The Candidate
By Noah Richler. Doubleday Canada, 368 pp, hardcover

There's much to applaud in Noah Richler's new book, The Candidate: Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail.

Eloquently written, it's an insider's look at the grubby and occasionally inspiring world of Canadian federal politics. And it contains important lessons for B.C. New Democrats as they prepare for their fifth election since they last held government in Canada's westernmost province.

Last year, Richler, a journalist and noted author, stepped into the political arena for the first time as the NDP candidate in Toronto–St. Paul's.

It wasn't a huge surprise to anyone who had read his 2012 book, What We Talk About When We Talk About War, which included a jacket blurb from NDP icon Stephen Lewis.

That tome was a trenchant analysis of the 21st-century rise of a warmongering, us-versus-them mindset in Canada. It also outlined how this was encouraged by former prime minister Stephen Harper, media commentators like Christy Blatchford and Don Cherry, and widely quoted academics like Jack Granatstein and David Bercusson.

Richler is a serious thinker who tackles big ideas. Therein lies the rub: for candidates in ridings across the country, federal campaigns are more about following the leader rather than laying out a grand vision.

Despite this, Richler reports that he had some thoughtful discussions on the doorstep about everything from Harper's politics of division to nuclear negotiations with Iran. He concedes he sometimes said things that he "did not altogether believe", such as that the NDP should pull out of the fight against ISIL or that Canada was in a recession.

He lost badly to the incumbent Liberal MP, Dr. Carolyn Bennett, as Trudeau made monumental gains in urban and suburban Canada.

Richler wants NDP to pay attention to the arts

What should interest B.C. New Democrats are Richler's observations on their party's approach to the arts and sports.

In 2008, the Conservatives failed to obtain a majority after Harper made disparaging comments on the campaign trail about people who attend arts galas. It was interpreted in Quebec as a contemptuous view of culture. (Harper tried to repair the damage in his next term with public piano performances and won his majority in 2011.)

The Liberals under Justin Trudeau still saw an opening in this area in the 2015 federal campaign. They promised to double spending on the Canada Council for the Arts from $180 million to $360 million. Sizeable increases were pledged for Telefilm Canada and the National Film Board. And the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation was going to get a $150-million annual funding boost under a Liberal government. 

"Of all the provinces, Quebeckers have understood the Gransci-esque messaging potential of both sports and the arts the most," Richler writes. "But whereas Trudeau knew how to play it, the NDP was only indifferently courting the sector. To my mind, the oversight spoke to not only a failure of vision but to a certain Calvinist streak in a party that seemed to uphold a very old-fashioned idea of work as its covenant."

In Toronto–St. Paul's, many voters care about the arts, leaving Richler at a distinct disadvantage because of the NDP's failure to seize the initiative.

The next section of The Candidate is something B.C. NDP Leader John Horgan should commit to memory. Richler points out how the federal NDP ethos was "rooted in (Ontario) factories and (Western) fields and (Quebec's supply-side) farms; in closed-shop unions and assembly plants rather than the modern-day fact of a world in which technology and disintermediation have promoted a very different kind of labour".

Moreover, Richler notes, Mulcair reinforced this dated view of the economy in his stump speeches; they invariably mentioned his nine brothers and sisters and his long-ago experience as a construction worker hammering nails.

"So if there were an interest in the arts, it was only expressed through ties with unions and notions of stagehands and carpenters that the party's socialization made familiar," Richler writes. "The party balked at anything beyond that; the gambles and risky outlays of directors and producers who are by nature big spenders borrowing big sums with a view to repaying investors and, ultimately earning fat fees—this sort of ethos lay outside the borders of the party's imagination."

Sports is also an area where many New Democrats are "ideologically uncomfortable", according to Richler, because of their aversion to "chauvinist nationalism and individual accomplishment". He, on the other hand, sees sports as an area where "the frontiers of inclusivity, equality and human rights are constantly and thrillingly being pushed out on behalf of women, people with disabilities and the ethnically and religiously diverse".

"Not one but two of the political circuit's greatest avenues to popular appeal were no-go areas [for the NDP], their social resonance only dimly understood," Richler writes.

The Candidate differs from other political memoirs

Other reviews of The Candidate have highlighted Richler's run-ins with party brass over his clever video mocking a Trudeau advertisement. There's also been a fair amount of attention paid to how journalists combed through his Twitter and Facebook accounts looking for comments that would create an uproar. Richler deals with this well in his book.

But for New Democrats, the book's most important contribution is the lessons it offers. Ditch the stodginess. Let candidates be more imaginative in their ridings. Gain a firmer grasp on the importance of the creative economy to city dwellers. And show more respect for people who make their living in arts and culture.

Unlike many other political memoirs, The Candidate is refreshingly devoid of a self-serving storyline. Richler is candid about his flaws as a politician, gracious to his volunteers and wife Sarah, and brutally honest about everything from fundraising to his feelings about fellow candidates.

There's been nothing as direct as this from a Canadian politician since former MP Garth Turner told it like it was in 2009 with Sheeple: Caucus Confidential in Stephen Harper's Ottawa.