his charm reflected the fact he actually liked the people he was talking to — at least when he was talking to them. People who were not his political or ideological fellow travellers were therefore sometimes welcome in his orbit, and occasionally they were even listened to.
He was largely the author of his own political successes — the many claims of the political advisors who rode his coattails to power and influence notwithstanding. You’ll note that most of them haven’t had that many political successes to brag about since, and not for lack of trying.
Klein was always more popular with the Marthas and Henrys of Alberta than with political insiders of many stripes. Even after the lean and hungry types within his own Progressive Conservative Party who had their eyes on his job started pushing him toward the door in 2006, engineering a 55-per-cent vote in a leadership review, his support among ordinary voters remained much stronger.
And what a strategy that little coup turned to be for the PCs, who stumbled when they chose Ed Stelmach and, it surely could be argued, stumbled more seriously when they unexpectedly picked Redford.
Klein remembered his friends, even when he didn’t agree with them. Years later, when I nominated MacLennan for the Alberta Order of Excellence — an idea that must have left the selection committee feeling chest pains and dizziness — Klein called me right back and immediately wrote an enthusiastic letter of support.
Prime Minister Harper said of Klein today that, “while Ralph’s beliefs about the role of government and fiscal responsibility were once considered radical, it is perhaps his greatest legacy that these ideas are now widely embraced across the political spectrum.” Unfortunately this is true.
Klein’s political and economic legacy did not end with his life on Good Friday. It will still be with us on Easter Monday and for a long time after, even if Ralph, King of the Albertans, no longer is.
It is a paradox, like the man himself, that the Klein Era that ended in September 2006 hasn’t ended yet.
Still, I for one won’t have any problem hoisting an alcoholic beverage tonight to the memory of Ralph Klein, the man.
This post also appears on David Climenhaga’s blog, Alberta Diary.
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