Terry Fallis - The Best Laid Plans: A Novel

author of Acting the Giddy Goat

For Nancy, Calder, and Ben

I am Daniel Addison. When I escaped Ottawa the first time, I was head speech writer for the Leader of Her Majestys Loyal Opposition. But after five years in the crucible of Parliament Hill, my public-service calling was battered beyond recognition. Nave, innocent, and excited when I arrived, I was embittered, exhausted, and ineffably sad when I left.

Still, I remained liberal and a Liberal in that order. I had come by my liberalism the hard way by slowly and steadily shedding the expectations and assumptions inflicted by my familys five generations of leadership in the Progressive Conservative (PC) Party. I had canvassed for PC candidates when the staples in my diet had been pured chicken and strained peaches. In those days, the candidate-kissing-the-baby shot had been de rigueur for campaign leaflets. Well, I had served as the local baby until I was old enough for it to be creepy. Check out the partys photo archives and youll find my smiling mug over and over again, my snowsuits or sunhats festooned with Tory paraphernalia according to the season.

When I arrived at university, I decided that family tradition was one reason to be a Tory, just not a very good one. So I decided to read about ideology, liberalism, socialism, and conservatism and what they really meant in theory, in practice, and in our history. I majored in English but also pursued my personal political science minor on the side. The more I read, the more of what had been my familys bedrock cracked and crumbled. After literally a lifetime of blind support for the Progressive Conservative Party, the family veil fell, and I realized in my heart and in my head that I was actually a Liberal. My forebears are still dizzy from subterranean spinning.

My parents seemed amused by my conversion and considered it to be a predictable manifestation of late-onset teenage rebellion. Their tolerance of what some of my relatives considered a knife in the familys back or, at least, a slap in the face was couched in the sincere belief that I would eventually come to my senses. Even then, I felt certain Id be a Liberal for life.

In the first year of my masters program in English after much soul-searching I capitalized the L and joined the Liberal Party of Canada. Uncle Charlie stopped speaking to me. Had I known, Id have taken the plunge years earlier.

I landed in the Opposition Leaders office after completing my coursework for a PhD in Canadian literature at the University of Ottawa. I started in the correspondence unit and within eighteen months, wrote my way up from letters to speeches. For most of my thirty-two years, I had lived with what I called my completion complex. I was bound to finish what I started. I couldnt leave any food on my plate even if the meatballs were hard as golf balls. I couldnt start a book, hate the opening chapters, and discard it until suffering through all 569 pages of it. I would sit through far more very, very bad movies than someone with even average cerebral capacity would ever endure. So leaving U of O one dissertation shy of my PhD was a therapeutic breakthrough, of sorts. After all, an opening as a wordsmith for the Leader of the Liberal Party (arguably, the Prime Minister in waiting) did not beckon often. I took the job. But in twisted tribute to my completion complex, I somehow nursed along my dissertation on Canadian comedic novels at night while turning phrases by day. After enduring Liberal caucus meetings, I found that defending my dissertation two years later was as easy as the dinner conversation in Leave it to Beaver. However, juggling my time and the demands of both poles of my life was not easy. Some of my colleagues thought I was very committed while others simply thought I should be. I languished somewhere in the middle. I was glad the PhD was done but was unclear about the implications. Clarity came soon enough.

On Parliament Hill, the pendulum of power swings between the cynical political operators (CPOs) and the idealist policy wonks (IPWs). Its a naturally self-regulating model that inevitably transfers power from one group to the other and back again. It can take years, even multiple elections, for the pendulum to swing to the other side. It was just my luck that I a member in good standing of the idealist-policy-wonk contingent would arrive in Ottawa just as the backroom boys were starting their swing back up to the top.

To be fair, governments work best when the pendulum is somewhere near the middle with the CPOs and IPWs sharing power. When the CPOs are dominant, as they were when I arrived in Ottawa (and when I left, for that matter), they tend to erode public confidence in the democratic process and infect the electorate with the cynicism, self-interest, and opportunism that flow in their veins. In the mind of a hardcore CPO, the ends always, always justify the means. At least, thats my balanced, impartial view.

On the other hand, when the IPWs are at the helm, however well-meaning we may be, we often lack the necessary killer instinct and political acumen to push our vaunted policies across the finish line. We cant seem to accept that selling the policy is just as important as coming up with it in the first place. We seldom get to the ends because we mess up the means.