'Watermen' and the Liberal Leadership

A previous article dated May 16, 2011 noted that

The leadership of the Liberal Party requires weather-worn individuals-    analogous to what Polynesians called the ‘watermen’. According to tradition, it takes some time to become a ‘waterman’…The Liberal Party of Canada, notwithstanding its frailty, does have some very good ‘watermen’.

I owe the waterman anecdote to a remarkable book: The Wave written by Susan Casey. Casey tells the story about Big men facing Big waves; Big Brains and Big Money trying to figure out Big Waves and their Big Risks,  and Big Waves usually beating the sense out of the three groups.  Once in a while, a Wave, when it notices a bold facsimile of human valor, opens a portal into its universe and allows the brave an inkling of its structure before wiping-out the fortunate.   That’s a classic moment- for both surfers and wave scientists, and hopefully the insurers! A classic waste!  The waterman, of course, is the precursor and the combination of all latter types.  Best left to Casey’s stimulating description:

‘waterman’ [is] a code that required a surfer to be as all-around confident in the ocean as he was on land…Like Duke [Kahanamoku] and the Hawaiian kings before him, a true waterman could swim for hours in the most treacherous conditions, save people’s lives at will, paddle for a hundred miles if necessary, and commune with all ocean creatures, including large sharks. He understood his environment. He could sense the wind’s subtlest shifts and know how that would affect the water. He could navigate by the stars. Not only could he ride the waves, he knew how the waves worked. Most important, a waterman always demonstrated the proper respect for his element. He recognized that the ocean operated on a scale that made even the greatest human initiative seem puny.

In particular, it focuses on the relationships and exploits of a band of four surfers: Dave Kalama, Darrick Doerner, Brett Lickle and one Laird Hamilton, considered by some to be the greatest Big Wave surfers in the world.  What is remarkable about the subject is that the players are remarkable, and what makes them exceptional is their account of failure and triumph, but moreso of failures and defeats- the near-misses, wipe-outs surging doubts and ensuing fears.  Yet undermining this need to triumph is the underlying danger of hubris-the classic underpin of the human species- the flaw that underscores all valor. ‘As soon as you think, I’ve got this place wired. I’m the man! You’re about thirty minutes away from being pinned on the bottom for the beating of your life’… ‘not death but rather being pounded so bad that psychologically you don’t recover’  That was Lickle, Hamilton and Kalama respectively. It took Dave Kalama three years and ‘baby steps to build my confidence back up.’

Surfing remains the paradigm of the tragic flaw. From Gilgamesh, through Homer and Greek antiquity, Virgil and Dante, Shakespeare and Milton, Goethe and  Wagner- with gods as with men, with angels as with demons, hubris clouds foresight by blindsight, like fortune clouds the brave in Machiavelli. The only difference may be that hubris is an internal stain whereas fortune, somewhat like fate, but more insidious, is an external actor rooted somewhere unknowingly in the gods, in the heavens or in chance or a combination of these, and maybe other forces unknown to us.

‘Watermen’ like leaders, embody a trait that should be presumed readily for any skill one intends to master: knowing everything about the thing! A good captain must master the terrain, like a good ship’s captain must know how to read the weather and the oceans; and from knowing one’s theatre, one develops leadership on the terrain… to surf great waves, the surfer integrates a team; he evolves from a ‘getter’ as each of this foursome is and was- 'rescuing anyone who needed help, even surfers they didn’t know or whose boneheaded actions had virtually guaranteed a fall’ to seizing the moment that will optimize on the phase speed of the wave, on its celerity…and then onto the deep dark grey primeval forces of quantum wave physics to surf it….

Their experience of failures and defeats, the recoveries and humblings, and the remorse of losing it all through age while looking into the windows ‘of scientists trying to explain and predict a ‘… universe [that] is constructed of waves…it’s craziness…Water waves [are] more complicated than electromagnetic waves because they’re non-linear.’

Consider the lines in Machiavelli’s later Discourses (Bk III, chapters 38-39)where the Florentine enumerates the prerequisites of a good leader. He must be eloquent, radiate great confidence, he must be respected by his colleagues and respectful, know the strategy and tactics of engagement and most of all, know the contours of the theatre where successes or failures are decided.

So too, the theatre of politics, of public policy and public finance, of global diplomacy and commerce requires a set of prerequisites in order to enhance the probability of success in a universe of eruptions and disruptions.

There is no one better prepared to surf Canadian waters as Mr. Robert Rae. He was a former Premier of Ontario, Canada’s most populated community,  who challenged traditional economic policy with an approach that has been recovered by the greatest economies in the world including the United States. A champion of employment and economic parity, he is fiscally innovative, and socially responsible. Notwithstanding, he was deposed and exiled from politics. He was resuscitated by fortune and enlisted by the Liberal Party of Canada. He has acted as a member of the Shadow Cabinet of the Liberal Party and Foreign Affairs Critic for the Official Opposition. He constructed a platform and organized a following that is serious and reputable and has bayed his critics for the last three years while the rest of Parliament’s elected keep cover or stay fools. If I must caricature Mr. Rae, I would suggest Dante's Farinata not so much for the latter's address, but moreso for the moral grandeur Dante attributes to the Inferno's greatest occupant and certainly one of the Dante's favorite characters. He has been both blessed and damned, like Farinata in Dante’s Inferno, he outsizes hell itself, holding his own, and holding the inferno in total spite. Dante’s favourite personage, his greatest creation and without a doubt, as much as he was damned by his enemies, he was admired by the Poet. No one knows the terrain as well as Mr Rae; no one masters the languages as well as Mr. Rae; and no one is better equipped with passion and eloquence, judgement and analytics, a fine mind and public ethos as Mr. Rae. So too, no one needs executive bicker and chatter less than Mr. Rae.  Of all the watermen that the Liberal Party of Canada lists, Mr. Rae best satisfies the requisites of the Big Wave surfer. No one has navigated rougher waters, no one has been challenged by more shifting and ferocious winds, no one has planed more difficult waves, and no one has endured the critic’s spotlight under harsher conditions than Mr. Robert Rae.  Fortune, after dishevelling Robert Rae, has handed the Liberal Party of Canada an opportunity: Mr. Rae is the best candidate for the Leadership of the Liberal Party.


Notwithstanding, for lack of superlatives to emphasize the hyperbole- the Party executives have now convened, invoked and imposed an archaic rule that precludes an Interim Leader from aspiring to permanent leadership of the Party regardless of credentials. Yet, contrary to media and some party pundits, rules should not preclude the  candidacy of a ‘marred’ and ‘aging’ Mr. Robert Rae who, supposedly, can never carry Ontario. To posit fledglings instead is to engage the Liberal Party of Canada in a most pretentious and pompous commerce of political illiteracy,  and meddle in the throngs of fortune,  to dismember the wrangling of fortune.

Is there anything more inconsistent than relieving a leader from his duties after having successfully rebuilt the organization. What greater loyalty than an organization embedded in its leader’s ethos and charisma. Party executives should learn from the country’s national pastime; do you shelf an acting General Manager after a successful interim term, or a successful coach after a successful interim regular season. Take lessons from Calgary Flames and the New York Islanders respectively.  It’s time to oust that exclusive rule before it dissembles the Liberal Party forever.

Indeed, Mr. Robert Rae has trekked  that terrain since his early years. He has been praised and damned by the same constituency. He has been rebel and conservative, shown brilliance and eclat. Some corner his ambition; others highlight his articulate passion. In all cases, Mr. Robert Rae exemplifies the best in the Canadian Liberal Tradition, and naturally embodies the leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada.