During her 30-minute exclusive interview Friday with the Prince George Citizen, Premier Christy Clark tipped her hand on her campaign theme and strategy.
When answering a question about the Northern Gateway pipeline and her five conditions she had laid out before the Liberal government will support the proposal., she earnestly talked about laying down consistent requirements so business knows what it has to do if it wants to build more pipelines in B.C.
And then she riffed Barack Obama, earnestly saying the B.C. Liberals are the party willing to work "to get to yes," as opposed to the NDP, which she called "the party of no" and then pointed to projects like the Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion plan that the NDP has rejected before even getting details on the proposal.
The Obama ground game in last year's U.S. presidential election was about providing a stark choice for voters between him and his opponent Mitt Romney. As president, Obama has been all about working together, bipartisanship, blahblahblah, but as a candidate seeking his second term in the White House, Obama went to great lengths to show how little in common he has with the contemporary Republican vision for America.
I say "Yes, we can" and the other guy says "no, we can't," was Obama's core message.
Watch for Clark to use a similar refrain from now through May 14, portraying herself and the Liberals as "can-do" and the NDP and Adrian Dix as nothing more than excuses to say no.
With virtually every question we asked her, Clark framed it as a choice between how the Liberals under her leadership would deal with it and how the NDP with Dix at the helm would respond.
Gordon Campbell was kicked to the curb of history, only mentioned once as "my predecessor," and Shirley Bond and Mike Morris, who sat in on the interview, were held up as the only competent choice for Prince George and area voters.
Clark talked about how the governing party is "compared to perfection" when in government but how during the election, she will be compared to Dix and how she welcomes that comparison.
While "the choice" as a campaign strategy obviously worked well for Obama, it's a riskier path for Clark.
Obama consistently held a small lead in polls, unlike Clark who is calling herself an "underdog" and is behind Dix and the NDP by double digits in both provincial and regional polls. Asking voters to contrast her with Dix means she's asking those same voters to give Dix a closer look, too.
The risk is obvious - they might like what they see.
Obama made his strategy work by successfully pinning the most radical ideas from the fringes of the Republican Party to Romney. It helped having the video where Romney made his comment that 47 per cent of Americans are victims that see themselves as being entitled to government care without having to pay for it in income tax.
With less than six weeks until voting day, Clark has come nowhere close to successfully depicting Dix as a left-wing lunatic who will bankrupt the province and that's where she needs to box him if she has any hope of overcoming the NDP's lead. So far, Dix has easily maintained his profile as a mild-mannered, thoughtful policy wonk who won't do anything radical without a great deal of consideration and consultation.
The only hope then, for Clark and the Liberals, is to start throwing mud and hope more of it lands and sticks on Dix than what blows back in their face.
Clark clings to the hope that she just has to make voters doubt Dix just enough for them to pick the devil they know.
At this late stage, however, that rope of hope she's holding is thin, frayed and starting to unravel.
