Before the calendar years ends, British Columbia Premier Gordon Campbell should call it quits.
Three wins for any politician is remarkable. Anyone that fortunate or skilled, or both, should quit while he is ahead. Don't tempt fate. Join the ranks of former premiers Frank McKenna, Peter Lougheed and Gary Doer, who won three or more and then folded their cards.
They were exceptions to the trend that politicians too often overstay their welcome. They tell themselves that big things remain to be done. They are surrounded by advisers who praise them. People near the leader are fearful of telling him the truth. The temptation beckons to try just one last time. It takes a strong man to see clearly that time for a change, fairly or otherwise, is a taproot of democracy.
Mr. Campbell is a stubborn chap who is embroiled in a noisy battle over his decision to harmonize the provincial sales tax and the federal goods and services tax. He's getting hammered because before the last election, Mr. Campbell said a harmonized GST was not on his agenda. This sense that he said one thing, got elected, and then did another is hurting him badly.
Harmonizing the GST, as three Atlantic provinces and Quebec have done, and Ontario is doing, reflects very good tax policy. It makes for a more competitive business environment. If revenues from the HST also lead to lower personal income taxes, the shift meets the test of taxing consumption more and lowering taxes on savings and investment, something almost all economists would hail.
Explaining such a shift, however, is tough politics. People see the new tax up front, but they don't yet feel the personal income tax relief. Maybe because Mr. Campbell pulled off the difficult feat of selling a carbon tax, he assumed he could do it again with the HST. If so, it would appear this fight is even more difficult.
Predictably, the NDP is against harmonization, as the party railed against the carbon tax. Less predictably is the implicit alliance the NDP has made with former Social Credit premier Bill Vander Zalm, of all people, who has come out of retirement to campaign against the HST. Populism of the left now meets old populism of the right. Who was it that said politics makes for strange bedfellows?
Subject to review by the province's electoral officer, HST opponents have apparently collected enough signatures demanding a plebiscite on the matter that the legislature will be asked to authorize one.
This law is the kind that contributed to California's demise as a political entity, where interest groups and shortsighted populism combined to gut the state's tax base. Plebiscitary democracy usually represents the triumph of short-term gain leading to long-term pain. The HST petition is a B.C. variation on the ruinous California example.
Perhaps Mr. Campbell has to stick around to see the HST through the plebiscite, win or lose, but he should pack it in before year's end. His critics will never say a nice word about him, but he can leave with many accomplishments to his credit. The last and perhaps greatest was the marvellous Winter Olympics, for which of course he got no credit politically, although he deserved it.
What to do next is always on a retiring politician's mind, especially one who, like Mr. Campbell, has spent a lifetime in politics as alderman, mayor of Vancouver, leader of the Opposition and Premier since 2001.
A distinguishing characteristic of his time in office has been systematically good relations with the federal government, regardless of which party governed in Ottawa. The benefits for his province have been considerable.
Although the federal Conservatives, total political animals that they are, might worry about appointing Mr. Campbell to anything in case his current unpopularity rubbed off on them, they should consider what he could do for Canada. If so, they might consider his demonstrated interest in Asia and appoint him ambassador to Japan, an appointment that would be appreciated by the Japanese because of his standing as a prominent provincial Premier who, unlike many of them, tried to take a national perspective.
Maybe no appointment will be forthcoming, and Mr. Campbell's renowned stubbornness will keep him in B.C. politics to fight for a fourth term. He'd be foolishly tempting fate to try.