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THE BRANDING of the PRIME MINISTER: 'Uncle Louis' and Brand

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THE BRANDING of the PRIME MINISTER: 'Uncle Louis' and Brand THE BRANDING OF THE PRIME MINISTER: ‘Uncle Louis’ and Brand Politics in The Elections of Louis St. Laurent 1949-1957 A Thesis Submitted to the Committee on Graduate Studies in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in the Faculty of Arts and Science TRENT UNIVERSITY Peterborough, Ontario, Canada © Cory Baldwin, 2017 History M.A. Graduate Program September 2017 ABSTRACT: THE BRANDING OF THE PRIME MINISTER: ‘Uncle Louis’ and Brand Politics in The Elections of Louis St. Laurent 1949-1957 Cory Baldwin From 1949-1957, Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent was the face of the Liberal Party. Party branding was wholly devoted to his friendly, ‘Uncle Louis’ brand image. St. Laurent’s image was manipulated and manufactured without public preconception, establishing the modern tactics of personal branding still used by his successors. This thesis studies the elections of 1949, 1953, and 1957, analysing photos, advertisements, speeches, archival documents, memoirs, newspapers, and other sources to show the development of Liberal branding strategy. It employs political scientist Margaret Scammell’s conceptualization of brand theory, showing how marketers used emotional brand differentiators and rational substantive performance indicators to sell ‘Uncle Louis’ to Canadians. The Liberals used St. Laurent and branding tactics to win two massive majorities in 1949 and 1953, and the Diefenbaker Tories used those same tactics to defeat them in 1957. ‘Uncle Louis’ proved the effectiveness of personal branding and leader- centered campaigns in Canadian politics. KEYWORDS: Brand Theory; Canadian Politics; Political Strategy; Political Marketing; Political Branding; Liberal Party of Canada; Louis St. Laurent; John Diefenbaker; George Drew; 1949 election; 1953 election; 1957 election; ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my supervisor, Professor Christopher Dummitt, my committee members Professor Dimitry Anastakis and Professor Antonio Cazoria-Sanchez for their wise advice and criticism which strengthened this project far beyond what I could have accomplished on my own. I would also like to thank my external reader, Professor Stephen Azzi of Carleton University. I would also like to acknowledge the History Graduate Program Director Professor Jennine Hurl-Eamon, and the other members of the history program and the broader Trent community who supported this project. I would also like to acknowledge the members of the Royal Canadian Navy’s History and Heritage Directorate, Dean Boettger, Cdr. Ramona Burke, Dr. Richard Gimblett, and John Knowles for their support of my education and my career. I would also like to thank my good friend Bafumiki Mocheregwa, who provided a better example than I deserved of hard work and dedication. Finally, I would like to thank my mother, Joy Baldwin, and my sister Melissa Baldwin for their love and support through the dark days and the bright ones. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ~II~ Abstract ~III~ Acknowledgements ~IV~ Table of Contents ~1~ Chapter One: The Branding of the Prime Minister ~32~ Chapter Two: The St. Laurent Story and the Core Elements of ‘Uncle Louis’ ~72~ Chapter Three: The 1949 Election Campaign or St. Laurent’s Debut ~101~ Chapter Four: The 1953 Election Campaign ~126~ Chapter Five: The 1957 Election Campaign or ‘Uncle Louis’ Rides Again ~168~ Chapter Six: The Legacy of ‘Uncle Louis’ ~172~ Bibliography iv 1 CHAPTER ONE: THE BRANDING OF THE PRIME MINISTER “It was in 1953 that an austere patrician corporate lawyer of great dignity and bearing was converted to the image of ‘Uncle Louis.’”1 Dalton Camp, Progressive Conservative Strategist Figure 1.1: 'Uncle Louis' campaigns in Summertown, ON.2 To his opponents in the Tory War Room,3 ‘Uncle Louis’ must have seemed like magic. In the late 1940s and the early 1950s, a quiet, competent, backroom lawyer with a bit of a temper transformed into the country’s grandfather. Louis St. Laurent, a man who had never sought power or public office,4 and who was resentful when he was called to it, proved himself to be a remarkably adept campaigner and politician. ‘Uncle Louis,’ the media’s name for the persona he adopted on the campaign trail, led the Liberals to two majorities and through three elections. He embodied the Liberal party; he became its 1 Dalton. Camp, Gentlemen, Players and Politicians, (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart Ltd, 1970), 137. 2 Norman James, “Like Their Elders, Children Greet Prime Minister with Enthusiasm,” Toronto Daily Star, (Toronto, ON), 1 June 1949. 3 For the purpose of this study the terms ‘Tory,’ ‘Progressive Conservative,’ ‘Conservative’ when capitalized, and ‘PC’ are used interchangeably to refer to the federal Progressive Conservative party. 4 This idea of the ‘Call to Service’ was a somewhat fabricated as well. This will be explored further in the next chapter. 2 leader, its mascot, and its brand. By the time of his traditional Maple Leaf Gardens rallies before voting day, no Canadian could have failed to understand that a vote for their local Liberal was really a vote for ‘Uncle Louis.’ By placing the leader of the party as the primary focus of the campaign and making the party brand and messaging subordinate to that of the party leader, the Liberals gave a face to the party. The Liberals used ‘Uncle Louis’ and an advanced understanding of branding techniques to win massive majorities. And, in 1957, his opponents used those same techniques to defeat him, cementing them in the Canadian political toolkit and driving Canadian elections towards a modern, leader- centred campaign style and away from the party-centered politics that had been dominant before. The Liberal party was the ideal mechanism for this experiment in leader-focused branding and ‘issueless’ campaigning. The Liberal party was, in many ways, the central institution of Canadian political life in the 1950s. They were the bureaucratic party of efficient government, with cabinet ministers of sufficient skill, talent, and authority that they could control their departments absolutely. The Liberal party was absolutely associated with government, so much so that “the distinction between state and party becomes difficult to draw.”5 Government was central to the lives of ordinary Canadians in this period. This made the Liberal party central to Canadian public life as well. The term 'Natural Governing Party' is generally used either as a way to talk about Liberal arrogance and entitlement, or perhaps to indicate that the party’s ideology was a natural fit with that of most Canadians. But there is a subtler, deeper meaning as well. 5 Reginald Whitaker, The Government Party: Organizing and Financing the Liberal Party of Canada 1930- 58, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977), xxiii. 3 Mackenzie King is often credited with not making Canada into much of anything. F.R. Scott’s famous poem WLMK contains this stanza: We had no shape Because he never took sides, And no sides Because he never allowed them to take shape.6 Scott is referring to Canada as a whole, but this applies perhaps even more significantly to what King had made of the Liberal party. He had taken a party that could stake out strong ideological positions on issues such as conscription, as they had under Laurier, and turned it into a party that could take any position at all if it was advantageous, a party that could mean all things to all people because it did not really mean anything in particular. By the mid-1950s, after three decades under King and another under his protégés, the Liberals had become almost entirely ideologically neutral. They had become an administrative party representing managerial efficiency.7 Their function was not to represent a particular point of view, but to govern.8 They did not know who they were if they were not in power. And they had been in power so long that it had become almost unthinkable that anybody else ever would. This meant that the Liberals could run without a platform, or policies, instead focusing their campaigns on a leader and mascot that radiated trustworthiness. They could point to their leader and their record and say, in effect, ‘We are obviously the best for the job, and we obviously have the best leader. If you want another four years of competent administration vote for us. You have no other real choice in the matter.’ This 6 F.R. Scott, “WLMK,” in The Eye of the Needle: Satires, Sorties, Sundries, (Montreal: Contact Press 1957). 7 John English, The Worldly Years: The Life of Lester Pearson Volume II: 1949-1972, (Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf Canada, 1992), 148. 8 For a more thorough analysis of this and how it influenced Liberal thinking outside of campaigns, see Reginald Whitaker’s The Government Party. 4 allowed them to run what they called ‘issueless’ campaigns, avoiding proposing potentially unpopular policies, and avoiding attaching their leader to such policies. These campaigns were not entirely devoid of policy discussion, but the Liberals and St. Laurent steadfastly refused to introduce new policies or change existing ones. Instead, when necessary, they described what the government had been doing and would continue to do. These policy discussions were never central to the Liberal campaign, and were presented more as examples of competent administration than anything else. But this strategy relied on the trustworthiness of both their candidate and the party, which had been eroded somewhat between the 1953 and 1957 elections, with the pipeline debate, the Suez crisis, and other high-profile scandals and crises. This was not the only factor in that loss, but it was a significant one. The goal of this project is to explain the ‘Uncle Louis’ phenomenon, to find out just how the Liberals were able to win two elections despite deliberately having no meaningful policy platform beyond their existing policy, priding themselves on running “issueless”9 campaigns where the only real question they asked was ‘Should this government continue?’ It also seeks to find out why they failed to win a third election.
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