History repeats itself, part 2 * pi

Ralph Klein used to be considered a nice guy.

I realize that this is a surprising thing to say about a man who's best remembered now for throwing change at the homeless, ridiculing recipients of Assured Income for the Severely Handicapped, making lewd jokes about female cabinet ministers, and hunting nuns for sport, but it's true. When he was running for P.C. leader, the concern -- along with the concern that he couldn't make morning meetings -- was that he was too nice a guy, too inclined to be everybody's (drinking) buddy.

Observers became convinced that Klein had the backbone for the job only after three incidents early in his premiership: in 1994 he fired Deputy Premier Ken Kowalski for being a power unto himself and Transportation Minister Peter Trynchy for some questionable business dealings, and in 1996 he fired Social Services Minister Mike Cardinal for mixing the personal and the political unduly. All three were difficult firings: Kowalski was a cabinet heavyweight and an important power-broker, Trynchy was the longest-serving MLA in the province (the last remnant of Peter Lougheed's class of 1971), and Mike Cardinal was close to Klein both personally and politically. But he fired all three unilaterally, and he ruled his caucus from an iron fist from that point until the point several years later at which he started to completely lose his mind.

Ed Stelmach's ascendancy to the P.C. leadership took place the same month as Stephane Dion's to the federal Liberal leadership, and comparisons between the two were inevitable. Both were seen as nice guys whose wins were largely accidental, the product of voting systems that hurt their more popular, but also more polarizing, opponents. Stephane Dion, who I quite liked at the time and for whom I retain a good deal of admiration provided when I evaluate him on the basis of sufficiently carefully selected criteria, quickly went about reinforcing that impression. Stelmach sort of seemed to too.

Guy Boutilier is no Ken Kowalski, but Ed Stelmach has served notice that he's not fucking around. The only question is whether we as Albertans will mark it eight, or zero?