You've probably never heard of him before, unless you are part of a small Ottawa-based circle of journalists and political assistants. And by tomorrow, he will have disappeared behind one or another of the clichés that reporters use to obscure their sources, an anonymous "official in the Prime Minister's Office," or "a senior Liberal" or "a Chrétien loyalist."
But today, Randy McCauley, 33-year-old son of the manse and professional political groupie, is having his Andy-Warhol-defined 15 minutes of fame, smiling out from behind wire-rim glasses in a half-page photograph in the local newspaper. (His father, Gary McCauley, was a United Church minister before getting elected as an MP.)
He has had the good luck or misfortune, depending on your perspective, of having his appointment to a second-tier position in Prime Minister Jean Chretien's office turned into cannon fodder in the continuing virtual battle between the Prime Minister and his Minister of Finance, Paul Martin.
That battle always is seen as heating up on slow news weeks when Parliament is not in session and the Parliamentary Press Gallery has time and space on its hands. Speculation about Mr. Martin's political future was prominent in at least three major newspapers, including this one, yesterday.
It is a virtual battle, fought by anonymous and invisible soldiers using the communications equivalent of neutron bombs, which attack people but leave buildings and other infrastructure unaffected.
Another Signal PM Will Stay On, Martin Fumes As Chrétien Names Loyalist To Key Post, declared the headline over a story written by a journalist known in that tight little circle described above as a frequent conduit for the PMO spin.
Time for a reality check. Mr. McCauley, who has spent most of the past seven years as a political assistant to Transport Minister David Collenette, has been appointed press secretary to Mr. Chrétien. This is not as grandiose a job as the title might suggest, more concerned with logistics of press facilities and paper than policy.
The key post in the PMO for these matters is the press secretary's boss, who is called the director of communications. That is currently held by Francie Ducros, who succeeded Peter Donolo in the post last summer. Mr. Donolo was a real player in the power game, and the jury is still out on whether Ms. Ducros has filled his shoes.
But is Mr. McCauley so important that his appointment would have the Finance Minister "fuming?" Although the story quotes unnamed "insiders" as saying unnamed "Martinites are apoplectic" about the new press secretary, it is quite possible that Paul Martin wouldn't recognize Randall McCauley if he fell over him.
The person Mr. McCauley is replacing, Jennifer Lang, was not a headliner at many Saturday morning discussions at your local Tim Horton's either. It takes a long stretch, even by the committed conspiracy theorists, to turn her decision to join her fiancé in Toronto into part of some dastardly plot to thwart the Finance Minister's prime ministerial ambitions.
But that didn't restrain the Ottawa Citizen's reporter. Quoting "one Liberal" (at current poll standings, that could be any one of 4.5 million voting-age Canadians who say they support the government party), "it's take-no-prisoners" time, and the PMO "has said we need someone who's going to war." This same Liberal believes "Randy is a fiercely partisan guy in terms of loyalty to the boss." (Wouldn't anyone hiring a press secretary want him or her to be a "loyalist?")
The latter may well be true, and Mr. McCauley was both helpful to journalists and an effective spinner for his boss during the complex and sensitive airline merger-and-takeover business. But we also know the PMO talked to other candidates for the press job who had foreign-affairs backgrounds but were unqualified as combatants in the virtual leadership war.
The point of all this is that any hook can be used to perpetuate the guerrilla leadership campaign. And we journalists are equally culpable for the hype, since we all play along by giving the combatants the protection of anonymity. It's easy to appear to be a brave soldier if you know the other side is firing dummy ammunition.