Politics has a way of teaching us humility, even if we never fully learn the lesson. One would think that I would have been the last person to write off any sitting government months before the vote. Nope. Hubris and bravado got the better of me.

To add insult to irony, I also attributed the B.C. Liberals’ widely expected loss to Premier Clark’s weak leadership and lack of humility, in contrast to Adrian Dix’s example. In the end, it was the strength of her campaign performance in the face of his shaky offering that turned the tide and delivered her party’s jaw-dropping victory.

Once again the political gods have reminded us that miracles can happen with the right combination of camera-made leadership, charisma, passion, warmth of character, focused messaging, effective advertising, organizational smarts and muscle, superior research, and quality candidates.

It also helps if your chief opponent lacks those same elements, curls up in a ball, and says nothing about your record. It’s better yet if one splinter party self-destructs to help consolidate your vote, while the other one gains traction at your opponent’s expense.

I was stupidly seduced and emboldened by the opinion polls in all of their empty inevitability. Yet I can hardly blame the pollsters for my own willful misreading of a public desire for change that was at best tepid, weakly inspired, taken for granted, and ultimately dependent on a vote of confidence in each leader.

Indeed, for most of the campaign, the hard evidence showed that Team Clark simply out-campaigned the NDP in every respect—physically, emotionally, rationally, organizationally, and strategically.

In terms of campaign theming, messaging, optics, and execution, the B.C. Liberals presented a consistent, cohesive, and effective narrative that was expertly delivered by their leader. The NDP never challenged that narrative and even aided and abetted it.

Defining the ballot question is always critical.

It’s not just “the economy, stupid”— as inept as the NDP’s positioning on that crucial issue was. It’s also always about leadership. Leaders shape, define, and personify the question of trust and confidence that always underpins any ballot question.

Dix’s fundamental failure was his inability to inspire trust, hope, and confidence in his leadership, team and vision. He also plainly lost the referendum on “change for the better” that he held out as his party’s winning ballot issue.

Sure, the Liberals’ vicious attacks on Dix’s character and the NDP served to define him and his party. Sadly, the truth was not material to those attacks anymore than it was to Clark’s hyperbole about the miracles of LNG or her plan to eliminate a debt that her government expects to increase by 50 percent. Say anything often enough and it tends to stick, especially if your opponent allows it.

Even more damaging, however, was that throughout the campaign, Dix redefined himself in the B.C. Liberals’ image as he also undermined his own “brand”. His “Kinder surprise” was only one such example.

In its timing, delivery, and explanation, his Kinder Morgan flip-flop was the opposite of the brand that he had worked so hard to build for himself as a strong and principled leader who is methodical, cautious, confident, consistent, trustworthy, and economically sensitive.

Indeed, he effectively authored the B.C. Liberals’ “Weather Vane” attack ad on himself.

His evasive answers on his spur-of-the-moment decision made him look weak, shady, and reckless. They also played into the B.C. Liberals’ attacks on his “memo to file”. Dix further added fuel to that attack with his woefully inadequate “I was only 35” excuse, which his campaign team then elevated with its misguided response to the Liberals’ You Tube attack video.

In so many ways, Dix and his campaign strategists snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

Their debate strategies were inherently flawed. They had inferior research. They had weak campaign events, thin crowds, little visible passion, unconvincing ads, unexciting platform announcements, and convoluted messaging that failed to focus or inspire public interest in their “practical steps” for change.

They also targeted the wrong ridings and failed to identify and get out their vote in key swing seats. They had fewer new star candidates than the Liberals. Having more of them with the smarts, profile, and organizational ability of David Eby certainly would have helped in swing seats that should have been the NDP's for the taking.

In hindsight, the NDP’s entire campaign was Seinfeldesque. It was a show about nothing that promised a change about nothing. Dix basically argued for a softer, kinder version of the B.C. Liberals’ agenda. It was a vanilla version of Clark’s candy cone plan, with a few sprinkles on top and served with less panache.

The NDP’s lack of concern for balanced budgets and debt management was not offset by any discernible public benefits from increased spending, especially in respect of its two strongest vote-getting issues. There was no meaningful focus on health or education. Indeed, all eight of its platform priorities were reduced to “rifle shot” issues that mostly missed their mark.

The platform itself was mostly devoid of populist content. It was demonstrably more concerned with lowering NDP supporters’ expectations of a Dix government than with earning voter support with ideas that interest, excite or get attention. Plus, the platform rollout was pedantic and visually uninspiring.

All of that falls on the campaign team’s doorstep, just as the bucks stopped at Dix’s desk in what might be in the plan and which priorities would be profiled.

Of course, the mother of all mistakes that the NDP made was in letting Clark and the Liberals off the hook for their record. In so doing, they turned the election from a vote of non-confidence in Clark’s government to a question of confidence in a Dix-NDP government. The B.C. Liberals loss of public trust was a non-issue.

Inexplicably, Dix chose not to hold the B.C. Liberals accountable in any way, shape, or form. He also passed on numerous opportunities to leverage Clark’s personal mistakes in the campaign as illustrations of broader failures of leadership and character.

His response to Clark’s red light controversy was only one such example.

Dix basically suggested that it was a trivial issue which was not really germane to her government’s proven penchant for rule-breaking or for acting like it is above the law. It fell to one of Clark’s own cabinet ministers to put the premier in her place and force her to apologize for yet another error in judgement that Dix deigned to minimize.

No party can afford to simply ignore their opponent and assume that a public appetite for change will trump all to favour it. Campaigns are always studies in contrast.

Dix not only failed to make a compelling case for change, both in terms of highlighting the Clark government’s problems and in selling his party’s proposed solutions. He also inadvertently undermined public confidence and trust in his own leadership and allowed the issue of change to become his Achilles heel.

He made the campaign entirely about himself, rather than about his strength of talent or his prescription for change from Clark’s deeply flawed and widely mistrusted administration. With all of the tools he had in his arsenal, Dix chose to fight the election on the Liberals’ turf with nothing but a white flag that he spent most of the campaign waving at his own shadow.

The TV debate certainly crystallized his awkwardness, discomfort, and diffidence next to Clark’s ultra-comfortable and personable performance. But most of his campaign images were equally unflattering.

The photos and television clips of most days’ events made Dix appear geeky, wimpy, and bookish. The tiny clusters of party faithful that were shown and his painfully lonely “mainstreeting” images further undermined his populist appeal as a premier-in-waiting.

Again, it is the campaign team’s job to prevent and correct that problem. The planned photo ops were weak from the word go and that amplified an image of Dix that ran counter to the strength of leadership that he had successfully conveyed for most of the two years prior.

Yet, ultimately, Dix was sunk by his own lack of visible passion for his purpose and by his inability to communicate his vision for meaningful change beyond greater political civility.

For two years, he had branded himself as a straight-shooting leader with gravitas and resolve. He seemed bent on elevating the conduct, character, and substance of government. He kept telling all British Columbians to wait until the “fully-costed platform” for his party’s vision to become crystal clear.

In the campaign, he mostly looked and sounded like a guy who was out of his depth, perhaps not what he appeared, and not ready for prime time. It appeared as if his vision was little more than Clark’s road map with even less clarity. He was Apple Maps. She was Google Maps. And his offering was exploited to reduce public confidence in the NDP.

By contrast, Clark began the campaign as a premier who was over her head and who was justly on her way out. She reintroduced herself to the people as a surprisingly strong and likable leader with her eyes clearly fixed on the future. She never raised the past and was never forced to defend it or to answer for her conduct in government.

Clark redefined herself as a premier with hope, optimism, and pride of purpose, while her entire campaign rekindled the age-old fears about the NDP, as it also forever defined Dix as a loser of biblical proportions.

Some have compared Dix’s loss to Gordon Campbell’s unexpected 1996 election defeat.

Difference is, Campbell didn’t start with quite the same lead in the polls and wound up winning a greater share of the popular vote, but fewer seats than the NDP. He also inherited a divided opposition that included a B.C. Reform Party with official party status and that was further divided by Gordon Wilson’s PDA party.

Putting that coalition back together was a Herculean task, and Campbell first succeeded in achieving to win the largest majority in B.C. history in 2001. Clark managed to reconsolidate that coalition she initially fractured, at least for this election. Largely that was due to John Cummins’ failures of leadership and to the B.C. Conservatives’ self-immolation.

Despite earning more votes than his predecessor and only one less seat, Dix did not win the largest share of the popular vote, and he lost market share compared to the NDP’s 2009 and 2005 election showings. Instead of consolidating his party’s traditional support base, he allowed the B.C. Green Party to get a foot in the legislature. That will dramatically change the tenure of debate and media coverage in the years ahead.

For all of this, Dix must know that his days as NDP leader are numbered. It’s a shame, in my opinion, because despite his many shortcomings, he did much to chart a course for the NDP that was laudable, prudent, smart, and overdue.

The style and substance he was offering could have been a positive game-changer that might have forever elevated political discourse and government engagement in British Columbia. I think he likely would have made a very good premier, who clearly learned a lot from his experiences in government and in the 13 years since that time.

Dix is a sharp guy with a clear mind and a penchant for public policy. He worked very hard to listen, learn, and engage people from across the political spectrum in better understanding social and economic challenges that are certainly not going away anytime soon. His choice of Don Wright to head the public service was an inspired move that generated a lot of confidence within the civil service and the private sector.

I was impressed by Dix’s attempt to move beyond petty, polarized, partisan politics and to reach across ideological lines to forge new relationships in a way that I never did in my time in the Premier’s Office.

Fact is, with a better campaign that anticipated and prevented the many failings noted above, Dix could have— and should have— easily won.

Given his humiliating defeat, I doubt that means that he could win in 2017, even if he could hang onto his job. Then again, I was sure that Christy Clark couldn’t possibly win given her sorry initial record as Premier.

Her slate has now been washed clean. Clark has been redeemed by her miracle win and she has every right to flash those smug smiles that all of her critics will have to endure in the months and years ahead.

She does have a fresh mandate to really show what she can do with an exceptionally talented team of 24 newcomers and 25 veterans besides. She has earned her party a new lease on life. At least 17 of those new B.C. Liberal MLAs are easily cabinet material. I expect that up to 10 of them will make the cut in a new and larger cabinet.

For its part, the NDP opposition has to rebuild its morale, with alacrity and humour, as it resolves itself to the hard and important slog ahead with which it is so familiar.

The sooner it moves beyond its internal review and sorts through the tea leaves of defeat, the sooner it can start focusing on the future, with renewed resolve, yet again,  to learn from its mistakes in unlucky ’13.

As for me, I’m still stuffed from all of the humble pie I had to eat on live TV for four hours as a CBC election night analyst.

I’ll never quite get that taste out of my mouth, which is a good thing. It will forever remind me how easy it is to lose perspective when you focus more on those who the polls suggest will get their just desserts, instead of on the hard facts that are unfolding before your eyes.