Waiting for the Wave: The Reform Party and Preston Manning

David E. Smith is a professor of political science at the University of
Saskatchewan and the author of Building a Province: A History of
Saskatchewan in Documents and The Invisible Crown.

Tom Flanagan, a professional political scientist, worked for a time as
policy director and adviser in the Reform Party. His privileged access
and intellectual perspective help make this the best account to date of
the Manning movement. Though a partisan, Flanagan is ever cool,
analytical, and, as far as the reader can tell, fair in his judgment of
the Reform Party’s strengths and weaknesses.

Which is to say, the strengths and weaknesses of Preston Manning. For
Manning—as everyone says and Flanagan does not dispute—is the party.
Yet, for the first time, an insider shows that that evaluation
misconstrues a great deal about the dynamics of Manning’s leadership,
beginning with the fact that he pretends not to lead and, on some
important occasions, actually has not led. This helps to explain the
party’s lacklustre performance in the House of Commons since 1993; as
well, it provides one answer to the contradiction between Reform promise
and performance in the 1992 referendum campaign.

While other parties have strategies, Manning depends on good timing
(“the wave” of the book’s title). As a result, consistency gives
way to eclecticism, the inevitable product in any case of depending on
“the common sense of the common people” to act as a beacon. Even if
the party’s centralized structures keep the common sense in check, a
lot of Reformers spend a lot of time avoiding the assumption of
responsibility. Compared with Manning and his group, the Liberals with
their Red Book appear almost doctrinaire.

Most remarkable of all, Flanagan presents Manning as a leader for whom
skills at mediation and consensus are paramount virtues while adherence
to principle is secondary, an order of priorities that he demonstrates
is not shared by all rank-and-file members of the movement.