Vancouver Courier
for February 11, 1998

I don't think Glen Clark should win the next election, whenever it's called. And common sense tells me that he won't win.

Yet, as a colleague said to me the other day, it's not Glen Clark's to win but Gordon Campbell's to lose.

Like in May 1996.

Having said that, those who are confidently waiting for the Liberals to win the next election, the sooner the better, might well ponder a few of last week's events.

* Gordon Campbell predicts an election for the Fall

* B.C.'s salmon fishery case against the United States is tossed out.

* Federal Fisheries and Arrogance Minister David Anderson refuses to join B.C. in its appeal of the case and continues to bleat about a negotiated settlement.

* Canada's salmon commissioner, the highly respected Yves Fortier, resigns saying, in effect, that we're nuts if we think that the United States will ever negotiate a fair settlement.

* The unity crisis heats up as the feds and the separatists trade verbal blows about what a Supreme Court of Canada ruling that Quebec cannot legally secede (the expected result) would mean and, in Quebec to help stir the pot was Gordon Wilson who may or may not be speaking for Glen Clark (who's content to have the benefit of both possibilities).

A Fall election is, of course, unlikely. But unlikely events are rather common in politics so let's examine the unlikelihood a bit more closely.

Hard as this may be to believe, premiers don't call elections for principled reasons. There's only one question, which is always on the table no later than a year after his election (or sooner if the majority is small) - can we win?

Premiers are forever focussed on re-election and take regular soundings, all the way from sophisticated polls to mainstreeting in swing ridings. And they always have two great advantages - under our creaky and unfair system they can call an election when they choose and they get first crack at setting out the election agenda.

But, politically, a premier needs an excuse to call an election at least a year before its normal time so Glen Clark's spin doctors might well be advising him something like this.

"Tell the folks that with one MLA very ill, a tiny majority at best, and the threat of recall (of which there is now none but truthfulness isn't a spinner's or a premiers' strong suit) that B.C. needs, for these difficult times, strong leadership, namely a strong mandate for me."

Not a very good excuse?

Perhaps not. But it gives Clark the answer Jean Chretien couldn't come up with last year when he squandered his huge majority on a premature election. And it gives him a chance to declare the issues as he sees them.

Clark's issue will be leadership. He'll portray himself - and be portrayed in a skillful PR campaign (which skill the NDP picked up and then some from the Socreds) - as the only man able to defend British Columbia's interests at home and abroad in these perilous times.

He will quickly point to the salmon issue and say, "I was right. David Anderson (and by inference his Liberal pal Campbell) were wrong."

Campbell will holler foul - that he too has been strong on Fisheries issues but he will be handicapped by two things.

He wasn't all that strong and Clark's flacks will pull all sorts of clips, deliciously out of context of course, to show Mr Campbell as the dove .. and, politics being a matter of comparatives, Campbell will by any standard look like the dove compared to Premier Clark.

The salmon is a gut issue to British Columbians who respond very strongly to strong language that supports this resource, especially if that language can as easily be directed at Ottawa as the Americans. It's the sort of issue Glen Clark plays on like a maestro with a Stradivarius.

Mr Campbell's second problem will be the national unity issue and again Glen Clark has the advantage.

I don't believe that Gordon Campbell would be a pussycat, by any means, on national unity were he premier. His problem is that, after all's said and done, he's a Liberal. Oh, I know that the B.C. party is independent, blah, blah, blah but because of his party's name there are doubts about Campbell where there are not (ironically considering the NDP's position on Charlottetown) about Mr Clark.

The days ahead could be very frustrating for those who want to see the back of Glen Clark, and soon. The Premier is a very good politician as was his hero W.A.C. Bennett. Those of us of a certain age, who supported the Liberals or Conservatives during the 60s, well remember the victories Mr Bennett snatched from the jaws of predicted defeat. He did it because he understood elections and what voter buttons to push.

A Fall election? Unlikely.

A Clark victory? Unlikely.

But so were John Major's victory in 1992 and Glen Clark's upset in 1996.

For in politics, unlikely is a long, long way from impossible.