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here must be something eerily – even horrifyingly – familiar to Ontario Progressive Conservatives in their leader’s behaviour this weekend in London.
In last year’s election, in which he hugely underachieved, there was for the first time a fixed date. For John Tory, there were no surprises. He knew when the buses rolled. His strong suit, by all accounts, was the organization he’d learned in the backrooms and corporate suites. And still his campaign was, by his own acknowledgement, a four-alarm organizational disaster.
Over and over this weekend, Tory insisted he’d learned from that shambles, that preparedness, planning, clarity were his new watchwords. And what happens the first time he gets to prove it?
On Saturday, at the leadership review required after his loss to Premier Dalton McGuinty, Tory won the backing of 66.9 per cent of the 1,308 members who voted.
Astonishingly, when all reasonable expectation was that he would have prepared himself for any outcome and determined in his mind the support he needed to stay, Tory didn’t know what to make of it.
This despite the fact the support he received is the most famous reference point in the history of leadership reviews in Canada, spot on the infamous Joe Clark Threshold.
It was the 66.9 per cent that the former prime minister decided was not good enough to sustain his leadership of the federal party in 1983.
The easy calls are what to do if you get a lot or a little. Tory fell in that teeter-totter zone from which his decision could fairly have gone either way.
Still, one would have thought the first question he and his advisers had asked and answered was what to do if he got the Clark number.
Instead, looking shocked and dispirited, Tory said he needed time to think it over, left the convention hall and appeared headed, so far as his leadership went, for the exit.

thestar.com