Why do Politicians leave Politics?

How wives changed Parliament's face
Feb. 5, 2006. 09:41 AM
JENNIFER WELLS
STAFF REPORTER

It smells peculiar."

Four years ago John Crosbie, ex of the House of Commons but still full of bonny mots, passed that judgment on Brian Tobin's decision to bow out of politics.

In making his announcement in January 2002, Tobin had by his side his wife, Jodean, whose sweet, youthful face was all but unknown outside of Newfoundland. It was the emotional pull of Jodean and their three offspring, said Tobin, that drew him to the conclusion that his political days were over.

To emphasize the point, Tobin offered this misty-eyed quote: "It's amazing what the glow of a Christmas tree will do to civilize even the most savage political beast."

Observers, in their turn, turned flinty-eyed in their examination of Tobin's exit, suggesting that the home-and-hearth trope was merely convenient cover for the cabinet minister's realization that the Liberal leadership was not in the offing. And anyway, weren't two of the Tobin's "children" in university? "Family reasons is an old saw, but it won't cut [it] in this instance," harrumphed Crosbie. "I don't believe it for a minute."

Today Mr. Crosbie makes this observation: "Practically two out of three times when some politician decides he's not going to run again, this is given as a reason," he says.

"It makes you sound, you know, responsible and reasonable and a family lover, etc. etc. It gives a warm and cosy feeling, I suppose."

As of this moment, Crosbie's two-out-of-three proves shy of the mark. A string of potential candidates for the Liberal leadership have offered up The Spouse and/or more broadly The Family as the compelling reason not to aim for the big job.

Tobin has taken a pass, defeating the '02 predictions that he was bound to make a reappearance on the political stage. So, too, have Frank McKenna, husband of Julie, John Manley, husband of Judith, and Allan Rock, husband of Debby Hanscom.

An echo of the possible wisdom of such a decision could be heard at week's end, when Paul Martin offered a brief and possibly half-joking sound bite on how Sheila Martin might feel, now that her husband's leadership days are behind him. (See sidebar quiz.)

Certainly, Mrs. Martin deserves a holiday on the family farm for as long as she darn well pleases, small reward for the interminable official functions in which she served as wife of the PM and the interminable hours spent on the hustings. To her credit, Sheila Martin never had the wide-eyed, paper doll look of some official wives. And in quiet sufferance she bore the endless attacks on the Ottawa Liberals as a corrupt force. "She had her share of fun," says someone who watched her up close in Ottawa. "You'd see her around the city having dinner with her friends." That, of course, was before the election. During the campaign, she stood at almost every single event, steadfast. "And then you see this spiral occur," says the Ottawaphile. "It does create a sense of hurt."

Why, we wonder, would someone not want to come up with a couple of million bucks to run a leadership campaign?

And why, we wonder, would someone not want to be the wife of that person, or, for that matter, the husband of that person?

And why, we wonder, would someone not want to have pins stuck in one's eyes?

The legitimacy of the family fallback can be known to only an intimate few. It has become the fashion in many arenas — business and sports are but two — to cite "personal reasons" as the rationale for exiting one's job. Such personal reasons, we know, run the gamut from "I knew I wouldn't get the top job," to "They're not paying me enough," to "The company failed to make its numbers so they've hurled me over the ramparts." The higher the position held, the more likely the "personal reasons" press release will be trotted out. The device is very big with CEOs and is often accompanied by a great deal of cash.

On rare occasions — say, the illness of a spouse — leaving for personal reasons may be transparently true.

On even rarer occasions, there comes along a politician or potential politician whose deep examination of his true self — as opposed to his public self — is offered up for all to see. General Colin Powell is one such. In announcing in November 1995, that he would not be seeking the Republican nomination, dashing all hopes of anointing the first black president in the U.S., Powell put his family, and most particularly his wife, Alma, first. "I have spent long hours talking with my wife and children, the most important people in my life, about the impact an entry into political life would have on us," he said. "It would require sacrifices and changes in our lives that would be difficult for us to make at this time."

`It would require sacrifices and changes in our lives that would be difficult for us to make at this time'Gen. Colin Powell, on not running for the Republican nomination

It was the contextualization that made the Powell announcement so compelling. He was exceptionally forthcoming about his wife's periodic depression, with which she had been grappling "for many, many years." And there was the hard work she had already endured — as a military spouse, Alma Powell had had to resettle the family after more than a dozen moves. The rumoured presidential bid had given the couple a taste of the loss of privacy they would suffer. "That makes you very vulnerable," she said once, commenting on how it felt to have strangers arriving on the doorstep. There was the hate mail. And fears for her husband's safety. The general had made no secret of his distaste for parts of the politics game: the "ad hominem attacks that destroy character"; the "incivility that exists in political life right now."

In the days after Powell's announcement, Newsweek ran a feature story in which the deciding moment is set with the Powells lying in bed one morning. Alma is weeping and she says, simply, "No." In a later interview, she said she had been emphatic about him not running. "I told him that from the very beginning."

As the Powell drama played out, Bloc Québécois leader Lucien Bouchard agonized publicly over his own political future and whether to enter provincial politics. "It's well known that my wife is not crazy about politics," he said of Audrey Best in November 1995, adding that his children, then aged 5 and 4, had learned the word "referendum." "They hate it. They spit when they pronounce it." The Los Angeles Times called it "Canada's version of the recent Colin Powell syndrome." Years later, when Bouchard resigned as Quebec premier, the young family, he said, was uppermost in his thoughts.

That said, knowing what we know about politics, particularly in its modern iteration, deciding to stay home may be the very essence of sensibility.

In September, Mark Latham, the former head of Australia's Labor Party, gave a rousing speech at the University of Melbourne entitled "Ten reasons why young idealistic people should forget about organized politics." Latham recounted the story of someone who had contemplated entering politics, but then thought the better of it because he "didn't hate his children enough."

The negative impact of family life was, Latham indicated, incalculable. The endless hours away from home; the ceaseless invasion of one's privacy. He quoted a former minister who had intoned, "Every day you spend away from your children is a day you never get back." Added Latham: "In politics, you spend far too many days away from your children."

The loss of personal life could, one supposes, be somewhat bearable were it not for what Latham described as the mounting antipathy on the part of the electorate. "Only the political class maintains the façade that what they do is important and well-respected."

The privacy invasion has not ended, however. Last week, Latham, now a self-described "home dad," threw a punch at a Daily Telegraph reporter outside of a Hungry Jack's restaurant, where he had taken his young sons for a bite.

Psychologists were quoted in the papers theorizing about Latham's lack of anger management skills and the possible traumatizing effects on the kids.

Warming to the subject that a life in politics appears not at all pleasing, John Crosbie admits it's tougher now than it was in his day. "The electorate are getting more cynical all the time," he says. "People don't look up to you because you run. They think you're just a self-seeking person, or power mad."

Crosbie was first elected to the House of Commons in October 1976. For years his wife, Jane, had been stalwart in support of his provincial career. "The only time she gave me real difficulty was when I first got elected [as an MP]," he recalls. "She had to decide whether she was going to come to Ottawa with me or stay back in St. John's to look after the dog. She had man's best friend there. She didn't want to leave him. At Christmastime, I finally had to say, `Now look, it's either me or the dog.' And I was, quite frankly, surprised when she chose me."

It is a bit of a shtick, but Crosbie now says he is in full sympathy with anyone who chooses not to be leader of a national political party. "It is getting harder to get your wife, and your children for that matter, to be supportive," he says.

And given his current enmity for air travel, he particularly sympathizes with East Coasters Brian Tobin and Frank McKenna. "To be treated like a scumbag every time you go through security," he says. "Life is getting tougher and more stressful."

Last Monday, McKenna held a news conference at the Canadian Embassy in Washington.

"I know what [political leadership] takes from you," said the outgoing ambassador. "I had to balance that against the opportunity to spend more time with friends and family, to watch my grandchildren grow."

He couldn't find the right balance when he was premier of New Brunswick, he said, and was "certain" that he would not be able to find that balance within the rigorous demands of the Liberal leadership.

Such a statement no longer "smells peculiar," to recall Crosbie's phrase.

It may be that the touted candidate holds not a chance of leadership success. It may be that the touted candidate has not the stomach for the rugged parliamentary sessions ahead.

Or it may be, it just may be, that it just ain't worth it.