At Premier Brad Wall's first caucus meeting with his massive 49-member Sask. Party majority, he emphasized the need for humility.
This should not be surprising.
Wall has, at least to date, remained humble. He is also very politically smart. Even if it were not already his natural inclination to stay humble, he would certainly understand that this is the message that must resonate.
But as history has taught us, the hardest part of governance is staying humble into a government's second term and beyond. It's especially hard with a massive majority and will undoubtedly be the Wall government's biggest challenge over the next four years.
Consider how arrogance plagued every one of the last few governments we've had in Saskatchewan.
One might think that the exception to this rule would have been the Roy Romanow government, first elected in the 1991 and tasked with cleaning up the financial disaster left behind by the Grant Devine Progressive Conservatives. Undoubtedly, the measures the Romanow NDP had to implement that included raising taxes, cutting back on highway repairs and closing 52 rural hospitals were grounds for humility.
But while the Romanow NDP may have been humbler in its first term, that government that was re-elected with a sizeable majority in 1995 quickly developed political cockiness. With the opposition transforming from the Progressive Conservatives to the Liberals to the Saskatchewan Party in the 1990s, there was a sense of invincibility in NDP ranks.
Romanow's near political death experience in 1999 took some of the starch out of the NDP, but the very fact that his government morphed into a "coalition" government with the Liberals restored some of that cockiness. The same could be said for Lorne Calvert's narrow 2003 victory, an election win that wasn't suppose to happen and one that gave the NDP an unusual fourth straight term.
The problem with the Devine's PCs nearly three decades ago is that there never was enough humility in their ranks after its record 56-seat win in 1982. And even the 1986 win in which the PCs actually got less votes than the NDP was hardly a humbling event. Rather, the PCs seemed to view it as carte blanche to continue governing in their big spending, deficit manner.
But when you think back, the PCs were certainly no more arrogant than the 1970s NDP that also benefited from opposition splits and transition.
The problem right now is that no Saskatchewan government has likely ever had as much reason to be cocky as the current Sask. Party administration.
Besides its massive majority, it's 64 per cent of the popular vote is a record. And as we discussed in this space last week, the massive majority victories of all but two of its members, some of them with wins gusting to the high 70-per-cent and 80-per-cent level, means than virtually no government MLAs are feeling very threatened. Moreover, about half the caucus will have 15 years experience or more by the end of this term, meaning that it may be even harder for them to draw on the humility of being a new MLA.
The very nature of large governments means those selected to cabinet begin to think they are the cream of the crop and those left to the backbenchers sometimes become arrogant to deflect from their own short-comings.
Also, this Sask. Party win forced the NDP to take a major step backwards. The decline, and perhaps demise, of the once-natural governing party is a major reason for arrogance.
Finally, the strong economy already has some in the Sask. Party convinced this is result of their own genius rather that good fortune.
Remaining humble may now be the Wall government's greatest challenge.
