The nerd who came from nowhere: Stephen Harper knows you don’t need to like a politician to elect him
TRISTIN HOPPER 08.12.2015
Just before Christmas 2013, a motorcade of three black cars stopped in front of a nondescript ranch house in the Varsity Village neighbourhood of Calgary. Plain-clothes RCMP stood guard as a figure emerged from one of the vehicles and knocked on the front door.
“There was enough warning to get coffee ready,” says Jim Hawkes.
Nobody would have faulted him for hating the tall, blue-eyed man standing on his front step.
As a Progressive Conservative MP for Calgary West, Hawkes had given him his first political job as a chief aide in Ottawa. But the young man soon defected to the upstart Reform Party and mounted a challenge to his old boss’s seat. On election day in 1993, a 34-year-old “Steve” sent his mentor to a humiliating third place.
That man, of course, was Stephen Harper. And those around Hawkes — including Harper’s then-girlfriend — balked at the apparent betrayal. But 22 years later, there’s not a hint of bitterness in the older politician’s voice.
“He was better than anybody I’ve ever employed,” says Hawkes in a phone interview from the retirement home in Calgary where he now lives. “I’m proud of him.”
Hawkes’s wife Joanne had died only a few months before that visit. Harper came in, handed his former mentor a copy of his new book, A Great Game, and for an hour they chatted, one on one.
“A good part of it was talking about life,” says Hawkes, “not political things – family things.”
This image — the prime minister relaxing with a cup of coffee and talking marriage and parenting with an old man — would be hard for most Canadians to picture. Rarely has a figure as guarded as Stephen Harper ascended to the highest political office of a Group of Seven nation.
Behind closed doors, Canada’s 22nd prime minister can swear like a “longshoreman,” is known to greet unwelcome news with “volcanic” outbursts of fury and has an uncanny talent for pitch-perfect impersonations. But to most Canadians he is a poker-faced cipher: never angry, rarely laughing, awkward in social settings and most comfortable when talking fiscal policy.
Stephen Harper is a nerd who came from nowhere, corralled an estranged coalition of Canadian conservatives and smashed his way into nearly a decade of power. And he did it without being cuddly, charismatic or particularly quotable.
Nine years in, that’s probably just the way he wants it.
* * *
“He’d ditch all the public obligations that come with the job tomorrow, if he could,” says Jim Armour, a former director of communications for the Conservative leader.
Other prime ministers have thrived on galas and state dinners. But aside from the occasional chance to meet hockey greats, Harper would pass up ribbon-cuttings for strategy sessions.
He lives in a hard-drinking town, but never imbibes outside the occasional photo op. After the Parliament shootings last October, as shocked colleagues thirsted for a stiff drink, Harper called for a tall glass of Diet Coke.
He’s ruthless at destroying opponents, but — strangely for a career politician — takes no joy in it. In 2011, as Conservatives across Canada bubbled with schadenfreude at witnessing the political ruin of the Liberals’ Michael Ignatieff, it is unlikely their leader felt even a twang of guilty pleasure.
“He’s like a predator; there’s no emotion to it,” says Gerry Nicholls, who worked with Harper at the National Citizens’ Coalition, a conservative think tank. “When a wolf goes after a rabbit, it’s not because it hates rabbits.”
He “reads everything,” becoming the bane of a privy council that had grown accustomed to prime ministers skimming their reports. He is known to catch the tiniest of spelling errors — and respond with swift reprimands scribbled in the margins. Friends call this “meticulous,” enemies call it “micromanaging.”
He gets angry. But it’s not the out-of-control BlackBerry-throwing tantrum so common to Ottawa, it’s a measured expulsion of rage designed chillingly to drive a point home. One staffer has described it as a “spectacular thing.”
He comes from a Presbyterian background and has occasionally been spotted at an Ottawa evangelical church, but staffers haven’t heard him say a single religious thing— nor have they found him unwilling to work on a Sunday. Indeed, Harper chose to announce the current election on the Sabbath.
Perhaps most surprisingly, Canada’s socks-with-sandals prime minister harbours an uncanny talent for comic delivery.
Cynthia Williams, who dated Harper in university, says in private situations he has a dry wit akin to the TV character, Frasier Crane. “He was always making me laugh,” she says.
In policy meetings and hotel rooms, Conservative staffers have got used to his penchant for launching into impromptu impressions.
“I used to prep him for question period, and he would answer as Jean Chrétien or Brian Mulroney or John Diefenbaker,” says Keith Beardsley, a former senior adviser to Harper.
In speeches, he’s been known to mix partisan jabs with self-deprecating riffs.
“(My father) is an accountant, as are both my brothers. I decided to become an economist because I didn’t have the personality to be an accountant,” Harper told the 2002 Ottawa Press gallery dinner when he was opposition leader.
It’s a public side to Harper that has dissolved almost completely since he became prime minister. Since then he has stopped showing up at press gallery dinners and dispensed with anything in question period that wasn’t a staid statement of facts.
It was at the funeral last year of former finance minister Jim Flaherty — who had fallen out with the prime minister before his sudden death — that attendees saw a brief glimpse of the old Harper.
“Jim, as fiercely partisan as he was, was also genuinely liked and respected by his opponents, liked by his enemies,” said Harper in his remarks, which carried a tinge of remorse.
“That … something I envy; I can’t even get my friends to like me.”
* * *
It was only 13 years ago Harper arose out of relative obscurity to head the Canadian Alliance and begin wielding his near-mystical powers to unite the “warring tribes” of Canadian conservatism.
He was a high school valedictorian who had sailed through university with honours, an obsessive strategist whose only hobby was politics. The only problem was, he didn’t have a hint of personal charisma or warmth.
A “behind the scenes” guy Preston Manning had snapped out of graduate school to form the brain of his fledgling Reform Party, the young economist was a walking strategy computer – but he recoiled at the glad-handing and baby-kissing required of a politician.
He detested small talk. He thrived in political debates at university, but vanished when his opponents tried to take him for beer afterward. Williams was the one “dragging” him to social functions. Later, it would be Laureen Teskey doing the dragging, with Harper riding on the back of her motorcycle.
“He’s not really comfortable in big crowds, never has been, probably never will be,” says Robert Mansell, the University of Calgary professor who first connected Harper with the fledgling Reform Party.
With Reform drafting its staffers as candidates, Harper had, in fact, chosen the one riding he figured he was guaranteed to lose: Calgary West, where his former boss held more than 70 per cent of the votes.
“He phoned me up to ask if it would be OK because he didn’t want to interfere with our relationship,” says Hawkes.
The strategy worked for the 1988 election, which Hawkes won handily. But by 1993, the goods and services tax, Brian Mulroney, Kim Campbell and the Reform wave conspired to catapult the rookie Harper into the House of Commons.
Only four years later, it was image that would drive him away. Specifically, the attempt to spruce up the image of Preston Manning: laser eye surgery, vocal coaching to remove his prairie drawl and fresh suits of stylish clothes.
As Manning wrote in his memoir, aides had been able to convince him his unusual “personal appearance, bearing and idiosyncrasies” were a “distraction” from the Reform message.
But Harper balked at the makeover and was widely suspected of leaking details of the “wardrobe allowance” to the press.
Eventually, “Stephen quit over that,” says Goldy Hyder, a former Conservative strategist.
* * *
After Harper returned to politics and became leader of the Canadian Alliance, there were doubts a man so lacking in warmth would win over the wider public.
“I never thought Stephen Harper would be prime minister,” says Hyder. “The sense was ‘He’s a loner, he’s too serious, he’s too much of a wonk.’ ”
What’s more, Harper had zero interest in being loved. Hyder calls it a form of “authenticity,” “what you see is what you get.”
In the mid-2000s, for instance, Harper had an eye infection that prevented him from wearing contact lenses. As a result, he was forced to attend a public event in glasses.
“We had all sorts of comments flood into party headquarters about how good he looked and how he should do that more often,” says Beardsley.
“Somebody raised it, and he just laughed: the contacts were back in the next day.”
The prime minister wears glasses more often now, but those close to him strongly suspect it has more to do with advancing age than any attempt to look approachable.
“It’s a pretty safe bet that Stephen Harper didn’t enter politics for the love and adulation,” says Armour.
One of his few displays of personality, of course, is when he stages concerts for the party faithful. Even then, he only got behind the piano after intensive lobbying from staffers and his wife Laureen.
“I didn’t even know he played piano,” says Tom Flanagan, Harper’s 2004 campaign manager.
Aides are also quick to note Harper always loses the “beer poll,” the occasional EKOS survey in which Canadians are asked which political leader they would like to have over for a beer. In 2010, he lost to Jack Layton. Last year, he lost to both Thomas Mulcair and Justin Trudeau.
The Conservative leader’s political genius, say staffers, is he figured out Canadians don’t need to like a politician to choose him as their leader.
“Bland works. If Canadians want entertainment, they’ll turn on Netflix,” says Armour.
And in Harper, blandness goes deep. In the acknowledgements page to A Great Game, he describes himself as having been a “studious and rather unathletic boy.”
Both his accountant brothers — who bear an uncanny resemblance to their famous sibling — share his shyness and introversion. Throughout Harper’s entire political career, they have avoided the spotlight.
“We’re all very proud of him,” Robert Harper told Postmedia after his brother’s 2006 election victory. To date, it is the only public comment made by the family.
And just like a prime minister who relaxes by researching pre-First World War hockey, the Harper clan seem to share a love of historical minutiae.
Grant Harper is one of Canada’s leading collectors of political memorabilia. The family patriarch, Joseph, spent nights and weekends researching military insignia. His 1992 book, Old Colours Never Die, is a comprehensive catalogue of Canadian military flags, pennants and regimental colours.
Hawkes remembers when Joseph came to visit his son in Ottawa. For two straight weeks, the elder Harper spent the entire time in the legislative library, researching naval history.
“When it opened, he went in. At the end of the day, he came out,” says Hawkes, who remains impressed at the commitment. “It stuck in my mind that that’s how he took a holiday.”
* * *
Frank Atkins used to get mocked for being the prime minister’s thesis adviser.
Now at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, Atkins is an associate of the “Calgary School,” the name given to an informal group of University of Calgary academics advocating small government, low taxes and balanced budgets.
But by 2010, his wunderkind student was suddenly running up the largest deficit in Canadian history.
Once, while the professor strode into a crowded room, a colleague shouted out derisively, “There’s Frank Atkins, the architect of the stimulus package!”
Harper’s 1991 master’s thesis, ironically, railed against the concept of using government stimulus packages to rescue an ailing economy.
The dense 162-page tome is officially titled “The Political Business Cycle and Fiscal Policy in Canada.” But according to Atkins, it could just as easily be called “Keynesian economics is really a stupid idea.”
Harper chose the topic himself, and where other economics students were notoriously flaky with their thesis obligations, he buckled down and completed it in a matter of months.
Atkins said it was common for conversations with masters’ students to stray into personal matters. But when Harper came to his office, the talk was all economics.
“Sometimes he’d scare me with those big steely blue eyes,” says Atkins, who remembers Harper would often fall silent and stare at him. “What I learned after a while is what he’s doing is he’s thinking.”
Like many young Albertans, Harper flirted openly with libertarianism in his university days. Naturally, this included a requisite phase of enchantment with the writings of Ayn Rand.
A fellow classmate recalls an undergraduate Harper showing up to on-campus architecture talks still energized by The Fountainhead, Rand’s novel about an individualistic architect hero.
Later, he said, the future prime minister would nurture dreams of going into city planning, then destroying it from the inside as a service to free enterprise.
A similar zeal drove Harper at the National Citizens Coalition.
“We believed in the ideal of maximum freedom and limited government, but not to the point of ‘Let’s privatize sidewalks,’ ” says Nicholls.
But one by one, the free market friends from Harper’s past have seen the prime minister adopt political positions that would have enraged him as a young man: corporate welfare, deficit spending and — the nightmare of anybody with an economics degree — supply management.
Atkins says he’s “come to grips” with the actions of his former student. He says Harper has needed to compromise to stay in power and keep a less economics-minded leader out of the Prime Minister’s Office, but he guesses there’s still a libertarian-minded man in the PMO.
“You’ll never know — because he’ll never tell you — but I suspect he still believes that, deep down inside,” he says.
* * *
As the Canadian Alliance merged with the Progressive Conservatives in 2004, Harper summoned Scott Brison to Stornoway for dinner.
The opposition leader did not chit-chat or “feign interest” in Brison’s life. As the MP remembers it, it was all business. The openly gay Nova Scotia politician opposed the Conservatives’ policy on same-sex marriage and Harper was trying to keep him in the party fold.
“He explained to me that while I would be not limited as part of his government, social conservatism was essential as part of any winning conservative movement in Canada,” says Brison.
Harper spoke at an anti-gay marriage rally as opposition leader in 2005, but his personal history suggests he never cared too much about stopping gays from marrying.
At a 1993 debate in Calgary, Harper argued sexual orientation wasn’t anybody’s business. “I’ve been on my own for a long time and I have never been asked about my sexual orientation,” he said.
And ever since their days in opposition, the Conservatives’ Parliament Hill offices have employed gays and lesbians.
Still, in his meeting with Brison, the Conservative leader gave no indication as to what he personally felt about the issue. Nor was there anything in his body language that would have provided any hint.
“It’s hard to get a bead on him. There’s not a natural, evident humanity about him,” says Brison, who defected to the Liberal Party soon afterward.
On rare occasions, Harper has been candid about what he really thinks. In a 2011 interview with Peter Mansbridge, he said he “personally thinks there are times where capital punishment is appropriate.”
But he also noted “I don’t see the country wanting to do that” and vowed not to touch the issue as prime minister.
Even so, this brief moment of honesty was swiftly punished with a backlash of headlines, opposition outrage and condemnations from the head of Amnesty International.
It might be why — even to close aides — Harper never betrays certain private views. Armour was at his side for years, yet says he has virtually no idea what the private man might think of his public self.
“If you ask me his views on gay rights or marijuana, quite frankly I don’t know, which is perhaps the secret of his success,” he says. “His personal views rarely get in the way of politics.”
The tactic works, but while few speak of a “hidden agenda” anymore, there are few who know just what Harper’s agenda is.
Armour says the prime minister is an incrementalist. “He decided that the longer he was there, the more changes he could make,” he says.
Gerry Nicholls’ theory is more Shakespearean. He believes Harper is still working on his 1990s vow to smash the Liberal Party and inaugurate Canada as a two-party state shared between the Tories and the New Democrats.
“It’s about grinding the Liberal Party into little bits of red dust,” says Nicholls.
Others, like Brison, speak of a gradual plan to starve the machinery of government. Most, though, suspect Harper simply enjoys being in power.
“He doesn’t care about the adulation that comes with holding high public office,” says Flanagan.
“He thinks he knows what to do and wants to be able to do it.”
A generation before Harper, Tory MP Erik Nielsen held the title as Ottawa’s most zealous guardian of information. The brother of comic actor Leslie Nielsen, he was Brian Mulroney’s deputy prime minister, where he earned the name “Velcro Lips” for stonewalling the opposition and enthusiastically avoiding the press.
Following his retirement, though, Erik Nielsen went against character, penning one of the most revealing memoirs in Canadian political history. In the prologue to The House is Not a Home, he promises a “revealing and blunt account, whatever the pain it causes,” and proceeds to detail secret affairs, estranged children and the suspected suicide of his wife.
Harper has no dramatic skeletons in his closet and friends suspect they will see no such tell-all denouement either.
Post-politics, he will sit on corporate boards and likely take up a teaching position. But chances are also good he will go to the grave while keeping mum on what really motivated him during his meteoric time in power.
“The public image is not the private man, and unfortunately, the Canadian public will never get to see that side,” says Beardsley.
National Post
and I got quite a chuckle out of the latest Hitler parody as well.
