The idea came to me for this post tonight when I watched the Nobel Peace Prize Lecture given by President Obama. What inspired me about his speech were three key things:
- He used tremendous humility in his words and body language. Obama uses humility first to disarm his critics, those who say he doesn't deserve the prize so early in his mandate. He tackles the issues right at the start and uses humility, one of the least used but most effective tools in gaining the will of people to follow you.
- He demonstrates the ability to see all sides of an issue, and recognizes their merits. Obama takes an inordinate amount of time, especially considering the audience, explaining why sometime War is morally just. Unlike most politicians, and rigid partisans, he avoids the trap of always needing to talk in one set of code, and more importantly is brave enough to say what sometimes people don't want to hear.
- He inspires us to think in greater terms, above political, geographic, religious, or racial boundaries. His masterful use of the English language, the above mentioned humility and straight-talk, and an ability to draw a picture of what something better might look like, these all help us see a picture of something better. Politics AND leadership is of course about selling hope.
So what?
I am tired of vitriolic partisanship, as most of us are. But when you walk down the dark alley of blog comments, newspaper letters to the editor, and online debate, we are confronted often with what can only be described as people needing to argue their position, twisting the facts or getting stuck in the rut of cognitive dissonance, never willing to concede that we all mostly agree on a large percentage of what each political party stands for.
So, in my personal opinion, the ability for a party leader to connect with us as a humble, straight-talking, and visionary person is the single greatest reason why we may vote for their party. Most Albertans are not the political enthusiasts we are (assuming you have read this far), and so populism in how we choose leaders remains a major factor. Ralph Klein held onto the hearts of Albertans for a long time, and mostly because we felt that he was a humble everyman. When he did something beyond reproach, we started to lose faith in him as a person, and that we couldn't trust him.
This is important because we are seeing a collection of movements start to form in Alberta politically. The Wildrose Alliance have become the standard as far as the polls are concerned, yet another movement, the Progressives are gathering. If you asked them they would say that what the Wildrose stand for is not what the moderate Albertan stands for. The new party movement, Renew Alberta, are advertising themselves as centrists, and again would say that they differ greatly from the Wildrose and the left-leaning Liberals and NDP.
I am going to argue that many of these party policies and principals are identical, when you look at them in simple text form. Below are Wordles taken from the policy documents and websites. I am willing to bet that you would find it very difficult to guess all five party Wordles correctly. In fact I'll buy the iTunes album of your choice for the first person who guesses all five correctly in the comments.
So my point is this. I think most Albertans want to be excited, inspired, filled with hope, and have a level of trust in our next Premier. I think they will want someone who uses humility, straight-talk, a willingness to see all sides and the vision to lead us along a path of continuous improvement. I don't see that leader yet.
PARTY #1

PARTY #2

PARTY #3

PARTY #4

PARTY #5

p.s. In building these I went to the website of each party and copied and pasted their policy documents, "what we stand for" website text, and in some cased had to past segments together. I REMOVED the following words as much as possible. (PARTY NAMES, Alberta, Albertans, variations on names like Conservative, or Conservatism). This is fun for a poli-geek like me, and I know this isn't science, so please don't give me any BS in the comments about methodology.
Thanks to Wordle for helping with the clouds. If you want to see the one I did of President Obama's speech, you can view it here.