If you have seen carrion birds gather around road kill, you might have a small taste of how people feel in a media scrum. The media in full flight can be frightening, overwhelming and demonize you with their rudeness, intrusiveness, and unreasonable demands. That is how Nigel Wright, former chief of staff for the prime minister must have felt the last few days. Yet, Mr. Wright had his plan, his objective, his strategy and his tactics and that armed him.
And in the heat of the Ottawa summer, the carrion media were fed pap. They were part of the scene, they played but a part and they have been had.
And Mr. Wright smiled while his former boss, Mr. Harper was many miles away from the melee. Canadians will likely never know what the Prime Minister knew of the incident. He just had the convenience of having a chief of staff who could casually write a cheque for $90,000.
And in a blizzard of e-mails released by the court, a different story was told. This was about the concerns of the courtiers in the imperial Prime Minister’s Office (PMO). It was all about optics—how they would tell the story. It was media control. It was about spin. It was the conversion of fact to fiction—palatable to the hoi polloi. Keep the mud splatter off the Prime Minister’s robes of office. It is not a topic that a sensible public relations professional would ever commit to writing.
But what did the Prime Minister know? Mr. Wright says that the Prime Minister knew very little. Mr. Harper’s eyebrows must have gone up at least a millimetre when he was told that Mike Duffy had a home in Prince Edward Island. He wanted Duffy to help elect Conservatives—not languish in a pastoral island when not in the Senate. He had to be party to that part of the sham at least.
As much as Stephen Harper enjoys micro-managing the government and his party, he probably was not aware of Duffy playing fast and loose with his expense accounts—that is too picky even for a control freak!
But when he was told about it, did he say “Can anyone rid me of that troublesome Senator?” No. In his usual unfeeling, uncaring way, Stephen Harper said, “Have the Senator repay it.”
According to Nigel Wright it became a major project of the PMO. It was “Save our ship Duffy.” All hands were ready to bail. And that was when Wright wrote the famous cheque. Mr. Wright is a very loyal soldier. And he has been busy in court this past week proving it.
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Copyright 2015 © Peter Lowry
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