The Last of the Great Liberals

The Grits could use a man like Keith Davey again.

Keith Davey, who led masterful campaigns for Pearson and Trudeau, died Monday.

He “was as decent a person as you could find in politics, or anywhere,” writes the Toronto Star’s Richard Gwyn. “He practised what’s been called ‘the politics of joy’ … He would, if still around, have helped keep our electoral politics a good deal more civil.”

Sun Media’s editors concede they're no fans of the Liberals, but “we must nonetheless acknowledge Davey as a brilliant political strategist, and perhaps the best ever seen in Canadian politics.” That compliment would be touching if the editors didn’t use the occasion of the man’s death to assure readers that had he not been suffering from Alzheimer’s for the last years of his life, Davey certainly would have subscribed to the Sun’s views of the Liberal Party: “If there is any blessing in dementia … Davey was at least largely spared witnessing the implosion of Liberal prime minister Paul Martin, and the ridiculous attempts by the Liberals to run first with Stéphane Dion and now with the Visiting Professor.” The word “tasteless” comes to mind.

“Indeed, the Liberals could use Davey’s talents now,” writes the Star’s Bob Hepburn. “There’s no big strategist and few fresh voices on the campaign team. Too many voters don’t know what the Liberals stand for anymore.” Hepburn writes that Davey built his success on the belief that campaigns were won on a single issue, that the Liberals should always run as reformers, and that opposition leaders must be tough street fighters, not shrill critics. He suggests the current crop of Grits are failing on all counts.

The National Post’s Kelly McParland says Davey’s success had as much to do with the political climate of the 1960s, when a pre-Bloc Quebec was still fertile ground and the Tories were inept. “Canada has changed, the Liberal party hasn’t …” he writes. “The sooner the Liberals recognize that and begin building a structure that reflects the concerns of Canadians outside southern Ontario and Atlantic Canada, the sooner they may fulfill their hopes of a return to the sunny high ground of power.”