Vancouver Province
for October 15, 1999

Has Gordo’s meteroic rise turned into a frazzled ball of faintly warm ashes? The answer is, clearly, yes.

Gordon Wilson hit the public eye back in the late 80s when, politically unknown, he became leader of the member-less provincial Liberals and immediately attacked, with considerable courage and impact, the Meech Lake Accord. In 1992 courageously, and perhaps sowing the seeds of his future destruction, he opposed the Charlottetown Accord against the wishes of many of his colleagues. After a spectacular electoral triumph in 1991, by 1993 he was in a leadership race which he lost that September. From Hero to bum in 18 months.

Wilson then formed the Progressive Democratic Alliance and against all odds, managed to hold his seat in the 1996 election. By the end of 1998 it seemed he would become one of those rare politicians who could hold his seat without a tangible party behind him. If nothing else, he had that precious ability to stay alive.

Last February Wilson crossed the floor, joined the NDP, and out of the ashes the phoenix was once more reborn. If nothing else, he looked awfully good compared to his new colleagues. By the time Glen Clark resigned in August it appeared as that a true miracle of survival had paid off – with Ujjal Dosanjh fighting criticism of his handling of l’affaire Clark and Joy McPhail stuck with a $1.5 billion dollar budget shortfall, why not Gordon Wilson for leader, thus Premier?

The why not? became obvious last month in what had to be the worst week in Wilson’s life since his affair with Judi Tyabji became public in the Spring of 1993. First, selected bits of autobiography were shown to be untrue, the impact of which was magnified when he challenged the media head-on. The media simply found more stuff; a $30,000 judgment he refused to pay; unpaid debts of the old PDA that everyone thought had been paid; a small newspaper Wilson had stiffed for about $800. Then, to cap it all off we learned that Wilson himself is in a very deep hole financially.

The Liberals, many of whom have some old scores to settle with Wilson (and vice versa) twisted the knife by taking a formal complaint about him to the Conflicts of Interest Commissioner saying he not properly declared his debts as required by law.

Gordon Wilson, making things as hard as he can on himself, blames his problems on a conspiracy in the media to do him in. He would do better to remember the deathless words of Pogo in the sixties – "we have met the enemy and he is us."

When Vaughn Palmer of the Sun exposed Mr Wilson’s somewhat rosy resume which I followed with a whimsical piece comparing him with Walter Mitty, James Thurber’s famous daydreamer, Wilson had two options. He could have kept his mouth shut, the better option (and the one least employed by politicians) because without his help, the story had no legs. Instead he selected option two which was to fight back. He insisted on coming on my show where he not only further demonstrated the ridiculousness of his Martin Luther King story, he inspired a former colleague, Dan Jarvis MLA, to remember that Wilson had put it about that he was a pal of Malcolm X’s too.

But all of this, while it might have made Wilson’s road to power a rocky one, isn’t what did him in. No, it was the disclosure of his huge personal debt situation. I, having been through exactly the same thing (I wasn’t running for Premier, though) have a lot of genuine sympathy for Mr Wilson’s position. Who hasn’t been way over their head at some time, save the very rich?

As with all things, timing is critical. At a time when the NDP must restore their image of cleanliness, Wilson is caught in a couple of whoppers. And while the NDP delegates might forgive this, the even bigger problem for the NDP is to convince the public, through the leader they select, that they will, in future, be fiscally responsible.

You can’t do that if your leader is, however well dressed and articulate, a deadbeat. Those "optics" are lousy. That, the delegates understand only too well. And that’s why Gordon Wilson’s tostada.