Paul Martin generally avoids the pronoun "I." Unlike Jean Chrétien, frequent pronouncements about himself make him uncomfortable. Such references are a little tacky, in his eyes; a display of self-absorption that he thinks politicians would be advised to eschew.
Last night, though, the next prime minister set aside his own rule. The man whom Canadians admire for remaking the country's books sought to strike a more well-rounded and personal connection with the public.
Mr. Martin still doesn't know when he will take power, but that is a technicality to all but those whose lives revolve around Parliament Hill. His speech accepting the Liberal leadership was essentially his first opportunity to speak to the country as Prime Minister. That meant emphasizing motivation and character rather than policy and process, which is the usual focus of someone renowned for sweating the details. Voters want more than to respect a leader; they also want to feel comfortable with him or her.
So, Canadians were treated to a video biography that told many of them more than they knew about Mr. Martin, including his close connection with his father's own political legacy. It wasn't maudlin in the way, say, that Bill Clinton's The Man from Hope video in 1992 tugged at the heartstrings. But it did succeed in getting across that Mr. Martin is grounded in a perspective that goes far beyond balanced budgets. And Mr. Martin — above all else — dwelt on what another U.S. president — George Bush Sr., who also hated to say "I" — called the "vision thing."
"We stand together on the edge of historic possibility — at a moment that comes rarely in the life of a country," Mr. Martin said. "It is a time when destiny is ours to hold."
The byword of the Martin campaign is change, an audacious claim since Mr. Martin was the second-most powerful politician in Ottawa for most of the past decade. How does one do that credibly?
As last night's speech emphasized, the first step actually is to suggest continuity. The progress over the past 10 years reversed decades of decline, Mr. Martin suggested, and the time is ripe to seize on Canada's newfound strengths to accelerate its accomplishments domestically and internationally. Who better to lead this process than someone who was integral to getting the country this far?
"In a sense, it's about the mood and the feel of the country," an adviser to Mr. Martin said yesterday. "There's a new confidence."
Here, Mr. Martin benefits from the contrast with Mr. Chrétien. The retiring leader's governing style was self-evident — solve problems that won't solve themselves, and otherwise stay out of the way.
That suited a nation exhausted after the hyperbolic Mulroney years, but it is no longer sufficient. Mr. Martin made every effort last night to paint himself, in this sense, as the anti-Chrétien — a transformational rather than a transactional leader, one who wants to focus on priorities with a decision-making style that is more consensual than Canada has seen before.
"The true challenge of leadership is to rally a nation to its unfulfilled promise," he said. "It is in ourselves that the true meaning of Canada is found."
The policy differences with the Chrétien era will, in fact, hardly be sweeping. Mr. Martin made much of Canada's economic opportunities in emerging sectors such as biotechnology, but he also made clear that the traditional government role in helping the underprivileged can never be forgotten. He suggested that Canada's relations with its neighbour, the world's only superpower, must be carefully nurtured, but he also emphasized Canada's responsibility to modernize the world's multilateral institutions. He spoke of making democratic institutions more responsive. And, in the Liberal tradition, he made much of rejecting the "dogmatism" of left-wing and right-wing parties.
He was, in other words, the personification of what was once known as the radical middle — activist and forward-looking while, at the same time, carefully balanced.
