{"id":767,"date":"2006-02-03T21:22:00","date_gmt":"2006-02-04T02:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=767"},"modified":"2006-02-03T21:22:00","modified_gmt":"2006-02-04T02:22:00","slug":"the-untold-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=767","title":{"rendered":"The Untold Story"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m sure there will be a few books out on this election and the Martin months for Christmas 2006 but, until then, Paul Wells&#8217; Maclean&#8217;s article on the campaign will remain the defining piece. He&#8217;s got the great one liners:<\/p>\n<p><em>&#8220;&#8230;his staff, whom [Martin] often calls the best campaign team in history &#8211; Martin is not a particularily meticulous student of history &#8211; had come up with a plan.&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n<p>He&#8217;s got the analysis. He&#8217;s got the campaign preparation and strategy for the Tories. He&#8217;s also got a great look inside the Liberal campaign, illustrated beautifully in this paragraph:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"font-family:times new roman;\">And the polls? Nationally they showed the Liberals tied with the Tories or<br \/>even a bit behind. Alcock said his only worry was that the Liberals were running<br \/>too strong, not too weak. &#8220;There&#8217;s a lot of people who argue that we had to come<br \/>down in order to activate what we need, which is people needing to stop Harper,&#8221;<br \/>Alcock said. &#8220;In fact if we&#8217;re going to do better than last time &#8211; that is, get<br \/>a majority &#8211; we&#8217;d rather be a bit lower than we are.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Alcock was describing a political version of the slingshot effect, by which<br \/>space probes fly dangerously close to planets so they can borrow some<br \/>gravitational energy to whip away even more quickly. The Liberals had decided<br \/>they needed to flirt with losing to win.<\/p>\n<p>Two things were immediately obvious about this strategy. First, it was<br \/>extremely dangerous, because as a rule of thumb, when you flirt with losing, you<br \/>lose. And it was awfully familiar. It was as if somebody had taken the 2004<br \/>campaign and decided that its chaotic shape &#8211; trouble, decline, panic,<br \/>last-minute recovery &#8211; was the shape all winning campaigns must take.<\/p>\n<p>Alcock paused and looked at his interrogator. &#8220;I know this sounds like<br \/>bullshit.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Who was arguing that the road to victory lay in near-defeat. &#8220;Well, David<br \/>Herle is certainly one of the big ones.&#8221;<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>There you have it &#8211; a look inside the mind of David Herle. If that paragraph alone isn&#8217;t worth buying a Maclean&#8217;s, I don&#8217;t know what is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m sure there will be a few books out on this election and the Martin months for Christmas 2006 but, until then, Paul Wells&#8217; Maclean&#8217;s article on the campaign will remain the defining piece. He&#8217;s got the great one liners: &#8220;&#8230;his staff, whom [Martin] often calls the best campaign team in history &#8211; Martin is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-767","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/767","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=767"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/767\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}