The provincial NDP still haven't figured out Christy Clark.
A party filled with eggheads like Adrian Dix can't seem to understand what's obvious to most other people.
Clark is more than just a pretty face and she punches way above her weight class. Too many card-carrying NDP members, and particularly the brain trust of the party, seem to think that because she's photogenic that she can't possibly be smarter than they are.
How ironic is that?
The party that prides itself on its social sophistication can't wrap its head around the fact that a woman can be both attractive and smart.
It's deeper than that, of course.
It wasn't just Clark's megawatt smile and upbeat attitude that won her the provincial election. Unfortunately for the NDP, to admit to more than that means a long look in the mirror to find who's to blame for losing May's vote.
The fact that Dix still has his job as party leader shows that the party won't face reality.
On the campaign trail, Clark outhustled Dix, putting in more hours, more campaign stops, and more time connecting with voters. She was proud, fearless, and enthusiastic, traits Dix failed to even hint he possessed.
She had a simple message with a few key points and she stayed on that message with no deviation. No voter could say they had no idea with Clark and the Liberals stood for. Dix talked about change but couldn't, in the words of John F. Kennedy, "talk right down to Earth in a language everybody here can easily understand." He either refused to explain what his idea of change was, talked about it in a way nobody could figure out or demonstrated that change for him meant grinding the provincial economy to a halt. That's what many NDP-leaning voters took away from Dix's refusal to consider expanding the Kinder Morgan pipeline, before the company had even submitted a proposal to do so.
The NDP deserved to form government after 12 years and three terms of Liberal power that saw soaring government debt, costs and spending spiraling out of control, more deficit budgets than surplus ones, the B.C. Rail debacle, the HST fiasco and numerous other examples of mismanagement.
But just because the NDP deserved to form government doesn't mean they earned it. They campaigned as if the two were one and the same when they are clearly not.
Clark campaigned under the right premise - maybe the Liberals don't deserve to stay in power but the Liberals still are the best choice available to govern and they will work hard to earn and keep the electorate's trust.
That's in stark contast to the NDP campaign playbook, which boiled down to "just trust us," forgetting that trust is not given, it's earned.
It's not personal against Clark.
The NDP refused to take Gordon Campbell seriously for far too long, either. They had beat him once before and they thought his first win was a rejection of the NDP, instead of a real win. They didn't really respect his political skills until he beat them not twice but three times.
Clark will have to wipe the floor with Dix again in 2017 before the NDP start to realize she's the real deal and their current leader is not.
The NDP are under the mistaken impression that nice people like Carole James or smart guys like Dix make great premiers. They only have to look at their own history to find that Dave Barrett, Mike Harcourt and Glen Clark were more than just nice and smart, they were inspirational. They motivated their caucus, their party and voters to share in their vision for B.C.
Clark has all three of those attributes but Dix is missing that last one and a leader who can't inspire is nothing more than an administrator.
She's the premier and now she has her own seat in the legislature. And we hope she'll bring the same drive and commitment that she demonstrated on the campaign trail to the more difficult task of governing.
If she does and if the NDP doesn't find the right leader to counter her, their days in exile from power will continue long past 2017.
