Having written many political speeches over the years, it would have been a pleasant surprise to hear the shout for the author to take a bow among the applause at the end of many a speech. Having listened to MP Patrick Brown on Saturday when he accepted the leadership of the Ontario Progressive Conservatives, that call would have been deserved. The speech was a good balance for the occasion.
Brown was gracious to his opponents and a bit obsequious to his friend MPP Monte McNaughton. McNaughton was the only candidate to quit the race and bring his socially conservative supporters to the Barrie MP. Not that Brown needed them. His mass memberships for people in the Tamil, Sikh, Hindu, Muslim and Chinese communities were more than enough to win and he recognized them by a few words in each language.
Despite the crafting of the speech, there is still a lot to do to improve the speaker. Mr. Brown has to be considered a work in progress. He can probably blame his mother for not doing something about his adenoids when he was young. That high, squeaky voice and the mouth-breathing appearance appears to be adenoidal. And while he is used to reading speeches, he does not seem to have the memory required to scoop ideas and then talk to his audience. You get a lot of his greasy hair while he reads to you.
When he goes off script such as he did near the end of the speech, he comes full face but seems to stutter a bit. He can probably be taught how to use a teleprompter. He might even learn how to handle seeming adlibs that are programmed into the script.
But speeches are not the main problem with Patrick Brown. This leadership contest was a “one-of.” No other political party in Canada is going to be so stupid as to allow someone to buy wholesale votes so as to swamp the party membership and win the leadership. Brown taught the Ontario PCs a lesson and they are not pleased about it. He will have to watch his back.
But it is his lack of any leadership qualities, his lack of direction and his lack of vision that should be worrying the Conservatives. Mind you, he found a speech writer or someone found the speechwriter for him. He will soon be assembling staff and starting to take advice from some of his backers. It is those backers who need to come out of the closet. We need to have an idea of where Patrick thinks he is going. Platitudes are not enough to take his party anywhere.
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Copyright 2015 © Peter Lowry
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