Mark Carney's Run: The Prime Minister (?) from Brookfield

It’s human nature to look for saviors, especially when circumstances are difficult, solutions not easily available and viable options even less so. Add to this uncertainty mix the second coming of the notoriously unpredictable Donald Trump as America’s 47th president, small wonder that many electorates find themselves opining for leaders who can embody purposeful direction and vision.

Justin Trudeau was that future once. But he committed the cardinal political sin of staying too long, leaving Canadians wanting a replacement who can confront, master, or at least manage an inbox practically overflowing with challenges.

In the weeks following Trudeau’s resignation announcement, the race to name his successor was being framed by the mainstream media as a two-person contest between former Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland and Mark Carney, the former governor of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England.

As is the usual practice in leadership bids, each has sought to advance competing visions tied to their personal credentials and desirability as candidates. Emphasizing her substantial cabinet experience (i.e. , International Trade, Foreign Affairs, Intergovernmental Affairs, Finance) Freeland’s pitch has hitherto focused on the claim that she is best equipped to handle the “existential threat” posed by Trump 2.0. In contrast, Carney has framed himself as a pragmatic outsider. To his supporters, his largely praised monetary management of both Brexit and the 2008 financial crisis shows he can effectively address Canada’s economic challenges while remaining above the, ideological excesses (i.e. ‘wokism’) and questionable policy decisions of the Trudeau years.

Notwithstanding the usual cacophony of those purporting to be “in the know” many Liberals are still undecided, although Carney does appear to have an edge in appealing to Canadian voters at large. A recent Nanos poll has a Carney-led Liberal party shaving the front-running Conservative party’s lead to under ten percentage points – theoretically potentially preventing the main opposition party from attaining a parliamentary majority while Freeland would incur a double-digit deficit in comparison. Benefitting from a slick, well-funded campaign machine and a strategy based on lack of specificity, the incredibly short timeline for the race — voters need to be registered as Liberals by the end of today to vote for a leader — does not provide enough time for close policy scrutiny.

All manufactured hype aside, it’s safe to say that Carney has an advantage. Compared to Freeland, he has secured the endorsements of most senior cabinet ministers and 86 of 153 Liberal members of parliament. This provides not only legitimacy but, far more importantly, greater organizational prowess as MPS and ministers bring to the table their own campaign networks with which to spread the Carney message.

Also important is the fact that, in an environment of anti-Trudeau sentiment, he has much more — though not complete — distance from the incumbent administration. It’s difficult to see how Freeland, regardless of her experience, can effectively avoid associations with the consequences of the past or existing policies that she herself was instrumental in bringing about and which she championed openly in every media forum.

Carney has his own challenges as well. He will likely have to clarify his nebulous relationship with the departing Trudeau government. Since 2020, the actual nature of his rather murky role as an informal policy adviser to the prime minister — including as the chair of a task force on economic growth — remains enigmatic at best. Was this a consultancy role? What was his true influence on policy? And for all of his emphasis on the importance of good policy – necessary for positioning an essential part of his brand image as a highly competent manager – a “safe” pair of experienced hands for addressing Canadians’ overriding concern: the economy, the substance of his actual, announced policy proposals are thin, including an ambiguous stance on the carbon tax. He is playing it safe – front runner safe, saving details for an upcoming general election campaign he fully intends to lead.

Nonetheless, when viewed through an objective lens, Carney simply has far more flexibility and potential than the more rigid limitations of those like Freeland who have ridden the Trudeau train. When compared to Freeland, Carney’s pitch to Canadians seems, at least on paper, to be a much smarter response to Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives.

His impressive resumé (a graduate of Harvard and Oxford universities, Goldman Sachs banker, senior government bureaucrat, Governor of the Bank of Canada, Governor of the Bank of England, Chairman of Brookfield Asset Management) has the potential to be a strong, substantive contrast to the occasionally MAGA-like, quasi-populist sloganeering that has so far been offered by Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre. Carney could represent a reasonable alternative to voters who, while desiring change, aren’t sold on Poilievre. Furthermore, the ‘Liberal’ party to which Carney is aspiring to be leader of, is in reality more conservative than Britain’s Labour, New Zealand’s Labour or the Democratic party in the U.S. It is, in fact, a center-right organization with an historical record of pragmatic fiscal and foreign policy governance dominating Canadian federal politics, holding power for almost 70 years of the 20th century.

But could Carney really reverse the moribund fortunes of the Liberal Party? Although the next leader of the party is guaranteed to be Canada’s 24th prime minister, they precipitous odds in fashioning a term that will last more than a couple of weeks due the near certainty of a non-confidence vote in Parliament after it resumes on March 24, 15 days after the Liberal convention. Indeed, if there is any semblance of electoral life following the convention, any new leader would be hard-pressed not to take a calculated risk and call an election far to capitalize on any momentum.

There is also no guarantee that Poilievre’s Conservatives won’t regain momentum, re-establish a 20-plus point lead in public opinion polls as they benefit from an anti-incumbent sentiment that, is really about a deeper discontent with Canada’s structural and economic challenges as opposed to any long-lasting anti-Trudeau effect.

While Carney’s outsider status may inspire the Liberal faithful, his electoral performance is more likely to highlight the drawbacks of political inexperience. Although he has potential in terms of political skills, he may not actually have the time to realize or develop that potential. Canadian political history is full of examples where the search for “saviors” following unpopular administrations can result in summer flirtations with no lasting romance. John Turner in 1984, Kim Campbell in 1993, Michael Ignatieff in 2011 were all examples of this. Widely seen as rescuers with eh ability to resuscitate brands on life support, they were unable to meet the expectations their leadership campaigns generated, and each went down to devastating, even humiliating defeat.

But even if Carney is on the verge of winning the first political contest he ever entered, he is still inexperienced and largely untested as a politician. The consensus view after Monday night's debate was that Carney needs to work on his French. But even Tuesday's debate showed that Carney is not a naturally theatrical performer or a particularly snappy communicator. His acknowledgement that he is not a "career politician" is an obvious attempt to turn his limits into a virtue.

It also might suggest a degree of self-awareness and a reasoned judgment that he is better off not trying to pretend to be something he isn't.

This is crucial. Electoral politics requires a special skill set that, unless it comes naturally, can only be acquired through experience. It requires a unique combination of policy aptitude, communication ability, emotional intelligence, coalition-building and raw instinct.

Those qualities are honed with frequent exposure to voters, whether through stump speeches, knocking on hundreds of doors from 9:00 am in the morning to 9:30 pm, stakeholder meetings or community barbecues/rubber chicken circuit. Carney simply does not have these experiences. He has a steep learning curve ahead. Very few leaders jump from a standing start with no political experience to the Big Chair and then manage to retain it. Even Donald Trump, often portrayed as one of the leaders with the “least” political experience first earned his chops in the vicious rough and tumble New York boardrooms and backrooms, then masterfully parlayed his tough guy image and communication skills into a commodity which matched the mood of the buying public, first in 2016 as the “outsider” and then most recently in 2024 as the “fixer” running against a ‘broken’ system. Carney cannot do that. He is in many ways, a product of that system, however humble his roots.

And faced with powerful anti-incumbent sentiment, his largely administrative experience may allow the wily Conservatives (who are the Canadian political equivalent of non-genteel knife-fighters) to portray him not as an interesting outsider, but as a technocratic voice of the very economic, political and cultural elite who Canadians are upset with.

All of this though obscures an interesting intellectual point of about the Mark Carney bid with potential real-world implications, especially if he wins the Liberal leadership and then goes on to hold on to power following the inevitable election (given the unique nature of the Canadian electoral landscape even if both the Liberals and Conservatives are tied in the popular percentages -- for example in the high thirties -- the Liberals will win at least a minority government due to the distribution of population where their seats fall. Thus, the Conservatives need to be at least eight to nine points ahead in the popular vote to be assured of a majority government. If a Carney pr Freeland-led Liberal party pulls ahead of Poilievre, by as little as two points and they pass forty percent, it could mean a majority for them).

In a real sense he is different from many political leaders and would-be prime ministers of Canada. His candidacy poses the question of whether or not a central banker could be an effective, even extraordinary prime minister. He may fit the Trump times, marked as it is by tariffs, trade wars, inflation and cost if living concerns which require a balanced head, but can he appeal to the electorate’s fickle heart?