John Filion

John Filion's "The Only Average Guy" often made me shake my head in disbelief, howl in rage, and sometimes even laugh very hard. I can say a lot of things about this book (and I will) but the most pleasurable part of it (and I will get to its shortcomings) is that it made me think. Plenty.

Filion's premise is that the mayoralty was a bridge too far for Rob Ford. I would add that anything was possible for Rob Ford, except adjusting to reality.

For me the point of departure are the Ford brothers, what we have in common and what makes them different.

For example, like Rob Ford I too fell in love with football as a youth. But it ended for me, I think, about the time puberty hit. With Rob Ford the passion never died.

Like Doug Ford, I run an independent business. In my case, I started mine from scratch. Doug took over his Dad's business. Fair enough. But to call on that experience as authority for slamming government is, I think, simplistic.

But unlike both of these dudes, I've actually worked in government. Municipal. Provincial. Federal. Five different agencies at last count. So when these guys start to blather on about government waste, I had a front row seat. Yes, government wastes money. I've seen it. And pledging to reduce waste in government is an honourable pursuit. But business also wastes resources. I've seen that, too, in my own business and in other people's businesses, too.

Waste is inevitable when nothing is a given. You make mistakes, you learn by your mistakes (sometimes). Think Target Canada. Think about the waste when the managers of Enron blew up the company by cheating and getting caught. Or Global Crossing. Or Worldcom. It happens in smaller much less dramatic ways too, unpublicized.

In government, ordinary people make laws and ask other ordinary people to carry them out, but there is rarely a blueprint on how to get things right. It takes time. And times change. Things that worked well once are not necessarily the right thing for later on. And indeed sometimes the laws end up being a waste of everybody's time.

In the case of Canadian governments, WE MADE THOSE LAWS. All politicians, left and right, claim to be reformers of some sort. For the Fords to waltz into municipal government and claim that they were going to change things...yeah, that made them typical politicians. Nothing new. There are a lot of laws in place the day they walked in the door. Already. You gonna change the laws? Okay. But you gonna be here until the cows come home, buddy, cause THERE'S A WHOLE MESS OF LAWS!!!!

And you don't start out by breaking the law.

Rob Ford didn't appreciate that when he became a councillor and mayor he was sworn to uphold those laws. That is a big responsibility. First uphold, later fix.

Rob Ford also didn't appreciate how many judgements he would be called upon to make, and how much information would crowd his life as mayor. For a person of his average intelligence, it must have been crushing.

Unlike the Fords, I have also been a reporter for a daily newspaper, so I can see things from the other side when the Fords claim that the Toronto Star or whomever has it in for them. In this very period while the media are raking Rob Ford over the coals the media are fighting for their livelihood, too. Online news is eating their lunch. Are the media in a frenzy? You bet! HuffPo, Gawker, The Daily Beast, BuzzFeed, and all those other online services are destroying the press.

How the "right" took the Fords lead in trying dismantle municipal programs is worth a better discussion than is offered in this book. I didn't notice any big improvements in my commercial taxes while they were in office. Nor did I see any big improvements to inequities in the municipal tax system, but this may be rooted in provincial laws more so than municipal. This is one part of the story that isn't finished.

The Ford brothers are strange, and their family stranger yet but not so strange that one can't see the hand of an alcoholic father behind the bullying, the bragging, and the holier-than-thou attitude. Nowhere in the book does Filion say it but it is certainly there between the lines.

What else could explain the father's inability to show affection to his children? Maybe he was just a quiet kind of guy. Not. He was loud. He bragged about how poor he was as a youth and was able to build a successful company. And he seems to have complained an awful lot about government employees making a living for doing nothing.

My father also grew up in the Depression. He was born in 1919. Ford's father, by comparison, was born in 1933 and largely missed the Depression as a youngster. My father didn't swear. He didn't drink. He certainly never bullied people. He was a very successful businessman as well. Like Ford Sr. he also ran for public office.

But I never heard him bitch and moan about how easy everybody else had it in comparison. My dad greased cars in his uncle's garage. He hawked hotdogs at the Toronto Maple Leafs baseball games, and he sold insurance door-to-door.

Like Ford Sr. he also got help from others in the early days of his business but he never tried to hide it.

I think Ford Sr. had more going on in his life. Things we don't hear about, not in this book.

And these are some of the things I would have liked to know which helped Rob Ford become obese, become an alcoholic, druggy, a wife-beater, and from what I tell, a weird football coach.

The bigotry, the lying, the substance abuse, the bad language, the resentment, and above all the anger. While this book does a good job bringing these aspects of Rob Ford's personality to the forefront, it does not fill in the whys. Neither Rob nor Doug Ford had much reason to be angry with anybody before they got into politics.

Except maybe their sister's lousy choice of husbands.

Another weakness in this book are the 10 missing years between when Rob left Carelton University in 1990 -- he quit university after one year, we are told, ostensibly because he didn't make the football team -- and when he was first elected to office. Supposedly he worked at his father's business with Doug. He was a salesman. Was he a good salesman? Did he work hard? What kind of an organization was his company Deco like to work for in those days? How does somebody as angry and bitter as Doug build a big company? In this book we simply don't find out.

From the absence of any management skills in government, we can assume that Rob never learned a day of management skills in his life, unless you count running a high school football team management experience. hey, it could be. Another reason to ask yourself why Rob Ford wanted to be Mayor of Toronto, easily one of the weakest executive jobs in Canada.

Mayor Rob leaned on city employees to do his personal tasks. He drank alcohol far beyond moderation in his office and drove while intoxicated. He bullied and used offensive language to his staff. Whether he liked to believe it or not, he was a corrupt politician, breaking laws and the morays of the office he held. Did he take large sums from the public treasury? I doubt it.

He was also a zero as an organization man. And whether you like it or not, big, complex organizations run things today. You take the oath of office and, buddy, it's your organization whether you like it or not. I've learned that running my organization. I wonder if Doug learned that.

It would have been nice if Filion had filled in some of the goings on behind doors with city councillors with the personalities who clashed with Ford. He does a pretty good job on the personalities within Ford's team.

Contrary to how the Fords behaved in office, you can be but don't need to be a prick to be an effective politician any more than you need to be a prick to be a good businessman. (Some of the greatest businessmen and politicians, however, were undeniably pricks.) It helps to be sharp, and it helps to be a bit ruthless when you need to be.

There is another lesson in this book for all of us: Ford Nation isn't going away. It's just waiting for the next demagogue to spring forth.

In this book, John Filion doesn't come to praise Caesar. He comes to bury Caesar. There is some attempt to journalistic objectivity here, but let's face it: Rob Ford was his opponent on Toronto City Council. It was fun for this reader to see how one opponent saw him, but a little unsatisfying.

I have read some great biographies of businessmen and politicians including Lyndon Johnson, John Rockefeller, Cornelius Vanderbilt, the Rothchilds, Andrew Carnegie,
Edmund Burke to name but a few.

Filion fills in some great pieces of the story beyond the news reports. We are still waiting for an account of the Fords with perspective and context. It's a great story and far from over.… (altro)