Of the three ways a political leader can excel (Policy, Politics, and Personality), the one that is hardest for potential followers to evaluate is that of politics. After all, you can’t go into the back rooms to watch deals happen.
You can, however watch how people raise money. That’s where the Liberals used to be good at politics, raising money from corporations. But when that option diminished with campaign finance reform, the Liberals started to have problems and have under performed the Conservatives for many years.
The Conservatives themselves have done very well with campaign finances under the new rules as they were always better than the Liberals at raising small amounts from all sorts of people. This is the new skill of politics and the Conservatives are superb at it.
But you may ask why money is a good proxy for political skill. (Or maybe you didn’t but I’ll tell you anyway.) Money in today’s market is obtained through good organization. If you’re well organized and can get favours from people who hold events and fundraise for you then you’re probably good at politics.
As for who in the Liberal race is best at politics? Well there is a clear winner, hands down, and that is Justin. He more than doubled the amount raised by all other candidates showing that he did learn politics at his daddy’s knee.
Tomorrow I’m going to look at the last of this troika which is Personality. Can you guess who the winner is in this category?
I was just going to post this and thought that a few people might wonder how this works in other areas, business for instance. It’s the same thing. The people who are best at politics get the biggest budgets. Simple eh?