Gary Doer goes to Washington
mastermind
try and foist a red neck rightwinger on the Obama administration. Mr Doer is exactly that - a
doer. Expect good things from his appointment.
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Winnipeg - From Tuesday's Globe and Mail
Wednesday, Sep. 09, 2009 03:05AM EDT
Mr. Doer goes to Washington
Outgoing Manitoba premier tells The Globe about his plans to bring homespun sensibilities to his
new role as American ambassador
He can barely sip his coffee without someone thrusting a palm toward his tanned face.
"I just want to congratulate you," says one well wisher.
"Thank you," he replies, strolling past a Tim Hortons inside Winnipeg's MTS Centre, the city's
downtown entertainment complex. More fans line up for a word.
"I'm so glad for you."
"Thank you."
"You're the best man for the job."
"Thank you."
"You've represented Manitoba so well - and that comes from my mom as well."
"Thank you, to both your mom and you."
In Manitoba, they love him - this 61-year-old university dropout who slurps his Timmies black,
slugs pints at a place called the Pony Corral and slouches when he sits. He enjoys spy novels,
fishing and football. His resume doesn't include a single job outside Winnipeg and he doesn't
care for cocktail parties.
Soon, however, Manitoba Premier Gary Doer will be the country's hobnobber-in-chief on Capitol
Hill as the Prime Minister's recent pick for Canadian ambassador to the United States.
Between embraces with admirers (with an approval rating of more than 65 per cent, he has a few),
he swirled his coffee and talked about adapting his homespun nature to a position traditionally
held by career mandarins and pointy-headed diplomats.
"I'm not nervous," he says. "I know there are a lot of things I don't know, a lot of internal
issues I have to get a handle on, but I understand the external stuff."
He takes on the post at a time when Canadian interests are falling silent in U.S. debates over
border security, country-of-origin labelling laws and "Buy American" policies.
In the past, certain Canadian ambassadors have employed a common strategy for overcoming
American brush-offs: lavish cocktail parties. But Mr. Doer, who received his political education
as a union leader and deputy superintendent of a prison, has already made it clear to Stephen
Harper that he'd rather wear out his shoe leather than his liquor cabinet.
"I told the Prime Minister that I'm not interested in cocktail parties with other diplomats," he
says. "Those politicians on the Hill come from somewhere, and if I have the choice to go meet
workers in Pennsylvania or the Chamber of Commerce in Chicago who are part of a politician's
constituent base, that may be equally important as having a cold beer with someone in
Washington."
He has good reason to be calm. Few Canadians have such a deep understanding of the American
political hodgepodge and even fewer have spent as much time on U.S. soil courting governors,
congressmen and mayors. Indeed, the same charm that garnered his NDP a five-election streak of
seat increases has also captured fans in the U.S., where his populist, back-slapping style of
politicking is more familiar.
Indeed, when Mr. Doer goes to Washington, he'll be among powerful friends, such as Homeland
Security head honcho Janet Napolitano and Commerce Secretary Gary Locke. He'll no doubt be
calling on both over the coming month to talk about rising U.S. protectionism, an issue he's
fought for nearly a decade as Manitoba Premier.
"It's mutual self interest," says Mr. Doer, whose political heroes include Theodore Roosevelt
and Abraham Lincoln. "I use the case of the steel worker in Selkirk producing steel for
Caterpillar plants in Illinois or Wisconsin, which are then turning around and selling equipment
back to the mining industry in Western Canada."
At this point in the interview, Mr. Doer catches himself. An uncharacteristic hesitation creeps
across his face. No longer top dog, he's on Ottawa's leash now.
"I gotta be careful here," he says. "I'm still getting briefed by Foreign Affairs, so I may be
off the manual here. I don't set policy and I'm only the designate."
With coffee in hand, Mr. Doer beckons a photographer to take an elevator down to ice level at
the MTS Centre, built in 2004 with a $13-million pledge from the province. He's not leaving for
Washington until the fall, but he's already taking stock of a decade in power.
"We had a fight to get this," he says, walking past 15,000 empty seats to the concrete pad where
the likes of Elton John and Beyonc� have performed, and the Manitoba Moose ply their trade.
"It was the old Eaton's building here, which was sentimental. We tried six times to get an arena
started in this city, and the nitpickers and negative nabobs always won. But we adopted the
attitude of, once we're in the rapids, we're gonna get it done."
He always has. For all his front-room charisma, Mr. Doer earned his political stripes as a
backroom negotiator, a valuable talent in diplomatic circles. During his time as leader with the
Manitoba Government Employees Association and the Manitoba Federation of Labour in the seventies
and eighties, he negotiated 200 settlements without a strike.
"Negotiation is not something to be underestimated as a political skill. It's always been useful
to me."
In 1986, as a cabinet minister in Howard Pawley's government, he forged a reputation as a
troubleshooter in difficult portfolios - a "baptism by fire," he says.
Chosen as NDP Leader in 1988, he saw the party obliterated in that year's election, reduced to
just 12 seats. But over two successive elections, Mr. Doer gradually built up the NDP's seat
count until he finally took power in 1999. He's avoided scandal and added to the party's seat
count in the two elections since.
Some observers found it strange that, with such a strong NDP pedigree, Mr. Doer was Stephen
Harper's choice for ambassador. But he's always pursued a Third Way ideology in the mould of
Tony Blair and insisted that left and right are outdated political terms.
And he doesn't much care if hard-line NDPers believe he's somehow abandoning the social
democratic cause in his new post. "I've put in 23 years," he says. "I've paid my dues."