National Affairs
What sort of leadership is Tory showing?
Claire Hoy
On the question of political leadership - which Ontario Conservative Leader John Tory claims is his strength - the late American politician Adlai Stevenson once quipped: "It's hard to lead a cavalry charge if you think you look funny on a horse."

Now Tory may have deluded himself into thinking he knows how to ride a horse past the opposition barricades, but anybody watching his riding skills so far would have to fairly conclude that he fell off his horse at the start of the last election campaign and his chances of effectively remounting are, at best, remote.

You will know, of course, that even delegates at the Conservative Party of Ontario's annual conference in London on the weekend gave Tory a lessthan enthusiastic approval rating - kind of a onehanded clap - when almost one-third of the 1,308 delegates suggested it was time for their lead cowboy to ride off into the sunset.

If that wasn't bad enough, alas, Tory - who has always pushed the theme that "leadership matters" - once again displayed his weakness in that area by dithering for several hours after the vote before deciding to maintain his status as an unwelcome guest in the leader's stirrups.

For somebody who wants to be premier - and who may have been, had he not singlehandedly killed the Tories with his lamebrained policy on funding faith-based schools in the last election - Tory should have been prepared for an instant response to whatever the outcome was.

This is not rocket science. Hell, even then federal Tory leader Joe Clark knew enough in Winnipeg in 1983 to step down and call a leadership convention when he received the same 66.9 percent vote as Tory did this weekend.

What's more, Clark, unlike Tory, was up against a vicious, internecine campaign on behalf of Brian Mulroney's leadership aspirations to undercut his leadership.

Apart from one or two openly hostile delegates, Tory faced no such well-financed and highly-organized campaign to oust him, yet he still didn't fare any better than Clark.

But wouldn't you think that a leader, a real leader, would have sat down with his advisers BEFORE the vote and determined what his response would be depending on the various possible outcomes of the vote?

Wouldn't a real leader know in advance what level of support he needed to maintain his comfort level in the job?

Would a real leader have to huddle with his wife and with former premier Bill Davis - like Tory, an incurable "pink Tory" himself - and keep the delegates guessing for several hours about his decision?

What sort of "leadership" is that?

Tory, who went into the last campaign ahead of Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty in the polls - and even managed to lose his own seat in the process - is a wealthy man who obviously isn't in it for the money.

He's also a particularly nice person, a decent and honest person. He's just a lousy leader, that's all.

He complains that people upset by his delay in deciding his future should not "confuse thoughtfulness with indecisiveness."

They're not.

A decisive leader, as mentioned above, would have already decided what he was going to do depending on the outcome of the vote.

What's more, somebody more in touch with the grassroots of his party would have had a pretty clear idea of what the vote was going to be.

Perhaps had Tory been a tad more "thoughtful" before putting all his partisan eggs in the basket of publicly funding faith-based schools - certainly a legitimate position in principle, but a political non-starter - he wouldn't be in the mess he's in.

Had he not completely screwed up the last campaign, the Tories may not have formed the government, but there's little doubt that had they run a good campaign, they could have at least held McGuinty and his Liberals to a minority and put themselves in a strong position to win a majority next time out.

Now, they have no chance of doing that, not with a leader who even one-third of the most dedicated party people think is a dud as a leader. If the loyalists don't want him as their leader, why should the general electorate want him?

Tory is right about one thing, however, leadership does matter.

Pity he isn't showing any.