WE`RE ALL CERTAIN that representative democracy is a Good Thing,and we take it for granted that we have it. In this book, John Laschinger andGeoffrey Stevens, a professional election-campaign manager and a professionalpolitical observer, tell us how the system is actually run these days, andleave us wondering. There was a time when a Canadianpolitical party could be reasonably defined as an association of like-mindedpeople who in an election campaign would present a set of proposed governmentpolicies for the approval or disapproval of the electorate A change began in 196 1, when Keith Daveypicked up a copy of Theodore White`s The Making of the President 1960 andcouldn`t put it down. There was an even more fateful moment in 1975, whenRobert Stanfield`s office gave a Carleton University graduate student namedAllan Gregg a summer job as a researcher. The developments from there arechronicled in John Sawatsky`s TheInsiders (1987), which set out tobe about the Ottawa lobbyists, but turned out to be largely about partymanagers because of the alarming ease with which people can move from oneoccupation to the other and back again. And now Laschinger and Stevens describethe way the resulting system works in practice: Recognition, TV skills, motivation, ...the ability to project self-assurance and control under stress are all elementsof electability -as electability is viewed from the backroom. Party policy, however, is a differentmatter. Elected politicians value policy, if only because it serves as a suitof armour, protecting them from opponents` allegations that they have no ideasand no remedies for the problems that afflict the province or nation. Tobackroom politicians, in contrast, policy is a distraction, even a nuisance,which complicates campaign strategies and confuses tactics. Hence, incessant, obsessive, andfabulously expensive polling - not so much to find out if voters need more persuasionof the worth of the party`s established policies as to learn what should beplayed down, or hidden altogether. So intent are the pollsters and theirclients on their particular concerns that they can easily lose sight of therealities of what the voters actually say in elections. The authors quote AllanGregg on the reason for the victory of the NDP in Ontario in 1990: The absence of any sense of risk allowedvoters to turn the voting act into a process of successive elimination ofnegative alternatives. Who`s worst? Who`s secondworst? Who`s left? And becausethere were no risks associated with voting for the NDP, that`s what they did. But in real life "they" didn`t:62 per cent of them voted against the NDP. The bulk of the book consists of anecdotes,some of them very good. Laschinger, who seems to have a knack for pickinglosers as clients, managed John Crosbie`s campaign for the Conservativeleadership in 1983. Crosbie`s inability to speak French had become a campaignissue, and Laschinger was determined to have him meet the criticism head-on byopening his convention speech in French. It was not a lot of French -just threeshort paragraphs - but it was more than Crosbie could manage. A tutor wasrecruited. Every day for the final week of the campaign, she made Crosbierehearse the three paragraphs, over and over again. I wish Laschinger had reproduced some ofthe result; but as one bit is burned into my memory, I take this opportunity torecord it for posterity. After his week`s rehearsal (not to mention hisexpensive Ontario boarding-school education) Crosbie announced that he was aCanadienne, and continued "eh John sweefeeay." It took a moment torealize that what was written in front of him was "etj`en suis fier." Leaders and LesserMortals would perhaps be notmuch more than an entertaining piece of ephemera were it not for the last twochapters, in which the authors (mostly Stevens, I suspect) seriously addressthe question of improving our political system, and point out the trends, suchas the decline of the newspaper, that will powerfully affect futuredevelopments. They do my heart good by forcefully rejecting the specious anddisastrous idea of proportional representation, and also by characterizing an"equal" Senate as one that "would increase the influence ofworthy Canadians in small places like Stettler, Alberta, and Summerside,P.E.I., at the expense of presumably less worthy Canadians in big places likeToronto, Montreal, and Vancouver." They propose a reform of parliamentaryrules to increase the independence of members by severely restricting thenumber of votes that must be treated as matters of confidence. (An alternative,less difficult of definition, would be the Pearson minority government`spractice of calling for a vote of confidence immediately after it was defeatedon a particular measure.) They recommend tighter rules for campaignspending, which are desirable if nobody supports my dream of banning allcampaign spending except travelling expenses for the leaders, thus forcing thenews media to do all the work of publicizing the issues and the candidates.Impractical, I fear. An appendix containing the results of allprovincial and federal party leadership conventions from 1967 to 1992 assuresmy copy of the book a permanent place on my shelves for ready reference.