Song references, I love 'em.Recently, the possibility of Gordon Campbell permanently leaving the office of the Premier has finally been realized. Besides his plummeting personal popularity, and the well-being of his party, some "experts" claim that reaching a third-term is achieved by few and thus he should, if I may quote one editor "not tempt fate." It's true that few Premiers have reached three mandates in office. Because I enjoy making lists, the following is a list of British Columbia's first ministers who achieved three consecutive mandates to govern this great province.
-Sir Richard McBride (1903/1907/1909/1912)
-Duff Pattullo (1933/1937/1941)
-Wacky Bennett (1952/1953/1956/1960/1963/1966/1969)
-Bill Bennett (1975/1979/1983)
-Gordon Campbell (2001/2005/2009)
The point is this rant is to stress that the electorate doesn't wake up one morning and claim "You're time is up!" to the governing party. McBride resigned because of his poor fiscal planning; the same thing happened to Wacky Bennett along with broken election promises. Duff Pattullo wasn't a fan of coalitions and resigned in protest, and Bill Bennett resigned to allow the province to embrace Bill Vander Zalm. They all lost their position because of their own doing. The voters didn't escape the post-election hype that consumes all of us; they realized the errors in the governing party's ways and demanded a change.
Politicians don't lose their minds after twelve years in their office. Indeed what does happen though is an ego develops, and with that comes the belief that they are unstoppable. As we all know though, we have the lovely invention of recall to remind our leaders of where they can slip back to.
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