Team Ford is poring over his 1990 early election post-mortem. Here's his advice.
Dan Rath dishes
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Q+A — More than thirty years after DAN RATH co-wrote Not Without Cause — the 1990 post-mortem on then-Liberal Premier DAVID PETERSON’s early election gamble — DOUG FORD’s war room is reportedly dusting off their copies, parsing for clues on how not to repeat the same fatal mistakes.
As the rumour mill churns out more hints of a snap election in Ontario, I called up the former Liberal aide to find out about the parallels between 1990 and 2024, and the risks of going early today.
Here, we talk about why Rath thinks the NDP is the “dark horse”, his advice for the Grits to claw their way back from political oblivion (“invent a time machine”), the dangers if the Tories were to pull the trigger early (“unintended consequences”) and lessons for all politicos (don’t get cocky!).
Decades later, a bunch of PC operatives are reading Not Without Cause. What do you think about that? I know Tory staffers and campaign operatives are poring over NWC to figure out how, if Ford goes early, he can avoid the same fate as DAVID PETERSON. Some of them approach it thinking, “We need to make sure we’re not as dumb as these people were.” But the advisers and deep thinkers around Peterson were the best of the best of their era who would more than hold their own against today’s crop.
In the fog of a campaign, now as then, mistakes are always going to be made no matter how well prepared you are. You can’t anticipate everything. Smart political people will read the book, understand that, and be humbled — not imagine themselves to be bulletproof.