Ivison: What really goes on inside the leader’s election campaign bus

John Ivison has been on the road with the federal leaders’ election campaign tours for his eighth go-round, and offers a behind the scenes look at life with the boys and girls on the bus. Watch the video or read the transcript. Every election campaign brings me back to Timothy Crouse’s classic account of the George McGovern U.S. presidential bid in 1972, The Boys on the Bus. Crouse said that what reporters know best, is not the voters but the tiny community of the press bus and plane, “a totally abnormal world that combines the incestuousness of New England hamlet, with the giddiness of a mid-ocean gala and the physical rigour of the Long March”. This is my eighth general election and it’s an accurate description. The past week on the Carney Express has involved a lot of hurry up and wait; being shepherded onto buses and planes: arriving like thieves in the night at some unremarkable hotel and leaving as the sun is coming up. “Did you enjoy your stay,” I was asked when checking out in Montreal. It was hard to say. We’d only been there for eight hours, six of them asleep. The days are a blur. On Sunday, after a rally in Nepean, we flew to Prince Edward Island, landing in the teeth of a cyclone. It was a huge relief not to end up as the eighth paragraph of a PM plane crash story. Next morning, we flew to Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and fell asleep in Quebec City. Once a day, we get a chance to question the candidate for 15 minutes, which forms the basis for the day’s news. Not everyone gets a question, so reporters huddle – not so much a conspiracy as colleagues cooperating to ensure everyone’s questions are covered. Most days, the candidate will take part in a ludicrous photo op requiring him to risk losing a digit on a saw at some factory or other. I bumped into Carney while he was having breakfast and he told me as Bank of England governor, he once had to drive a simulator around a racetrack at the Jaguar car factory. “Has anyone ever made it round,” he asked. “Lewis Hamilton almost did,” came the reply. The headline of the Governor crashing the economy into a wall wrote itself. Carney was much more comfortable playing road hockey with a bunch of 10 year olds, his only concern being that he might take out one of the kids. Elbows were down for the day. The rule on tour is never turn down the chance to eat, drink or visit a bathroom that isn’t moving. Exposure to normal voters and fresh air is strictly circumscribed. Access to too much alcohol and fried chicken is unbounded. The reporters seem younger and more respectful than the old school like my friend Richard “the Badger” Brennan, who was apt to climb on the bus and inquire: “Is that the smell of fresh brewed coffee or Liberal arrogance?” I’ve travelled on three campaigns covering Justin Trudeau, four with Stephen Harper; I was in the Rockies with Andrew Scheer and watched Jagmeet Singh longboat on the tarmac in Halifax and found quiet time to write a column on a bench in Kelowna. At the end of the 2004 campaign, I woke up in the Maritimes with the Paul Martin campaign. We travelled to Chester, NS, where Martin dipped his toe in the Atlantic. We were heading to Vancouver, with stops in Gatineau, Toronto and Winnipeg. We had our end of tour dinner at 2am on the West Coast, while Martin dipped his toes in the Pacific, and then we all hopped back on the plane to fly to Montreal. Reporters were left trying to figure out whether they could claim overtime for a 25-hour day. So why do we do it? There really is no substitute for watching the pretenders for the job of prime minister up close as they deal with the slings and arrows of a campaign. The leaders’ tour is still the focus for election campaigns and polling numbers tend to rise when the leader comes to town. Carney has shown remarkable energy for a 60-year-old. But then, he was up in the gym at 4.45 on the day we left Quebec City. This is the culmination of his life’s work and the adrenaline is flowing. That’s not always the case. Watching Stéphane Dion and Michael Ignatieff campaign as Liberal leaders in 2008 and 2011, it was obvious that it just wasn’t them and that they were living in bubbles of their own self-narrative. One Liberal told me that Ignatieff collapsed exhausted in the green room, after working a room full of supporters, only to be told by Justin Trudeau that he had to feed off the energy of the crowd, rather than be drained by it. Trudeau is a natural at the performative side of politics but it did not come easily to Ignatieff. Carney does not have the muscle memory of a seasoned campaigner, particularly in French. His speech in Laval on Tuesday was flat and people started to wander out long before the end. He needs to have a rousing closing rally in the GTA on Saturday, asking the question about who is best prepared to negotiate with Donald Trump next week, if he is going to seal the deal and win a majority. But there is a weightlessness to the Liberal campaign at the moment. It’s not scientific but there’s a whiff of pheromones around winning campaigns; they tend to strut like stray cats. The Liberals are trying their hardest not to strut. I’ll be back with a campaign post-mortem next week. Until then, thanks for watching.

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