Leaders and Lesser Mortals: Backroom Politics in Canada

Paul G. Thomas is a political science professor at the University of
Manitoba.

This book provides an insider’s look at the conduct of political
campaigns. John Laschinger is described as “Canada’s only full-time
political campaign manager,” with five provincial election campaigns
and eleven leadership campaigns to his credit. Geoffrey Stevens writes
on national affairs for the Toronto Star, after previous journalistic
stints with The Globe and Mail and Time magazine. Their combined
experience has resulted in a very readable and valuable book loaded with
colorful anecdotes and insights about the political process in the real
world.

In what is already a cynical age, many of the stories and hints for
aspiring leaders will reinforce prevailing negative stereotypes. For
example, the book emphasizes the dominant influence of polls in
campaigns, and presents the “ten commandments” of polling—for
example, always choose a pollster who gives advice, be honest with the
candidate (except when a lie is useful), and know when to leak a poll
(or when to invent one). For party leadership contenders, the authors
come up with nine rules, all as practical and hard-headed as those about
polling.

While there is a manipulative aspect to the advice they offer, the
authors are clearly disturbed by the declining public confidence in
political institutions and the people who serve in them. They diagnose,
in a somewhat simplistic manner, the sources of public discontent and
prescribe a series of reforms, many of them derived from the 1992 report
of the Royal Commission on Electoral Reform and Party Financing. The
book includes an organization chart of a model federal election
campaign, and an appendix containing the results of federal/provincial
election and leadership campaigns since 1967. Political junkies will
particularly like this book, but anyone who wants a first-hand look at
the campaign process will find it a fascinating read.