[URBAN NOTE] "Welcome to Tory Nation"

[rfmcdonald]

Torontoist's Graeme Bayliss noted that new Toronto mayor John Tory picked as deputy mayor the right-leaning Denzil Minnan-Wong. Others have noted that this signals Tory's right-wing tendencies. Speaking more broadly, Spacing Toronto's John Lorinc notes correctly that we Torontonians don't know much about how Tory will actually govern, observing that many of his provincial-politics skills may not even work here.

These may still be exciting times.

Tory, who learned his trade at the feet of long-time Progressive Conservative premier Bill Davis (I’d say watch for a cameo appearance in the days to come), clearly believes that politics, as the old saying goes, is the art of the possible: “You’re over there, I’m over here — let’s split the difference and say everyone’s a winner.”

Initially, his mandate, his powers of persuasion and his role in the dispensing of council favours will take him some distance down the road towards his mandate. But Tory’s two big stated goals — building an immensely complicated transit project, and finding ways to reduce the social divisions in Toronto — won’t yield easily or quickly. Consequently, it will require enormous discipline on the part of him and his advisors to stay focused in a job where each day is a daisy chain of distractions.

There will be many tough and contentious choices ahead, and Tory, as the pundits will remind him regularly, won’t be able to cast himself as a mature leader and then duck responsibility for unpopular positions.

What’s more, we have no idea how Tory exercises executive judgment when it comes to dealing with the most difficult or intractable problems (all we know is how he exercises campaign judgment, which is very different). We have no idea how he responds when his tribe threatens to turn against him, or when the idiots on council (we all know who they are) gleefully throw monkey wrenches into his best-laid plans. We have no idea what he does in the face of scandal, crisis, or defeat. We don’t know whether he will try to pass off spin as accomplishment in the absence of the results he failed to deliver. And we don’t know whether he can be genuinely tough, in the way that all political leaders need to be at some point in their careers.

I’m prepared to give Tory the benefit of the doubt at this point — I believe he genuinely wants to move the needle when it comes to transit and sees it as a kind of civic legacy — and I also think Tory himself believes that the inclusive, feel-good ideology of Civic Action, which has sought to mentor young leaders from marginalized communities, can be scaled up to the larger canvas of the city.