Mister dress-up

Sunday, December 01, 2002

Mister dress-up

Here's the perception: Ralph Klein is Canada's leading neo-conservative revolutionary, whose small-government and free-market policies have brought unparalleled prosperity to Alberta. Now here's the reality.

Andrew Nikiforuk

Last year I turned on my television set, along with lots of other Albertans, to watch the provincial election results. Everyone knew Ralph Klein would handily win a third term because Albertans are like buffalo; they don't like changing political direction very often. In fact they have only done so three times in the last century. Not surprisingly, the premier had spent much of the day drinking red wine in anticipation of another wild Tory stampede.

Two hours after the polls closed Klein had good reason to pour himself another glass: the electorate gave him 62% of the popular vote and 74 out of 83 seats. The result bettered his 1997 victory margin by 11% and his first provincial bid in 1993 by nearly 17%. When the jubilant premier made his victory speech, his voice drawled with the weight of alcohol. Then the blue-collar boy whom commentators have dubbed "Canada's Reagan" or "The Miracle on the Prairie" made an immodest declaration: "Welcome to Ralph's World."

Klein, of course, was referring to the province's giddy economic state. Alberta boasts the lowest taxes, highest resource revenue and best income levels of any province. Canada's future oil supply, the oilsands, is cooking with $60-billion worth of investment and an influx of workers from Newfoundland and Saskatchewan. In Calgary, new subdivisions are sprawling over the foothills like an industrial oil spill. Traffic jams are no longer just a Toronto headache. In Ralph's World everybody seems to have one hand on the wheel of a new SUV and the other on a cellphone. The cellphones are almost always ringing.

As Ralph's World approaches its 10th anniversary this month I thought it was time for a blunt assessment of this quintessential '90s politician. Love him or hate him, Klein has led Alberta and the nation itself through some mighty changes. He helped to make small government, lower taxes, accountability, decentralization, balanced budgets and deregulation all the rage in statist middle-class Canada. Why, one brewery gambled that it could capitalize on his popularity by naming a beer after him: the Kleineken.

But is Klein, the TV-journalist-turned-master-political-communicator, truly the neo-conservative economic hero he makes himself out to be? Or is he just another old-fashioned politician conveniently wed to Lady Luck and the status quo? The facts are sobering: He's no neo-con. Klein talks a good talk but hasn't yet practised a true conservative walk. Nor is Alberta the decentralized, democratic and accountable paradise it claims to be. And if there is a vision for tomorrow, something any self-respecting conservative would deem a necessity, Klein hasn't unveiled it yet.

MYTH #1: IN RALPH'S WORLD, GOVERNMENT SPENDING HAS BEEN CUT WAY BACK

Let's begin this assessment of the Klein decade with a look at his chief claim to fame: as commander of Alberta's famous deficit-and-debt blitzkrieg in the early '90s. When Klein won the Tory leadership race in 1992, Alberta's financial house, like that of most governments in the country, was teetering, primarily because Peter Lougheed, like every '80s premier, had built big, leaving his successor, Don Getty, deep in the red. Though Getty started to downsize, he didn't advertise the fact. Back then, the province had a $3-billion annual deficit and annual debt payments totalling $1 billion, thanks mostly to a long history of failed economic-diversification schemes and industrial-development subsidies that totalled more than $35 billion. The oil and gas industry was also in one of its periodic slumps.

When Klein took over, he posted an "under new management" sign and got right to work. He sold budget cuts, primarily in education and health, to Albertans by comparing the province's fiscal state to that of an indebted family. To help explain the situation, Klein created the stereotypical Al, an oil executive, and his wife, Berta. The couple, said the premier on TV, were living higher than their means. As was Alberta. To help reduce that $3-billion annual deficit, Klein cut funding for kindergarten by half, reduced dental and vision programs for seniors and started slashing jobs, a process that would eventually see 10,000 employees leave the public sector. He also sold off liquor stores and public registries, privatized the management of public parks and killed an obscenely lucrative MLA pension scheme that had outraged the public. In the end he chopped overall government-program spending by 30% over a six-year period. In real terms Klein cut more government than either Mike Harris in Ontario or Gordon Campbell in British Columbia.

Jim Gray, a key Klein supporter and the former chairman of the oil company Canadian Hunter, calls it Klein's finest hour. "The thing that Klein did right -- and I know this sounds cruel and hard -- was to act quickly and decisively." The oilman believes that speed "is the only way to institute change in a fat and complacent society. There is a need for periodic crises in a society like ours."

Most Albertans would reluctantly agree with Gray's assessment. Although many might question the ad hoc sloppiness of how the budget reductions were implemented (even Gray concedes many mistakes were made), most voters generally got what they wanted: a balanced budget, reduced debt and a smaller government. In 1994 the province spent 11 cents of every dollar on debt servicing; now it only pays three cents. "That's their greatest success," says John Carpay of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. "It was a remarkable achievement."

But how much of the achievement was due to Klein's success as a government-tamer? And how much of it was due rising petro prices and production, which poured billions of extra dollars into provincial coffers? When Klein took over in 1992, Alberta hobbled by with an average of $2.2 billion in oil and gas royalties, which are the rent companies pay to the government for the right to exploit public resources. But Klein has been blessed with a resource bonanza that has contributed an average of more than $3.5 billion a year. By 2001, it gave his government a spectacular $8-billion windfall ($7 billion from natural gas, $1 billion from oil). At the same time, a roaring economy boosted corporate income tax revenue from $600 million in 1993 to $1.3 billion in 1997.

As an increasing number of Tories now admit, just about any fool could balance the budget with that kind of spare change. "Klein hit a roll on oil and gas prices," admits Gray. And as soon as the deficit war ended, "Ralph the Knife" turned into Ralph the spender. Flush with cash, Klein began throwing money at problems associated with the demands of rapid economic growth (everything from congested roads to inadequate water services). In the last six years he has increased government program spending by 52%, or more than any other Canadian government. Teachers, MLAs, doctors and nurses all got double-digit pay raises. Although program spending has yet to top the highs of the Getty regime ($7,400 per person), it now hovers around $6,000 (it was at $5,600 during the height of the deficit fight). And if that wasn't enough to make hard-core neo-cons blanch, Klein has recently done three other things that don't square with his carefully cultivated image as a right-wing economic hero: he increased the number of cabinet ministers (from 17 to 24, giving Alberta the distinction of having the third-largest cabinet in Canada); he restored that generous MLA pension plan (it will give Klein a half-million-dollar severance payment upon retirement); and, after loudly promising that the "only way taxes will go is down," Klein increased "sin" taxes last year by $724 million.

His revolution is "beginning to look like an episode, not a transformation," notes Roger Gibbins, president of the Calgary-based Canada West Foundation (CWF), an independent think-tank. "He is drifting back to a hodgepodge style of government without much cohesion or focus." Carpay and other fiscal conservatives now refer to Klein's born-again spending habits as "My Big Fat Alberta government."

MYTH #2: IN RALPH'S WORLD, THE ECONOMY IS NOT AS DEPENDENT ON THE OIL AND GAS INDUSTRY

In the election of 1992, one of Klein's first promises was to take what he called "one of the least stable regional economies in Canada" and make it more resilient to busts and booms. The instability, of course, stems from the province's privileged oil and gas endowment. Depending on world energy prices, the government can expect natural-resource revenue to pay anywhere between 15% and 40% of the government's bills. These wild fluctuations typically give Albertans scary budgets: either a splurge or a purge. But after 10 years in office, Klein is still splurging or purging. Following record windfalls in 2001, Klein still couldn't balance the budget the following year and abruptly cancelled $1.2 billion in even more spending, only to finally record a $722-million surplus.

Nor is the economy more diversified. According to a study by CWF, international exports (that's mostly oil and gas) have doubled in value from 15% of the province's gross domestic product in 1981 to 38% today. At the same time, inter-provincial trade has been in steady decline -- right along with the province's manufacturing sector. So Alberta is not only exporting more energy southward, but has become increasingly tied to American economic binges and hangovers as well.

Robert Mansell, a University of Calgary economist, has long argued that Albertans and their governments often get blindsided by the irrational exuberance of booms. As a consequence they get caught in "a staple trap," one in which they recognize the need to diversify during a boom only to discover "a booming resource sector will tend to result in an economy even more specialized in, and dependent on, that sector." Klein has cemented this deadly matrix.

MYTH #3: IN RALPH'S WORLD, GOVERNMENT HAS GOTTEN OUT OF THE BUSINESS OF BEING IN BUSINESS

Throughout the 1990s a neo-conservative touchstone was -- as it still is -- an abiding faith in free markets. But when it comes to Big Oil and Gas or electricity deregulation, Klein continues to mess with the market through subsidies to both private enterprise and private individuals.

At the same time Klein cut back spending on schools and hospitals in the early '90s, he was giving the oil and gas industry an annual $300-million tax break, or royalty holiday. It's been a hard habit to break. Last year the province kept on granting the industry subsidies, this time to the tune of $314 million. In addition, the Klein government has refused to disclose to the auditor general why these subsidies are still necessary in an era of high energy prices. The province also gives the oil and gas industry an annual $640-million subsidy in free water allocations.

In the case of the province's shoddily designed electricity-deregulation scheme, Klein, who readily admitted he didn't understand the concept, forked out $4 billion in power and natural-gas rebates to prevent a political rebellion among consumers just before the 2001 election. It was the largest intervention in the private sector since the Lougheed era.

MYTH #4: IN RALPH'S WORLD, ALBERTA IS SAVING FOR A RAINY DAY

Unlike Lougheed, Klein has made no provision for the day when resource revenues will start to decline. In fact, he has actually lowered the royalties, or rent, corporations pay on publically owned oil and gas resources. In 1996 his government even introduced a new generic royalty scheme for the oilsands that lowered public income from $2.95 a barrel to 98¢ a barrel, even though Albertans have invested nearly $1 billion in new oilsands technologies.

In contrast to Ralph's World, Norway has taken advantage of its resource windfall. Though both jurisdictions have roughly the same amount of oil and gas, similar population sizes (Norway has around four million people to Alberta's three million) and booming economies, Norway expects a net cash flow of $32 billion from North Sea oil and gas production this year while Alberta expects just $5.7 billion.

The difference is striking. So is the contrast between how much each government has salted away for the day the wells run dry. Right now, Norway's Petroleum Fund is worth $54 billion. Alberta Heritage Fund was capped at $12 billion. It then lost about another $1 billion of that in bad investments. So left-leaning Norway, which the Fraser Institute calls "the most debt-free country on the planet" because of its balanced budget and lack of any accumulated debt, is doing what any good neo-conservative would espouse: remembering that government's role includes ensuring that future generations are not unduly burdened by the actions, or inactions, of the present. "The Norwegian benchmark," concludes Edmonton economist and consultant Mark Anielski somewhat wistfully, "serves as an important reminder that Alberta might do more with its advantages."

MYTH #5: IN RALPH'S WORLD, GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY HAS INCREASED SIGNIFICANTLY

Throughout the 1990s, in speeches to such organizations as the National Citizens' Coalition and the Fraser Institute, Klein noted that Canadian governments had lost trust and credibility "because they over-promised and under-delivered." To arrest that trend in Ralph's World, the Klein government adopted legislation that demanded regular reporting, performance measurements, business plans and audited financial statements from government departments. As a result Alberta now leads the rest of the country in reporting how government walks its talk. It even publishes an annual report called Measuring Up.

But, as the auditor general observed last year, several ministries have had trouble measuring their walk, let alone improving it. Health and Wellness, for example, often spends money before it ever writes a business plan. It also hasn't reported very faithfully on the cost and quality of health services. Over at Alberta Finance, the auditor found glaring holes in its accountability framework, pointing out, for instance, that the government has been incredibly lax in its accounting for oil and gas revenues. At one time the province's Production Audit Group (PAG) kept excellent data on how much oil and gas was being produced and by whom. Without this data Alberta can't accurately calculate royalties or the rate of resource depletion, or adequately plan for the future. But, according to the auditor general's 2001 report, PAG has been leaderless since 1999, and due to cutbacks it has only three staff members left. Industry, therefore, mostly audits itself and, says the auditor, "there does not appear to be a formal strategy to guide the Group and to form the basis for accountable reporting." What's more, the U.S. Justice Department recently highlighted the importance of rigorous accounting. In a series of court actions, it showed that oil and gas companies had routinely shorted American taxpayers by US$100 million a year (10% of an annual US$1-billion rent) by employing a variety of price-fixing and record-fiddling games.

Forgone revenues, noted the auditor, "are paid for by higher taxes on other individuals and organizations or by reduced services." The Ministry for Resource Development, the province's most powerful department, has also been evasive. Since 1997 it has changed its performance measures so often (the average measure lasts just 1.7 years) that year-over-year comparisons are difficult if not impossible and no one, let alone the auditor, could measure its effectiveness.

Near the end of his 2001 report the auditor summed up the status of past recommendations and Klein's record on accountability. It wasn't inspiring. In 1994 the percentage of recommendations accepted and acted on stood at 80%. By 1999 it had fallen to 20%.

MYTH #6: IN RALPH'S WORD, GOVERNMENT IS TAKING A LOT LESS MONEY FROM ITS CITIZENS

Tax relief is a neo-conservative clarion call, and in many respects Klein has let people keep more of their own money, though citizens earning between $30,000 and $60,000, according to Alberta Finance, pay more in taxes proportionately than either the poor or the rich. In other words, the province is milking the middle class and letting the rich pay less -- an odd policy for an avowed populist.

Still, Alberta has no sales tax, and the recent move toward a flat tax (which removed $1.1 billion from government revenues in 2001) plus a cut in corporate taxes (which will remove another $1 billion by 2004) gives Alberta one of the lowest tax rates in the country. This distinction, however, is not as impressive as it looks because Klein has been busily finding new ways of grabbing back what it has given away. In Ralph's World taxes often come in the guise of user fees and gambling. In some cases Klein has gone so far as to download taxing authority onto new levels of government.

Although user fees are a handy way to promote the prudent use of public services, Klein has overused this revenue-producing tool. In 1994 alone, he introduced 80 measures that either introduced new user fees or raised old ones. Together, they hauled in $275 million (or nearly triple the revenue previously brought in). User fees now accompany almost every government service, and most continue to shoot up. Albertans, for instance, recently got hit with a 30% rise in health-care premiums; and Calgarians with children enrolled in the public school system now pay out more than $1,000 for educational necessities such as books. Another example: in the last 10 years university tuition fees have gone up 160%, or more than those of any other province. In addition, the government recently passed an order-in-council giving regional health authorities the right to issue a "food-entertainment permit" -- a $100 fee that is supposed to help government cover the cost of food inspections but is also applied to tanning salons that sell only energy bars. John Carpay of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation calls such initiatives "just another tax disguised as something else."

But Klein's biggest tax-by-another-name innovation has been in the gambling business. After repeatedly declaring tax increases to be a "cowardly way" of balancing budgets, Klein looked to games of chance to help fund his government. By so doing he caught the attention of other cash-starved provincial governments, all of which followed his lead in transforming a deviant behaviour with high social costs into a cash cow, one that could be milked to pay for such things as public schools and debt servicing from coast to coast.

Klein, an inveterate gambler himself, hit the jackpot with his move into gaming. By 1997 his booming new franchise, which included video lottery terminals (VLTs), casinos and lotteries, was pulling in more, $698 million annually, or nearly $200 million more than oil royalties. Gaming dollars now total $1.2 billion a year and make up 4% of the government's revenue, putting Alberta alongside Nova Scotia, Saskatchewan and Newfoundland as the provinces most dependent on gambling revenue to balance the books. In Alberta one of the ministers in Klein's oversized cabinet is the Orwellian-sounding Minister of Gaming.

But many social conservatives are not at all pleased with what gambling has done to Alberta. They point out that even though it has fewer VLTs than most other provinces, its 6,000 machines pulled in more cash ($525 million, or $243 per adult) than Quebec's 15,000 machines last year. Another fact particularly troubles them. The average Alberta household, according to the Canada West Foundation, now spends more on gambling than it does on health care, clothing or recreation. What's more, according to a report by the Pembina Institute, an estimated 112,000 problem gamblers accounted for 17% of the province's gambling revenue ($857 million) in 1999 alone.

Whenever community leaders such as Frederick Henry of Calgary challenge the morality of gaming, Klein has lost his cool. After Bishop Henry encouraged Catholics to challenge the proliferation of VLTs, calling them a tax on the poor, Klein responded by saying that religious groups were hypocrites for accepting government funds generated by gambling addicts. In an irate letter to members of a church in his own riding, St. Stephen's Ukrainian Catholic, Klein enclosed a $80,000 cheque with the inscription: "If it bothers your conscience, you can always send it back."

Much to Klein's chagrin the church voted to do just that. "The premier overreacted and made a mistake," recalls the 60-year-old bishop. After 28 religious and community groups raised an 80,000-name petition to force a municipal plebiscite on VLTs in 1998, the government went on the offensive. "They sent in their spin doctors and framed it as a choice issue. They squeaked out a victory," notes Henry. "But it was the closest Mr. Klein ever got to a massive political insult."

It was also an example of the premier's inconsistency. He says he favours decentralization and local choice, but when some communities talked about getting rid of gambling, the government did everything it could to discourage citizens from limiting its revenue flow.

MYTH #7: IN RALPH'S WORLD, DECENTRALIZATION HAS BROUGHT ABOUT HUGE NEW COST SAVINGS AND GREATER EFFICIENCY

In a 1994 speech to the National Citizens' Coalition, the avuncular premier claimed too much administration in education was diverting dollars from the classroom while too much administration in health care was diverting dollars from community-based health care. He promised to reinvent and restructure government in order to give more power to patients and parents.

But what Klein delivered was a lot of noisy restructuring that emphasized doing more with less rather than doing something different or more democratic or more responsive to consumers. Take education, for example: Alberta again started a national trend by consolidating its school boards, from 140 to 60. The boards in turn closed scores of rural schools, built bigger institutions and increased class sizes. But bigger is not necessarily better in education: research consistently shows that consolidation neither saves money nor produces better academic results.

Klein's only decentralization initiative -- charter schools, or independent public schools run by communities or parents -- has been restricted to 15 schools and has no political champion in the government. "Alberta has a veneer of accountability and decentralization about it," says Dennis Lapierre, a former school principal and parent advocate. "But scratch the surface and you find a system as chaotic and disorderly as any provincial school system."

Health care has experienced a similar fate. Kevin Taft, one of the country's most respected health-care policy analysts, who once advised the Tories and is now a Liberal MLA, gives Klein full marks for trying to reduce a complicated network of 200 hospital boards into 16 regional health authorities. (All three of the other Western provinces copied this model.) The idea, of course, was to make the system leaner, less fragmented and more accountable. And it has produced some tangible benefits: physicians who give flu vaccines now actually work with physicians who, say, treat the flu -- something that simply didn't happen in the old way of doing things.

But has the consolidation saved money? No. Even Klein admits that. Nor has it necessarily improved local responsiveness or public input. "We used to have a central ministry that controlled policy and the boards," explains Taft. "Now we have 16 regional administrations bigger than the ministry -- 16 empires and no one to control them."

Having never conducted a public review that examined the effectiveness of regionalization, the Klein government now wants to consolidate again by reducing the number of regional health authorities (RHAs) from 16 to just five or seven. It may also discontinue the practice of having the public elect two-thirds of the members serving on RHAs. Both actions will reduce the amount of local input into health-care decision-making, which was one of the very rationales for health-care reform in the first place.

MYTH #8: IN RALPH'S WORLD, GOVERNMENT IS MORE DEMOCRATIC, OPEN AND RESPONSIVE TO THE GRASS ROOTS

You might think that surely in Alberta, the province that gave birth to the conservative, grassroots-driven Reform Party, a freewheeling and open democracy would be thriving. Not the case. Democracy has fared poorly under Klein. In the last election only 53% of the citizenry voted, one of the lowest turnouts in the province's history. Public debate isn't overly welcome in Ralph's World, either. Last year, the legislature sat for only 36 days, a record even the Canadian Senate surpassed (84 days).

Another anti-democratic Klein habit is to invoke closure to halt legislative debate. Between 1993 and 2000 the government used it 30 times, more than any other administration in Alberta's history. Lougheed, who ruled the province for 14 years with an even greater popular majority than Klein, employed the measure only once. This reliance on closure makes the government less accountable and more secretive, a state of affairs also illustrated by the Klein regime's stonewalling techniques concerning freedom-of-information requests. Earlier this year, for instance, the opposition Liberal party launched an FOI request to try to discover the extent of Enron's involvement in Alberta's electricity deregulation. Rather than open its file in the democratic spirit of transparent governance, the government subjects FOI-requesters to huge user fees. In the case of the Liberals' Enron search, the bill came to $15,287.54. (Alberta Energy, by the way, still has a link to Enron on its website.)

Nor has Klein taken to grassroots input. Since 1994 Tory MLAs have introduced private members' bills to give Albertans the right to vote in provincial referenda on four separate occasions. But each time Klein killed the legislation. "He is an elitist and doesn't want grassroots people being able to put forward their issues," notes Carpay. "This government gets an F as in Frank for direct democracy."

But the greatest Soviet-like mindset has occurred in the premier's own office. In the '70s the government created the Public Affairs Bureau (PAB) to write more professional communiqués. Before Klein came to power a cabinet minister oversaw the bureau. But the master of sound bites quickly changed that. Klein now directly controls PAB, with its $10-million budget and a staff of close to 300 people. The bureau's job is to market government decisions to what Klein calls "the customers."

Every department of the Alberta government now has a PAB equivalent, and no information is released without PAB's approval. Within government, PAB is cynically known as the Ministry of Truth. "It is an empire dedicated to telling only one story -- the facts according to Ralph Klein," writes Don Martin in his biography, King Ralph. "And as the minister in charge, all Klein aims to sell is the truth, the selective truth and nothing but his truth -- so help him Ralph." PAB has reduced political reporting in the province to the "Ralph Says" beat.

So Ralph's World is not always what it seems. It presents the happy illusion that deficit reduction restored Alberta's fiscal health when, in fact, a huge increase in oil and gas revenue helped balance the books. Accountability and decentralization, key goals of the Klein revolution, are little more than empty rhetoric. Electricity deregulation, another goal, promised much but forced massive government intervention in the marketplace. As the C.D. Howe Institute concluded last year, deregulation also gave "the province the dubious distinction of jumping from one of the lowest to the highest electricity rates in the country...it has still not achieved the competitive market that planners envisioned."

While visible income taxes have gone down, user fees and gambling revenues have gone up. After six years of fiscal restraint, Klein started spending again without much vision or planning. Nothing has been saved for tomorrow while subsidies to industry go unchallenged. Last, but not least, the Public Affairs Bureau makes sure that Albertans mostly hear Ralph's Word in Ralph's World.

Part of the problem here is that Ralph Klein is no Peter Lougheed. For all his big-spending habits, Lougheed, a blueblood patrician of a leader, at least had a clear vision for the province: it included higher royalties, a rainy-day fund for the future, economic diversification and a home for some of the world's best medical research. Klein, on the other hand, the poor boy from a broken home in north Calgary, hasn't articulated much vision at all. Lougheed's comfortable upbringing allowed him to scale mountains and challenge the powerful. Klein's tumultuous childhood, which included alcoholic parents and an abusive stepfather, has kept him in the valleys, looking up to the wealthy and influential. Unlike Lougheed, the overachiever, Klein's personal style is limited to coping, scraping by and managing from one crisis to the next. "It's a personal style that fits a premier fighting deficits and debt," says Roger Gibbins of the Canada West Foundation.

Just what Klein might do next is anyone's guess. His ability to change with the times is legendary. He was, after all, one of those big-spending politicians during the '80s when he served as Calgary's mayor. But he now seems to be on autopilot, listless and with no flight plan. After bullying a number of homeless men inside an Edmonton shelter last year he had an Oprah Winfrey moment and stopped drinking. He may stay in politics to celebrate the province's 100th anniversary (2005) or he may take advantage of that restored MLA pension and its half-million-dollar severence payout and go fishing.

Jim Gray, who meets with Klein from time to time, believes the premier's best work is yet to come: "Klein is still in the kitchen cooking up a meal. He's not finished yet." Gibbins, however, suspects that Alberta is ripe for political change. He also notes that Klein's many personal flaws unfortunately play to an awful national stereotype of Albertans as folks with too much money and too few brains. Both Peter Lougheed and Preston Manning worked hard to undermine those impressions. Klein, however, reinforces them.

"We want someone to present our better side," notes Gibbins. "Klein is not doing that. But there isn't a long cue of visionaries lining up for the job either."

When Klein first became premier a lot of Tories eagerly read portions of Milton Friedman's The Tyranny of the Status Quo. In his book the Nobel prize economist explained that reformers only had about a six- to eight-month period to shake up government before the status quo or the iron triangle of beneficiaries, politicians and bureaucrats reasserted themselves. Klein is not much of a book reader but he got the key message. ("Now you know good old Ralph. Do I look like the kind of guy who would read those books?" he once quipped to a New York audience.)

Klein, the '90s guy, started out with a bright promise of fiscal conservativism. But as soon as the deficit disappeared, he embraced fiscal pragmatism. Now his style of government has morphed into another tyranny of the status quo simply known as Ralph's World.