The High Road (18 page)

We were in the car pulling away from the curb after the meeting when I finally asked him.

“So did you just pull that health care answer right out of your … um … head?”

“What are you drivin’ at, man? I told you and Muriel already that I knew very little about health care and that we’d have to bone up on it before the next all-candidates meetin’. I thought I’d made that quite clear,” Angus protested.

“Angus, whether you believe it or not, your last answer in there revealed quite a deep knowledge of health care policy, certainly deeper than they or I were expecting. You were very impressive. Just the right blend of knowledge and self-deprecation. But where did it come from? We’ve never really talked about health care.”

Angus looked puzzled.

“Well, I can read, you know. Even quite large words. And I can ask questions. So I did some readin’ online and spoke to a few colleagues. That meant I knew enough to get by. It’s fascinatin’ stuff, but I now know just enough to realize how little I really know. And I dinnae like that feeling.”

André called when were halfway home to confirm my read on the meeting. Angus had impressed them mightily. He said he thought we’d be pleased with tomorrow’s editorial.

I passed all of this on to Angus as we neared home. Then I turned on the car radio. The final ultra-harmonious refrain of Starland Vocal Band’s “Afternoon Delight” was just dying out. Then the grating voice of that same angry woman resumed.

“Brainwashed by the writings of his ultra-feminist wife, Angus McLintock has a secret extremist feminist agenda ready to rip apart Canada’s social fabric. He actually wants housewives to be paid for baking cookies and vacuuming. If you thought affirmative action programs were unfair, you ain’t seen nothing yet. So don’t give Angus McLintock the chance. Vote for Emerson Fox. This has been a paid political message on behalf of the Cumberland-Prescott Progressive Conservative Association.”

Uh-oh. I looked at Angus. For about thirty seconds after the radio ad, he seemed to be calm and to take it in stride. Then I noticed his white knuckles on the wheel and he promptly drove us into a snowbank.

Michael Zaleski was waiting for me in the offices of National Opinion, the official polling firm of the Liberal Party. He had earned the loyalty of the leader and Bradley Stanton by always and only delivering the advice his principal clients needed to hear, not what they may have wanted to hear. He wore a staid grey suit, white shirt, and a tie that shattered even the most avantgarde conceptions of good taste. The design seemed to me to depict the botched autopsy of a small two-headed neon bird, spread and splayed. But it was hard to look directly at it for long enough to be sure. It was so bright, it hurt my eyes. It was so loud, it hurt my ears.

“Whoa, that’s some cravat you’ve got going on there, Z-man,” I said, looking away. Everybody called him Z-man. You know you’ve made it in politics when you get a nickname. “I didn’t think those were allowed in Canada.”

“I know. Isn’t it great?” he replied, holding it out perpendicular to his chest. “It keeps everyone awake in our morning staff meetings.”

“Awake or away?” I asked. “Can you pop out the batteries until we’re done? You can turn it back on when I’m gone.”

He ignored my last comment. I seem to have this unerring habit of making one remark too many.

He turned his laptop around so we could both see the PowerPoint presentation he had cued up, ready to go. A pollster without a PowerPoint is like an Albanian diplomat without an
interpreter. They could both speak, but you just would have no idea what they were saying.

“So thanks for coming in. I thought you’d be interested in these numbers,” he started.

“Well, thanks for the invite, Michael. Fire when ready,” I said as I opened my Moleskine notebook. I could still see the reflection of his tie in the laptop screen.

“Look, you know you’re really up against it in C-P. It’s been Tory-blue for so long, the idea of voting red is completely foreign to most residents,” he cautioned.

I nodded. The title slide gave way to the first of the colourful graphs and charts, standard fare for pollsters around the world.

“Okay, as I mentioned in our call, Alden Stonehouse is pulling much stronger numbers than we expected. He’s just shy of 14 per cent of decided voters, which is big for an independent. Really big.”

“That’s just block-voting within his congregation, isn’t it?” I asked.

“That’s what we first suspected, but that’s not all that’s going on. Every respondent in our sample who admitted to being in his congregation is voting for him, but that only accounts for about nine points of his fourteen,” the pollster explained. “It seems he’s actually pulling Tory voters away from Fox.”

“How can that be?” I inquired. “It makes no sense in C-P.”

“That’s what we were wondering, too. So we’ve probed a little deeper in the last two waves. For the most part, there are three interconnected reasons for at least some local Tories bailing on Fox. One, Stonehouse has easily exceeded voter expectations. They’re surprised he’s so articulate, thoughtful, and reasonable. He just doesn’t sound like the religious nutbar voters thought he’d be. Two, his policy positions and political views are very closely aligned with the Progressive Conservative party’s and the prevailing sentiments of the average C-P voter. Third, and most importantly, Fox’s attack ads seem, at long last, to have crossed
some kind of line in the voters’ minds. He’s finally gone too far with the personal stuff.”

“Wow. Fascinating. Great work, Michael.” I was impressed with the analysis. “Are the numbers in motion? Where’s the trend?”

“They’re still very loose, but the movement from Fox to Stonehouse has been sustained since the first all-candidates meeting.”

“So what are the voter intention numbers?”

“Right. Here you go,” he said as he clicked to the next slide.

I took in the figures.

I was amazed we were as close as we were, even with the Stonehouse factor.

“What’s going on with the Undecideds?” (Angus would never accept this pollster-invented word, but I was in a hurry, and besides, he wasn’t there.)

“You’ll like this. Of the regular Tory voters who are abandoning Fox, a third are going to Stonehouse, another third are going to Angus, and the final third are parking in Undecided.”

“But what are the demos of the Undecideds?” I asked.

“I’m way ahead of you,” he replied. “It cuts quite evenly across the sample. No one group seems to stand out except that Conservative voters are skewing higher than usual for the reasons we’ve already discussed.”

“So the story is, without Stonehouse, Fox would be leading by twenty-five points and we’d never be able to make up that much ground,” I reasoned.

“Yep. The numbers tell us that virtually every one of Stonehouse’s votes is either a church member or a disaffected Conservative.”

“So the right-wing split is actually real. It’s really happening,” I said, excitement creeping into my voice.

“In spades.” Zaleski nodded, smiling.

“Awesome. But what about the national numbers?” I asked.

Zaleski skipped a couple of slides.

“Well, it’s very tight. But since your man’s hovercraft heroics, the Tories have dropped six points and we’ve picked up five of them. The remaining one per cent went to Undecided.

“And you think Angus helped that shift?”

“He didn’t help it, he caused it,” he declared. “We specifically asked, and the numbers are solid.”

I sat in silence taking this in.

“But there’s more you should know,” he said before moving to the next slide. It was entitled “The Angus Effect.”

“There’s actually an Angus Effect?” I asked, genuinely perplexed.

“Not
an
Angus Effect,
The
Angus Effect,” Zaleski responded. “Let me explain. We always ask what issues are most important in the minds of respondents as they consider their candidates, and then we prompt them with a rotated list. The national gen pop results look like this.” He clicked the numbers onto the screen.

“Yeah, makes sense to me,” I said, not quite understanding. “So what?”

“Well, here’s the same list for Cumberland-Prescott,” Michael fingered his mouse, then sat back and watched my face as the numbers took root.

Michael just smiled and nodded before adding some colour commentary.

“On the national list, candidate integrity has never risen above 7 per cent, and it’s now riding at 12. And after Cumberland-Prescott, while there’s not a single riding in Canada where candidate integrity is seen as the most important issue, let alone pulling 28 per cent, it is steadily moving up the list. And the ridings surrounding C-P have shown the highest growth in the candidate integrity numbers.”

“Um … you’ve got to be kidding …” I mumbled, realization dawning on me.

Like P. T. Barnum in the centre ring, the official pollster of the Liberal Party lifted his hands and his voice.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I give you … The Angus Effect.”

When I arrived in the boathouse workshop, Angus was already there tinkering in the cockpit.

“The blessed starter motor finally arrived this morning,” Angus opened. “The damnable excise tax and duty cost me near as much as the motor itself!”

It looked like he was nearly finished installing it, but what did I know?

“Can I give you a hand with the installation?” I offered.

Angus visibly recoiled at the thought, then realized he’d visibly recoiled at the thought, and tried to soften the blow.

“Ahhhh, no thanks, lad, I’m nearly done,” he stammered. “Why don’t you have a seat way over there? I’ll just be a jiff.” He pointed with what I thought might be a screwdriver, or perhaps a wrench of some kind, to a stool over in the corner, as far away from the hovercraft as was possible while still being within the same building.

“Angus, I’m not a complete klutz,” I replied, feeling a little wounded. Of course I’d have had more credibility had I not been looking so intently at him that I missed the stool, settling on the concrete floor next to it and knocking a steel pail from its hook on the wall. Angus pretended not to notice, though my ears were still ringing from the clatter.

While he worked, I talked to him about Michael’s briefing on the numbers, concluding with a detailed description of The Angus Effect.

“Piffle and codswallop,” he muttered under his breath and under his dashboard. “Sounds more to me like The Stupid Arse Fox Effect, combined with The Better Than Expected Stonehouse Effect. I guess we owe the good reverend our gratitude if it keeps up.”

“We may well owe him our victory, so we should hope he continues to do well,” I said from the safety of my stool in the corner.

“Undiluted hyperbole,” Angus snorted after a moment or two. “
The Angus Effect
. Mercy. You know, laddie, the last time I heard that phrase, I was at boardin’ school in the Highlands. My bunk-mates regularly invoked that term, particularly after we’d been served cabbage for dinner. Or turnip,” he added thoughtfully.

A half-hour later, we’d muscled
Baddeck 1
down the boathouse ramp onto the ice. Angus donned the supple leather flying head gear and goggles I’d given him some months earlier. They’d been worn by my great-grandfather when he flew in World War I. Not many could have pulled off such a retro look, and neither could
Angus. I pulled a bright Liberal red toque down over my ears. The plan was to cruise up the river and to do some dock-to-dock canvassing while the two Petes and their crew of volunteers went door to door in another part of the riding.

“Shall we give her a whirl?” Angus asked as he settled into the cockpit next to me. I placed the large spool of red ribbon I’d brought with me on the floor beneath my seat.

“Fingers crossed,” I said.

Then, in cinematic slow motion, Angus aimed his index finger at the shiny black button that was freshly mounted on the dash, and pushed. The whine of the new starter motor kicked in, soon to be overtaken by the thump-thump of the main engine as it roared to life. Even his goggles couldn’t obscure the satisfaction in his eyes, despite how ridiculous he looked.

Angus fingered the throttle and the engine wailed at his touch. I felt us rise off the ice. You really could feel yourself being lifted as the rubber skirt filled to capacity around the perimeter of the hovercraft. With Angus working the foot pedals and the steering wheel, we actually rotated on the spot, then headed out onto the ice. The noise was fearsome, and I wondered how we were going to engage voters in meaningful conversation, or even in canvassing’s more typical mindless chatter, when we’d need at least twenty minutes after killing the hovercraft engine before the ringing in our ears died away.