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The October 6 election gave the Liberals a surprising near-minority. We can find lots of reasons for it. First, Premier McGuinty projects himself as an experienced hand in troubled economic times. In addition, after eight years of governing, he still appears fresh and enthusiastic. That’s no small feat; long-time incumbent governments often defeat themselves because they and their leader appear worn-out and cynical: I certainly remember that Premier Ernie Eves projected fatigue in the 2003 campaign and especially the debate.

Conservative Tim Hudak’s message was critical, as it should have been. But the simplistic message — “Hudak lower taxes, more jobs/McGuinty higher taxes, fewer jobs” – was repeated to the point of overkill. Mike Harris, the last Ontario Conservative to defeat an incumbent, had a much more comprehensive platform in his “common sense revolution,” and more gravitas than Hudak. And watching Rob Ford’s conservatism-in-action in Toronto and hearing Stephen Harper’s wish for a “hat trick” didn’t help.

Andrea Horwath’s enthusiasm was undercut by the unreality of some of her promises – cut emergency waiting times in half, freeze gasoline prices – and her lack of priorities, as reflected in the number of different groups she was willing to “put first.”

For me, the campaign in microcosm was a candidate’s debate in my constituency of Don Valley West, between two heavyweights, former Education and current Transport Minister Kathleen Wynne and Conservative Andrea Mandel-Campbell, a high-profile business journalists. (The NDP and Green candidates, while well-meaning, and far less experienced and articulate).

In the debate, Mandel-Campbell was able to seize the issue of public debt and taxes, claiming that the Liberals had enormously expanded public debt and raised taxes during McGuinty’s eight years in office. She added, as an aside, that Ontarians have a higher per-capita public debt than Californian’s.

Wynne was never able to adequately respond to Mandel-Campbell’s position. While she made the point that Tim Hudak would not repudiate any of the decisions made by the Harris Government – in which he was a minister – she never explored the implications. She could have reminded the voters that when the Liberals came to office, they were hit with an unexpected $5 billion deficit the Conservatives had left. She could also have reminded the voters that the Liberals eliminated the Conservative deficit and essentially balanced the books for the remainder of their first term.

Turning to the second term, she could have reminded the audience that the deficit increased, not because the Liberals were willfully wasting public resources, but because they were responding to the global recession, and it meant major expenditures on keeping the auto industry functioning and participating in the Economic Action Plan. So Ontario was running a large deficit, just as the federal Conservatives were. She could have asked Mandel-Campbell whether she wouldn’t have bailed out GM or whether she wouldn’t have participated in the Economic Action Plan.

Wynne could have also mentioned that the California comparison was completely irrelevant because the State of California plays a much small role than the province of Ontario, so it isn’t a surprise that we have more per capita provincial public debt.

Looking to the next four years, Wynne could have made the case that if the Conservatives were so intent on making deficit and debt reduction as their number one policy priority, they would likely be making very drastic cuts in public spending that could well drive the economy into another recession. She could have compared their fiscal plan to that of the Tea Party in the US, or the one that external agencies are imposing on Greece, which she might have called “Hudak’s Grecian Formula.” She could have argued that we aren’t Greece and the McGuinty Government hasn’t governed as though we were. More broadly, she could have made the point that, while it’s important to eliminate deficits and pay down debt, it shouldn’t be done so quickly that it can push the economy into another recession and drastically drive up unemployment.

I came away from the debate thinking that Ms. Mandel-Campbell was promulgating Tea Party economics and Ms. Wynne didn’t call her on it. The Liberals shouldn’t let a Canadianized version of the Tea Party’s story prevail in the campaign. Perhaps if they had responded more aggressively, they would have won their majority. But looking to the new term that starts today, they must begin to tell their own story, one that balances a concern for the economy today with a concern for the fiscal balance sheet in the distant future.

Watching the leaders’ debate in the Ontario election, I noticed that New Democrat Andrea Horwath and Progressive Conservative were making considerable use of story-telling. The stories Horwath told were of named individuals, including her son, whom she claimed had been badly served by the Ontario health care system, in particular hospital emergency wards. The stories Hudak told were personal, dealing with his Slovakian immigrant ancestors, and his daughter’s medical treatments.

Horwath used her stories to attempt to refute Premier McGuinty’s assertion that the quality of health care (as measured by indicators such as waiting times) had improved during the last eight years. So when McGuinty presented data, Horwath adamantly shook her head, claiming that her cases told a different story. It appeared that the two leaders had different versions of reality.

Of course, it is always possible to have individual stories of service delivery problems or failures in an institution that, overall, is improving performance. The stories can reflect mistakes made by service providers or areas that remain problems (so, for example, cancer care could be improving faster than emergency services because spending on the former is increasing faster than the latter). While stories are no substitute for empirical policy analysis for a government in power, their intrinsic drama may be more persuasive in an election campaign than the recitation of statistical indicators.

How is an incumbent to respond in a debate to the opposition’s horror stories? One approach would be to ignore the stories and continue citing statistics. Another would be to admit that there are occasional problems, but that overall service is improving. Yet another might be to recognize that stories of problems always evoke public attention, while stories of successful treatment receive less attention. The incumbent could then argue that for every horror stories there are hundreds of stories of service being delivered successfully.

Both incumbent and opposition are appealing to the electorate to determine whether their own experience matches their claims. Still, the opposition has an advantage here, because, even if people have received good care in the past, the horror stories suggest that they might not in the future.

In Hudak’s case, the stories served both to introduce himself to the electorate and as a touchstone of his policies. His opposition to the Liberals’ proposed tax credit for new immigrants seems rooted in his family experience of getting ahead in Canada without such benefits. McGuinty accused Hudak of exhibiting a thread of xenophobia in his policy positions. Another way McGuinty might have put the point is that Hudak hasn’t transcended his own narrow experience, while he as premier has been required to think more broadly about the province and its role in the international economy.

So stories were a key component of the Ontario leader’s debate. Which of the stories we heard will resonate with the voters? Which will lead voters to identify with a candidate’s values or upbringing? Which will describe a fear, even a nightmare, that the voters share? Now that the debate has raised public attention to what has so far been a lackluster campaign, it will be fascinating to see which of the stories we heard in the debate continue to be retold during the final week of the campaign.

I recently saw a “based on a true story” ad for Tim Hortons that aired during a Blue Jays game. That led me to the Tim Hortons website, where the company is now running a competition (with a grand prize of $ 5000 in Tim Cards) for stories about “special Tim Hortons coffee moments.” The slogan of this initiative is “every cup tells a story,” and it appears that the best stories will be translated into ads.

I’m not sure how many ads have yet been based on these submissions, so I’ll confine my comments to the one that I did see. This story involves a relationship between a young adult daughter and her parents, particularly her father. The young woman has moved to a small apartment – she sleeps in the living room – in the downtown of a big city and, to indicate that this is a lifestyle change, gotten a nose stud.

Her parents have come to visit her. Her father is trying to persuade her to come home – presumably somewhere in small-town Canada – where it is less expensive and quieter. She tells dad that “this [the big city] is home.” Daughter and parents see a Tims and sit down for a coffee and a heart-to-heart talk. While her father still looks distressed at her life choices, the Tims is presented as the place where they can still connect.

The ad portrays very important life-cycle issues. The young woman is asserting her own identity. While the ad doesn’t tell us what work she is doing, it does tell us that it will be in a big city, not a small town, and will involve an edgier and more avant-garde life style than found in a small town. It sounds like she has joined Richard Florida’s “creative class.”

Her father is acting out of sincere concern for his daughter – an aspect of Erik Erikson’s generativity – but his concern is tinged with self-interest, in that he still wants her close by. The difficult realization he’s reaching is that his idea of how she should live her life must give way to hers, and that he cannot control her.

It’s interesting that the company ran the ad during a baseball game, where the audience demographic includes – perhaps is dominated by – the middle aged males represented by the dad. I assume it could also be used on programs with the young adult audience represented by the daughter (perhaps the CBC’s “Being Erica.”)

But where does the link to Tims fit in? It’s indirect, since the ad is not about the coffee or the menu, but rather about the human interactions that customers have at Tims. If the ad’s target market is – even more specifically – middle aged males in small towns, then it is reinforcing the message that Tims is the coffee shop of choice, but there are also many Tims, even in gritty noisy big city downtowns.

The question that comes to my mind – as a middle-aged guy who has spent his entire life in big cities – is where I would go for if I were looking for neutral ground on which to have a heart-to-heart chat with either a family member or a colleague. Tims would not be my first choice. I’d be looking for a place with a quiet corner that has the feel of a living room, and where we could linger without any pressure to free up the table for another customer. To their credit, the Tims I pass by are very successful and always seem crowded, with long lines of people waiting to order. I’d be much more likely to choose a Starbucks or Second Cup that isn’t too busy, and has quiet corners where people linger.

I’ll be interested in seeing the next commercials to emerge out of Tims initiative in narrative crowd-sourcing. I’m an advocate of story-telling as a means of communicating one’s message. But I’m not convinced that indirect stories about interactions between people having coffee (or food) at Tims are winning customers for Tims, or strengthening its market position relative to that of its competitors.

This post is to announce the publication of my latest book, Governing Fables: Learning from Public Sector Narratives. The book can be ordered from Information Age Publishing at its webpage: http://infoagepub.com/products/Governing-Fables. It can also be ordered from online booksellers such as www.amazon.com.

Governing Fables advocates the importance of narrative for public servants, exemplifies it with a rigorously selected and analyzed set of narratives, and imparts narrative skills politicians and public servants need in their careers. Governing Fables turns to narratology, the inter-disciplinary study of narrative, for a conceptual framework that is applied to a set of narratives engaging life within public organizations, focusing on works produced during the last twenty-five years in the US and UK. The genres discussed include British government narratives inspired by and reacting to Yes Minister, British appeasement narratives, American political narratives, the Cuban Missile Crisis narrative, jury decision-making narratives, and heroic teacher narratives. In each genre lessons are presented regarding both effective management and essential narrative skills.

Governing Fables is intended for public management and political science scholars and practitioners interested in leadership and management, as well as readers drawn to the political subject matter and to the genre of political films, novels, and television series.

Here is some background to the book. Narrative has become a significant cultural phenomenon, as evidenced by its frequent use in discourse (particularly in government and business circles), and affirmed by its rapidly increasing Google count, now  nearing 100 million references.

Narrative is also an area of growing interest within public management. Some scholars have begun to collect and analyze public servants’ narratives. Other authors have written about how public management practitioners can use story-telling as a form of advocacy. Still other authors have looked for the management lessons to be found in authored narratives about politics or public management, particularly movies and novels.

My book focuses primarily on the analysis of authored narratives, but does it in a much more sophisticated way than its precursors. The management lessons literature focuses on content rather than form, and looks for unambiguous readings. In Governing Fables, I apply narratological theory to these texts, which necessarily entails an acceptance of ambiguity and conflicting meanings, both within an individual text and among the several texts that retell a particular story. It also involves an analysis of the relationship between content and narrative strategy. Rather than restricting my focus to individual texts, I am looking for common patterns in related texts. It is these common patterns that create the Governing Fables referred to in the title. The fables refer to specific contexts, such as transformational teachers in troubled public high schools, British politicians, or the Cuban Missile Crisis.

I have also created an overarching structure for the different contexts, namely a four quadrant model that incorporates diverse outcomes for both protagonists and the organizations that they lead. Readers of this blog will recall that I applied this model in posts earlier this year to notable recent films (Inside Job, The King’s Speech, The Social Network) as well as to campaign messaging in the recent Canadian election.

If you purchase Governing Fables you can look forward to a thoughtful discussion of a variety of contemporary British and American movies, novels, television programs, and memoirs about politics and government – some of which you may have already read or seen and others which you may want to read or see. From this discussion will emerge lessons about how politicians and public managers can behave effectively in a variety of managerial contexts, and lessons about the use of narrative as a management skill.

Writing this book has involved a lot of thought, and I believe I’ve come up with something that is distinctive and valuable. I encourage you to read it.

The Ontario Conservatives have now revealed their campaign strategy, and it’s a copy of their federal cousins’ approach. Demonize the opponent. In this case, it is the advertising campaign, now widely running, to portray Premier Dalton McGuinty as “the taxman,” a politician who frequently raises taxes to pay for waste (an example given in the television commercials is eHealth). The Conservatives hope that by spending massively and spending early, they will fix in many voters’ minds the image of McGuinty as taxman just as effectively as the federal Conservatives fixed in voters’ mind the image of Michael Ignatieff as ambitious and untrustworthy cosmopolitan intellectual.

How should the Liberals respond? Despite eight years as Premier, McGuinty’s image has never been so clear and unmistakable that he cannot be rebranded. If he doesn’t respond, he will suffer the same fate as Michael Ignatieff, who chose not to respond. Because the election has not been called, the Conservatives’ spending is not subject to legislated limits, and it is not clear to me that the Liberals can match them.

The initial Liberal ad is an “Ontarians are working together” ad, narrated by the premier. It is the political high road. The question is whether the high road will work when your main opponent is building his campaign around negative advertising aimed directly at your leader. In addition, with the recent victories of the federal Conservatives – with such a strong showing in Ontario – as well as the election of Rob Ford as mayor of Toronto, the Ontario Conservatives seem to have the zeitgeist in their favour.

In a blog about the federal election (“If he says you’re fat, you say he’s bald” – March 12, 2011), I argued that one approach to negative campaigning is to find a different topic than the one your opponent is raising, and attack him on that. It seems Tim Hudak is open to at least two principal lines of attack: lack of experience and right-wing ideologue. The Liberals contemplated the latter approach in 2007, but didn’t need to use it because John Tory was open to attack for his championing of public support for religious schools. They could bring it back this time, and more credibly than last time, because Tim Hudak is a CSR (common sense revolutionary) Conservative, rather than a centrist like John Tory. Emphasize Hudak’s links to Harris. Dig up Hudak’s record. Run ads showing Hudak’s face morphing into Harris’s.

Even though it is not what the “you say he’s bald” maxim would dictate, McGuinty could defend his record. He could argue that the Government of Ontario has spent money on important public purposes, such as improving health care and education and protecting the province from the effects of the recession, and that Ontario’s levels of taxation are similar to other comparable jurisdictions. He could remind Ontarians that, as Oliver Wendell Holmes famously said, taxes are the price we pay for civilization. And he could make the point that Hudak is unwilling to pay that price and would therefore wreck civility, if not civilization in the province. Portray him as Ontario’s own Tea Party boy.

I’m old enough to remember the Beatles’ song “Taxman,” which came out in 1966 on their album Revolver. The song referred to Britain’s then confiscatory (95 %) marginal rates of taxation for high income earners and taunted both Labour and Conservative party leaders, Mr. Wilson and Mr. Heath, respectively. Mr. McGuinty is a far less aggressive taxman than either Mr. Wilson or Mr. Heath, and he must make that point. The Liberals will undoubtedly do some polling to assess the effect of the taxman onslaught, but my gut tells me that it is having an impact. If McGuinty wants a third term, a prompt and vigorous response is a necessity.