Party over for "King" Ralph, but what a ride!

By GERRY WARNER
Staff writer, Cranbrook Daily Townsman
April 7, 2006
It's the fall of a giant and soon we'll no longer have "King Ralph" to kick around anymore as the once-mighty ruler of the Kingdom of Alberta was ignominously shown the door last weekend by his own disgruntled party. And for Klein that must have been the unkindest cut of all -- being kicked out by your own boys. (And let's face it, in Alberta politics everyone is essentially a "boy," usually of the good 'ol boy variety, even the girls.)
In some ways it's almost a Shakesperian tragedy, especially for we in the media, because Ralph, if nothing else, was great copy (and forgive the use of "Ralph" here because some people on this planet project such a collosal image that one name suffices; like Cher, like Madonna, like Ralph).
How great a copy? Here's a few gems: March 2005 - "You would have to eat 10 billion meals of brains, spinalcords, ganglia, eyeballs and tonsils to get that disease (Mad Cow Disease). August 2000 - "Don't give me any of that shit." (Speaking to New BruswickPremier Bernard Lord and Newfoundland's Brian Tobin at a Premiers'Conference.) December 2001 - "I'm 59 and I drink too much from time to time."(Said after he arrived at a homeless shelter in Calgary and swore at the people there and threw money on the floor.)
The latter incident was especially amazing because any other politician who pulled off a stunt like that would have been finished. Yet Ralph came out of it smelling like a rose and his popularity soared. But that was then and this is now and as Ralph found out at the Tory convention last weekend he is no longer invincible.
Quite mortal, in fact.
How mortal? I lived in Alberta for five years when Klein first came to power and I recall driving into Calgary one day during an election campaign to be acosted by this huge billboard near the Red Mile, showing Ralph's rugged visage. At first glance, I thought it was a reproduction of a cartoon from one of the Calgary papers then I realized it was a blowup of a real photograph. His well-pickled nose really was that big, his face had all those well-worn lines and wrinkles, his collar was undone. But that was Ralph, a born politician and everyone loved him for that. On another occasion I was attending a gala dinner fund-raiser and showing of Phantom of the Opera at the Jubilee Theatre in Calgary when as luck would have it I was sitting close to the VIP table where Premier Ralph and his wife Colleen were ensconced. At one point in the evening Ralph got up and was headed for the men's room when he stopped at my table extended his hand and asked me how I was enjoying the evening. You have to understand that I'd never met King Ralph before and he didn't know me from Adam. But a born politician never lets an opportunity go by. A handshake, a wink and a few friendly words exchanged and I left that theatre ready to vote for Ralph as often as I could.
That's how the real pros operate.
I also had an oblique connection to another of Ralph's famous "incidents,"the time he gave an angry environmentalist the finger at an Edmonton press conference. I later met that environmentalist and got to know him through an organization we both belonged to. He liked to brag about how he provoked Ralph on that occasion but the joke was really on him because they made a poster out of the picture of Ralph and his raised digit and once again with mainstream voters in Wild Rose Country it made Ralph more popular than ever. But there comes a time when you reach into your bag of tricks and there's nothing there. And that's esentially where Ralph has been since the last election. And while he's been groping around trying to re-esablish his political vision the sharks have been circling. It reminds me of that famous Shakespeare line in Julius Caesar: "Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look." Of course, in the end it was Brutus, and not Cassius, that did Caesar in but it could have been any member of the mob around him and so it is with Klein. Former Klein cabinet minister Lyle Olberg made if clear a few months ago how he felt about the boss and was booted out of cabinet for saying it. Then Klein's political judgment faltered big time when he said any cabinet member interested in his job had to resign from cabinet while he dithered away retiring on his own schedule. Surely Klein should have realized that this made him an instant lame duck, but he didn't. Maybe hubris got in his way, but his party realized it and last weekend they cruelly showed him the door and made it plain they weren't going to give him very long to go through it.
And that's how a political dynasty ends. Not with a proverbial "bang" as T.S. Eliot so elegantly put it many years ago in "The Wasteland," but with a whimper. But hey Ralph. Sorry to see you go. You gave us a hell of a ride.
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