Grading the Leaders: Dalton McGuinty: A-

When you're riding this high in the polls, and you started out almost even with the opposition it's hard to say someone has run a bad campaign even if you don't agree with their tactics. You have to give credit where credit is due.

Of course I am biased but I think McGuinty ran a pretty good campaign that did what it needed to do to keep and enhance his lead.

First of all, he made Tory's biggest weakness the focus of the campaign and played it to his strength. It was a huge issue and it resonated with Ontarians and further cemented McGuinty's reputation as the education premier who would stand up for public education.

Second, he had a progressive agenda that took a lot of the issues Hampton was highlighting (such as poverty, dental care, senior care and so on) and provided realistic solutions for them within a fully costed platform. In fact it was the most fiscally conservative of the 3 main parties (which makes these last ditch tax hike accusations incredibly lame).

Third, he consistently gave a solid defense of the Liberal record and confronted all misinformation put out about it. He was up front about his broken promises, explained his decisions well and why we are all better for it. Big contrast with Tory's equivocations about where his "efficiencies" would come from.

Fourth, he made all the appropriate parallels between Tory and Harris without stretching or going over the top (e.g., he never said Tory wanted to pick on the poor or that he was a right-wing ideologue, etc....) and he consistently provided excellent contrasts between the Liberal record with the PC and NDP records. He excellently framed his party as defenders of the public interest and the Tories as defenders of private interests.

Finally (there are more, but I'll leave that to others) he managed the media incredibly well and much better than the other two leaders. There were no real gaffes or slip-ups, he never went too negative (left that to his surrogates as appropriate and as done in 2003) and it seemed he always got the media focused on what he wanted to talk about (something neither Tory nor Hampton managed to do very well).

However, McGuinty doesn't get an A+ for two reasons. First of all, while it was appropriate to put a lot of focus on religious schools given the monumental nature of what was being proposed I still think the Liberal campaign focused on it more than it needed to. Tory was already being barraged about it each day in the media so he was already doing himself in, McGuinty could have spent more days highlighting different aspects of the Liberal platform than he did and spent less time on the religious schools issue. He would have taken away the same supporters fleeing from Tory over the religious school's issue but also possibly won over others who wanted a more clearly mapped out vision of where the Liberals will take us over the next 4 years. Yes McGuinty mapped out of lots of good policies this campaign and a vision for the future, I'm just saying he should have put a bit more focus on that over talking about Tory's Achilles heel as often as he did.

Second, even though McGuinty is not near as guilty of this as John Tory, I still felt the Liberal campaign was too focused around him. He was in all the ads, pasted on the bus and was the centre of the campaign. Given that McGuinty has what many (even conservative) commentators have agreed to be one of the strongest teams behind him in recent memory I just don't see why there wasn't more focus in his ad campaign and on the campaign trail on the strength of his team as a whole. I don't see how it would have hurt to highlight the strong team McGuinty has versus the incredibly weak and hiding teams that Hampton and Tory had. McGuinty is a great guy and as the leader he's the face of the party so he's got to be the focus of course, I just think they could have added more focus on his team too.

Other than that though, McGuinty has dominated this campaign, controlled the agenda and has gotten results and I'm looking forward to 4 more years and I hope his next campaign in 2011 earns an A+.

So in summary of all 3 leaders, McGuinty definitely ran the best campaign and for those who care to differ take it up with the people of Ontario since it's clear he's earned more support in this campaign than the other two leaders. That said, while each leader had some unique flaws in their campaign, I fault all three of them for focusing their campaigns too much around their own personalities. Who would be in a Tory or Hampton cabinet if they had won? It seems neither wanted to showcase their team. Same for McGuinty though, which makes even less sense to me given the strength of his team.

But regardless of whether you wanted them to win, you always have to give the winner credit (even if you don't agree with their tactics), as it looks pretty damn likely we will see a McGuinty majority tomorrow.

I'll be back later tonight (or tomorrow morning) with my detailed predictions and then tomorrow night we can see just how psychic I really am.

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Grading the Leaders: John Tory: D

What to say about John Tory's campaign? Well at least he'll probably do better than the last major campaign he ran (wonder if Kim Campbell is laughing now though).

Anyways there were many problems with John Tory's campaign that's left him in his currently very weak position. I'll only focus on three in particular though. First obviously there was the religious schools issue. It's coming out more and more now that Tory had been told by many people and even focus groups that this idea was toxic and he ignored them all. Tory says a good leader has to listen, but it seems to be that Tory only "listens" when his back is completely against the wall and he has no other choice (unless he really did want to re-live 1993). So his plowing through on this issue and continually beating us over the head on how he was standing firm on principle and that somehow this was going to win us all over was just completely lacking in judgment and as some commentators put "political suicide". While his reversal stopped a mutiny from occurring it probably lost him a lot of supporters that actually thought he was a man of principle (and he has continued to confuse voters on the free vote issue ever since). Basically I can't fathom what other terrible ill-thought ideas Mr. Tory would have rammed through the legislature had he be given a majority. You can argue that this issue shouldn't have dominated the campaign, but Tory's stubbornness on it really highlighted just how unfit for the Premier's office he was. He had not even considered some of the most fundamental flaws with his plan such as what to do about the inevitable court challenges by scientologists and so on, how could he claim that he was going to treat the religious schools just like the Catholics and still let those schools charge tuition, how would he monitor these schools, what would happen when they started violating the curriculum, and on and on. It just give the impression that he doesn't give great thought to his most important policies which is the worst possible quality to have if you want to be the Premier who is tasked with handling education and health care in our province.

Now it wasn't just religious schools that brought Tory down (though that in itself was probably enough to keep him out of the Premier's office). He also made a mistake I think in wrapping his entire campaign around himself as I discussed earlier. Everyone was a "John Tory candidate" and his bus and commercials were all about John Tory and not the PC Party. Pamphlets passed out at these candidates' events said nothing about the candidates themselves, only Tory. It's like he was ashamed of his team and ashamed of his party. It also made it appear as if these candidates would just be complete puppets with no mind of their own. Tory even took the role of attack dog for himself, something that almost always goes to a surrogate. I'm really not sure what Tory thought he was accomplishing other than his naive belief that everyone knew who he was or would like him and I guess Tory thought no one would really care who his candidates actually were. Anyways the whole thing came off as massive arrogance and really raised questions as to just what kind of people was he running and why was he hiding them? As well it feeds the impression that his team is weak and thus he would have a incompetent cabinet to deal with if he actually won. And it doesn't make me want to vote for someone if they're not even well advertised by name, he could have at least given us the illusion that these people won't be puppets. People would like to know about who they are voting for, instead all they hear about is the PC leader (and of course much moreso about that other leader that the Tories were so sure everyone hated).

Besides the John Tory we did see was always complaining and talking about how awful everything in Ontario is, so if he was going to put himself front and centre he should have at least projected a positive image with a positive vision, but he did neither. I'm biased of course, but I didn't like the John Tory I saw on TV, he seemed bitter and angry all the time. So I suppose a voter could assume the "John Tory candidates" were bitter and angry just like him. Anyways the whole image centred nature of the campaign was just one big mistake from the get go.

Finally compounding the other two factors, was Tory's platform. If religious schools was never brought up the $1.5 Billion gap would have been a bigger issue. It just reeked of Harris/Eves slash and burn policies. It also really ate in to Tory's credibility each time he was unable to spell out how he could find such savings. It just made parallels with Harris appropriate again. Tory could have easily really bolstered his credibility and just flat out said "ok I'm going to cut here and here's why". I might not have agreed with him, but your regular John and Jane might have. Instead, he ended up sounding like Hampton that we could all have our cake and eat it too which was basically the whole mantra of the Common Sense Revolution that was proved completely false. Plain and simple something would have to be cut and Tory should have been up front. Nobody believed that he would just find "efficiencies" and no services would suffer.

All these things together just showed that Tory doesn't think through his policies, isn't straight with people and doesn't think much of his team. There's much more issues wrong with Tory's campaign (the complete focus on promises as if that's all that mattered, his horribly negative ads, his fear-mongering on crime that was out of touch with reality, etc....), but I can't go on forever (I do have a Master's program to keep up with) so I've highlighted 3 things that I think basically sunk his chances that's really enough justification for an F.

Ok so I'm being pretty negative, so I'll give Tory some credit. I did like to see that he visited a lot of poor communities in this campaign and some farming communities too that other parties didn't pay as much attention to. That was a good touch and I do get the sense that Tory cares about the impoverished in Ontario (though I still think the rest of his team would rather continue the Harris/Eves war on the poor).

Other than that though, Tory was way too negative all the time which should have been left to his surrogates and when you're on track to do even worse than Ernie Eve's it's really hard to give you anything much beyond a failing grade.

For the few nice touches he showed he avoids an F, but I can't say I'll miss John Tory in politics, he seems better suited elsewhere and I'm sure he'll still make a difference in a positive way as I think he's a good guy at heart.

And then there's McGuinty's campaign.....

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Campaign Overview: Grading the Leaders: Hampton: C+

So with the campaign coming to a close I thought I would steal Adam Radwanski's idea of grading the leader's (I'm sure it's been done long before Adam so I don't feel so bad) as a way of summing up how I feel about each of their campaigns.I'd like to hear others grades too.

Now many of you may disagree with my analysis, but I think we all have to admit that in giving out such grades for each leader's campaign you really do have to take into account the results, so for all you Tories out there, I don't see how you could justify Tory having run a better campaign when he's doing worse now than when he started.

Anyways.....

Grading the Leaders: Howard Hampton: C+

Suffice it to say the NDP and Howard Hampton haven't had an easy time this time around (I guess they haven't since 1990 though). It's tough when the people know you'll never form the government to have your ideas taken seriously. But a good leader has to be able to deal with that. Hampton means well I'm sure but he just couldn't get the job done. He came up with his "six priorities" and I guess he thought that if he kept it simple people might actually listen to him, but you know aside from eliminating the health tax(while raising corporate and income taxes for the highest bracket), uploading services, and re-listing eye exams and physio, I don't remember what his other policies were. He kept talking about seniors in soiled diapers, but I don't remember hearing a fully costed plan on how to deal with that. Basically, he raised a lot of good issues, but he suffered from a real credibility problem in that he didn't have realistic solutions.

It seemed like he was just full of were pie in the sky promises with no fully costed platform to back it up. Basically, Hampton seemed to be telling us we could have the world and not suffer any consequences (unless you were rich I guess, then you get taxes raised). He also started out the campaign claiming he was going to form the government which no one really believed which took a further hit to his believability.

But then there were his actual ideas that just didn't stand up to scrutiny. This was nowhere more true than with energy: Hampton wanted to close our nuclear plants and coal power plants and then hope and pray we could replace it all with renewable energy. Pie in the sky thinking as I said. When people think you're full of BS on some matters they don't really want to hear what you have to say about the rest. Next time, the NDP should really come forth with a fully costed platform and actually test out their ideas on non-NDP supporters to see if they actually hold up to any kind of scrutiny. I won't hold my breath though.

Anyways I guess Hampton not being listen to or believed came to full a head last week, as he fell back on the old adage that when your campaign isn't going well just play the blame the media card. I don't think the media was completely wrong to focus on religious schools. It could after all be making one of the biggest change to our education system in decades. Of course I did agree with Hampton that it would have been good to hear more coverage on all the others issues that he mentioned. But Hampton, like Tory should have been able to see the forest from the trees earlier on religious schools and how important it would be. The Liberals saw it and were front and centre talking about it. Hampton instead kept talking about "smokescreens" while McGuinty was establishing himself as the only true defender of public education. Hampton could have taken a clear stand like McGuinty, but like Tory he just couldn't see how much this issue would matter to Ontarians (and maybe moreso the media) and didn't make enough of a splash on the issue. If he wanted to talk about other issues, he should have gotten in on this one to get the attention, and while he had it, took the opportunity to his advantage and brought up the other issues. He could have taken the lead to talk about other issues this way, and he didn't do it, so all the while he got ignored and fell behind in the race.

I do give Hampton some credit though for at least realizing that thata lot of this was John Tory's fault for bringing up this wrong-headed religious schools idea in the first place. It was good to see HoJo "take a break" for a short time, but Hampton should have left it at that, but instead completely melted down in front of the media. It was not exactly the way to make a comeback. He came off sounding desperate and demoralized and plunged his credibility down further. It was as close to officially throwing in the towel as you get.

He's rebounded a bit these past few days, showing just a bit more confidence, but nothing that would lure away many Liberal supporters. His latest claim that the Liberals would have to raise taxes is a bit rich from the party that had the most expensive platform of all (and relies on much rosier economic predictions than the Conservatives or Liberals). Again he really suffers from a credibility gap and I think that's partly what's done him in.

So in summary, I give Hampton some credit for raising some good issues and for in the final days finally criticizing Tory for the disaster he's been. He's also likely to at least also increase his party's share of the popular vote (and possibly seat count) over 2003, so results do have to be factored in there. But by and large he didn't get the job done as he failed to get much attention most of the campaign (something the leader of the NDP has to be adept at and something Layton does a better job of), put out ideas that didn't really stand up to scrutiny and he looks like he's failed to hold the Liberals to a minority which was his main task.

I feel for Hampton, I think he's probably in politics for the right reasons, he (by his own admission) just might not be the right guy for his job. I imagine a new leader will take the reins soon of the NDP and if I were an NDP supporter I would hope he/she learns from Hampton's mistakes.

Next up is John Tory...

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