Gordon Campbell's Final Day as Premier

Image by: Sheryl Yen

Gordon Campbell at his VBOT tribute lunch with friend David McLean of OBC.

Tomorrow Premier Gordon Campbell spends his last day as Liberal party leader in the shadows. Like him or not, it’s indecent to not acknowledge his contribution to B.C.

As of tomorrow evening, Gordon Campbell will no longer be your whipping boy.

After 17 years as leader of the provincial Liberal party – most of them as premier – he’s being replaced at a party leadership conference. There are many in this province who will say good riddance.

The forces of the left, for example, who always saw Campbell as some kind of evil, business-backing dictator who feasted on the poor and hungry; in the pockets of big business, and all that. Straight from the old socialist playbook.

Or the forces of the right, who saw him as a fuzzy middle-roader, too quick to funnel money to causes that didn’t really have anything to do with advancing (usually) Big Business. They liked his efforts to fight overspending, but not when it affected their part of the pot.

And so it goes. In a province where cliches are so common, few seemed to recognize that in Gordon Campbell, the province had a new kind of politician, one that differed from the stock characters: the harrumphing, table-thumping right winger; or the fire-breathing lefty claiming to protect The Workers.

Dare I say it? Campbell was a centrist technocrat who generally tried to govern without being bound by the right vs left cliches that have bound this province for 100 years. For the most part, he was a governor instead of a politician.

Sure, he had to do what he had to do to be elected, and this being B.C., that could sometimes get ugly. But you didn’t hear a lot of rhetoric out of Gordon Campbell. He let his governing ability speak for itself.

However, B.C. was not immune to the increasing polarization that has occurred with rise of the right throughout North America, and Campbell the centrist was eventually pushed that way. 

But in a province where, with a few notable exceptions, most politicians have a short shelf-life and are usually eaten alive by their followers, Campbell couldn’t fight them off forever. He knew when to quit.

I don’t particularly care who replaces him as leader, but I do think the party that is completely ignoring him tomorrow might want to acknowledge the fact that, he was a pretty good leader for almost two decades. 

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