Candidate Profiles: Ken Dryden

Continuing on in the series profiling the finalists, I now present my views on Ken Dryden.

Ken Dryden

Ken is actually the candidate I have had the longest talk with. I ran into him at SummerFling this year and had a long time chatting with him. I also had a fairly decent talk with him in his hospitality suite at the LPC(O) AGM last may. First off, he's probably the nicest candidate in the race. While some of the others may ask you what program you're in, he's the only one that actually seems to care. At LPC(O) he had a long chat with another UW Young Liberal member about law schools.

Having said that, he started off the race as a guy who could win by being "everyone's second choice". Unfortunately for him, he's not the first choice of too many people, and as it turned out, he's probably everyone's 4th choice. That would go well under some voting systems, but in our current one, it's not enough.

If this were 10 years ago, and Ken could speak french, he would make a much better candidate. He's a very bright man, and it's about time we had a former hockey player as a leader. As long as he learned enough to sidestep the "Habs vs. Leafs" question (well, at least to let the leaf fans off easy), that is.

For now, the only way I saw us electing Ken this time around was if we knew for sure we were going to lose the next election. Despite his long-windedness, I think he would have done well as leader of the opposition, as a good, respectable man to hold us until someone else came along in 3-4 years time. Not that I don't think he would have made a good PM, but I think he would be one of the people in this race who wouldn't get discouraged and bolt if we lost.

But he does have one thing going for him, it's that nobody doesn't like him. If there was a poll as to which candidates you would most want to sit around and talk with for a few hours, he would win it hands-down. And the Conservatives would look really cheap attacking the man who did so much for this country back in the 70s.

Convention Prediction:
I'm hoping that the Dryden crew comes in to convention dressed in full hockey garb, and they come out and have a good time. Dryden himself will be a big draw for whoever he ends up with, since everybody likes him. Maybe not as symbolic as Martha, and probably without the numbers of Volpe (coming tomorrow in our series), but I have a sense that a lot of his delegates will follow him.

Future:
What is Ken's future in the party? He's going to be too old to make another run at the leadership next time around, and his french won't improve enough to make him a serious candidate next time. If we can win again, he'd go well to go back into one of the social issue cabinet posts, so either back in childcare, or over to heritage, maybe. If we don't win, I could see him staying around for another term then retiring after that.