Brown out

When it comes to allegations of sexual misconduct against Patrick Brown, the jury is out.

Or, more accurately, the jury will never be out, because the likelihood of charges being laid against him is zero to nil. Which makes it impossible for him to clear his name. The allegations are flimsy at best, baffling in nature and have now shifted from the original claims  that forced him to quit.

The precedent this sets is unsettling. Someone – or some people – have inserted themselves into the democratic process, thereby possibly altering the outcome of an election. Many of us are left wondering why, yet marvelling at how easy it was for them to do so.

In the U.S., they talk about Russian meddling. Here we just don’t know what happened.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not supporting Patrick Brown for leader.  I think his decision to run is foolish and demonstrates why he lacks the judgment to be the leader. The provincial party, I sensed, was never really comfortable with him as leader.  He came across as young and brash.  Don’t forget, he was only a backbench MP in Ottawa. Some of these MPPs, such as Vic Fedeli, had years of public service behind them. Fedeli was a mayor in North Bay before running provincially.

I recall when Brown arrived at Queen’s Park he was full of bravado about how provincial MPPs kept losing elections. They didn’t know what they were doing. He’d show ’em.

That never goes over well. It is,  I suspect, part of the reason why his own party was so quick to abandon him when the allegations first came forward. I think back to other leaders and the people around them. Mike Harris and John Tory were two very different  politicians, yet they had people around them who were fiercely loyal to them. In the worst of times,  they would at least have helped them through a brutal news conference before they quit.

The alacrity with which Brown’s people abandoned him, I believe, speaks not so much about their fear of the sexual misconduct allegations but to their frustration with him as a leader.

He doesn’t take direction well, and he needs to. He was very poor in interviews and never seemed to be prepared. He blundered into a lawsuit with Premier Kathleen Wynne, when all he had to say was, “I am sorry, I misspoke.”

Questions had swirled about nominations; his performance during Question Period was lacklustre. Many Tories feared that, once the election writ was dropped, voters would look to him – and not see in him the leadership they expect from a premier.

The allegations of misconduct were mishandled and now Brown is seeking to blow up his own party by inserting himself into the leadership race. He needs to reconsider before he becomes a sad footnote to history.