#8 Vanity and Learning

The Mentors (Part II - John Laschinger, Tom Scott and Norman Atkins)

Substack Article #8: “Vanity and Learning – The Mentors (Part II – John Laschinger, Tom Scott and Norman Atkins)

This is the second in a three-part series on the men and women who mentored and taught me pretty much everything I know.

Let me introduce you to three more remarkable people

John Laschinger – Was the National Director of the PC Party of Canada when I met him. I never worked directly for John but in my early days in party politics we spend a tremendous amount of time together.

Apparently before I met him, “Lasch” (as everyone called him) was on a fast track to become the CEO of IBM Canada. He had a MBA when few did, was incredibly smart, had a winning personality and was an organizational wizard. His corporate career got side-track however when he got bit by the political bug – an infection that he could not shake for the balance of his days.

In 1970, he volunteered with the PC Party of Ontario who were gearing up for an election under their new leader, Bill Davis and quickly became on of the key members of “the dirty dozen”.

His entry into politics corresponded with the rise of what many (including prominent American Republicans) considered the world’s most sophisticated political operation of the time – The Big Blue Machine.

The dirty dozen were 12 young men in their late 20s and early 30s who were obsessed with Jerry Bruno and his book “The Avance Man”. Their job in the Big Blue Machine was to go into the field in advance of the leaders tour, gather on-the-ground intelligence on who was who and what was what in the local area, transmit that information to the central headquarters so that the leader’s team were fully briefed, and then to organize and deploy local resources to ensure the event was a success when the leader arrived. Needless-to-say, for the time, this was an entirely new level of campaign sophistication, and the dirty dozen were remarkably good at it - and none better than Lasch.

So instead of going back to IBM, he was hired to become the National Director of the federal party.

When I got my job as EA to the President, I lost my office on Parliament Hill and was moved to Party Headquarters. As I mentioned in an earlier series, this was a time when political parties and campaigns were run almost exclusively by volunteers and in addition to an assistant, a secretary and 6 older women who ran the print operation for the party’s newsletter, Lasch and I were pretty much the only people who worked in the central office.

Clark had been elected Leader of the Party but had yet to establish a formal campaign organization, so any “electioneering” that had to be done was also pretty much left up to the two of us.

I got my first real opportunity to work with John when the government called two by-elections for October 18^th,1976 in the vacated seats of Ottawa-Carleton and St John’s- West. I conducted a poll in each riding, the two of us briefed the candidates and their local organizations and we won both.

Lash ran operations in both the 1979 and 1980 federal elections but with the evolution of a much more sophisticated political apparatus under the leadership of Lowell Murray and Bill Neville (more on both in series #9), it was clear to John that he was no longer going to be top dog in the organization.

He quit the party and took a job as the CEO of a larger insurance company, but within a year he was bored out of his mind, quit and started out on his own as Canada’s only full-time political consultant and strategist.

Since then, he has run elections throughout Canada and around the world and is probably the only person in the country who has been involved in more campaigns than me.

We still get together from time to time, for coffee and lunch.

Learning – Do what you love

Tom Scott – The first time I met Tom Scott was at a breakfast. He sat across the table with an intense gaze and after a number of uncomfortable minutes leaned forward and said …”When I look at you, all I can think of is coming out a swimming pool and throwing my head back, like this”, lowering his face and then lifting it back sharply. At the time, I had hair down to my shoulders and he was prematurely bald.

He also was the Creative Director of Foster Advertising, Canada’s largest independent advertising firm, and a chartered member of the Big Blue Machine who oversaw all their paid communications.

From that moment, it was clear that he was whip smart, extremely funny and irreverent.

Like all members of the Big Blue Machine, he had been squeezed out of the national party operations under Joe Clark, but Rich Willis, Lowell Murray’s right hand man had desperately been trying to get him and others back involved, and I was seen as a relatively low risk introduction to make that happen.

We became fast friends and every time I was in Toronto, I would make sure to visit him in his office or go out for dinner, where he would regale me with stories of elections past and turns of phrases and quips that would leave me alternatively laughing and gasping for air.

He also was very intrigued by the polling I had been doing and – like many key players in the organization - chagrined and frustrated that the Party did not have its own Canadian polling firm and soon started talking to me about what it would take to make that happen.

Those conversations lead to the creation of Decima Research (more on this in an upcoming series).

The understanding was that Foster would put up the money, American pollster, Dick Wirthlin (who I had met on an early Secretary of State sponsored tour of the US) would provide the administrative and technological know-how and I would provide the client-serving “face” of the business.

Even though that arrangement would fall apart within 2 years after starting Decima, Tom and I worked together and continued to be very good friends for years thereafter.

He lobbied for me to become the Big Blue Machine’s pollster in the 1981 provincial campaign and we worked together on all subsequent Ontario elections for the next decade. My eldest son became fast friends with his two daughters. We fished (given how much I hated fishing, doing this was testament to how much I enjoyed and sought out his company, regardless of the reason) and golfed together and (even though he had quit drinking years earlier) he loved to join me in my life-long indulgence of going to seedy clubs to listen and see live music.

Like me, he skulked away and quit party politics after the disastrous 1993 federal election (under my direction, it was he who did the creative and picked the photograph for the ad that was famously alleged to have “made fun” of John Chretien’s face) and we have more or less lost touch, ever since.

Even though this happened, every time I think of him, I still smile.

Leaning – Be bold, If you don’t shot the puck, you’re never gong to score a goal.

Norman Arkins – Its hard for me even to begin to describe Norman Atkins.

His entry into partisan politics came through his brother-in-law, the legendary Dalton Camp, who, as President of the Pary had overseen and orchestrated the coup that ousted John Diefenbaker from the leadership of the PCs in 1966.

Camp was a true intellectual giant, ridiculously charismatic and a public speaker without peer. Norman Atkins was none of these things – but in his own way, went on to accomplish more and make a bigger mark on Canadian politics than his sister’s more famous husband.

I met Norman in the run up to the 1981 Ontario election (much more on this is a later series). Tom Scott had managed to convince other members of the Big Blue Machine to have Decima do their polling and try to recapture the majority government that had alluded them in 1975 and 1977.

I had also just come off a defeat in the 1980 federal election and while he had little reason to, Atkins seem to trust and take my advice right from the start. A resounding victory in 1981 simply cemented our relationship that continued until his death in 2010 and include more wins in 1984 and 1988 when he chaired the federal campaigns.

As I mentioned off the top, his talent is difficult to describe – in no small measure, because his talent was so unusual and unique.

He wasn’t a great strategist (like Lowell Murray) or had a brilliant policy mind (like Bill Neville). Nor was he intellectually impressive (like Tom Scott) or gut-splitting funny (like Nancy MeLean). But he could make all of these people do whatever he wanted them to, oftentimes when they didn’t want to. (Nancy Maclean – as a testament to her mischievous sense of humour – used to refer to this unique skill as “management by whining”)

He had an uncanny ability to identify and dissect talent, then to assign that talent to a task, and then create a dynamic where you did not want to let him down by failing to do that task to the highest standard you were capable of. Not only was he the boss. He was the boss of a whole coterie of individuals who were palpably more impressive than him, yet none of whom questioned for a moment his right to be boss or thought they could do a better job of being the boss.

I flew to Ottawa for his funeral in 2012 but was too sad to attend. I hugged his three boys who I grown very fond of over the years, and turned around and went home.

Learning – Understanding your weaknesses – and finding people to fill in your shortcomings – is as important as flaunting your strengths