On January 20, 1961, John F. Kennedy was sworn in as the 35th president of the United States.
On January 21, 1961, he was already faced with his first full-fledged controversy because of one of his appointments.
Kennedy appointed his brother Robert F. Kennedy to be his attorney general. His supporters understood the need for the president to have someone he could trust without any reservations in that sensitive portfolio. The president’s critics accused him of nepotism. And ever since then, it’s been complicated whenever a politician in a position of leadership has tried to hire one of the family.
It didn’t get any easier in 1993 when President Bill Clinton appointed his wife, Hillary, to head up a health-care task force.
Ontarians are now facing this debate because, last Friday, Premier Doug Ford put his nephew, Michael, the rookie MPP for York South– Weston, into cabinet as the minister of citizenship and multiculturalism.
There are lots of ways to look at this issue, so let’s do that. It likely goes without saying that, if Michael’s last name had been Smith instead of Ford, he wouldn’t be in cabinet. He’s only 28 years old, and, while that doesn’t make him the youngest minister in Ontario history (Dennis Timbrell in 1974 and Shelley Martell in 1990 were both 27), it certainly is pretty darned young to be in cabinet.
Having said that, if Michael Ford’s last name were Smith, I suspect most people wouldn’t have an issue with this at all. He managed to take a seat away from the New Democrats in a riding that’s never voted Tory. So, even though he’s young, it wouldn’t be considered unusual at all for the premier to want to give any winner under those circumstances a cabinet job to boost his profile and help keep the seat blue. After all, Ford won it by fewer than 800 votes.
Ontarians are well aware of the fact that politics truly is the family business for the Ford family. The premier’s father was an MPP. His brother was the mayor of Toronto. And he himself was a city councillor before moving to provincial politics. So it’s worth remembering that Michael Ford didn’t just fall off a turnip truck and end up on the executive council. He's actually already been elected twice: to the Toronto District School Board and to Toronto city council. His background has received an outsized amount of attention because he changed his family name to Ford from Stirpe, which was his father’s last name. His mother, Kathy, is the premier’s sister. His father is currently in prison serving an 18-year sentence for attempted murder. In light of those circumstances, it seems completely understandable that Michael would want to associate his personal “brand” with his mother and uncle’s family name — as he did in 2014 — rather than his father’s.
Given the family connection, it would not be unusual for the public to jump to the conclusion that Michael’s politics were as disruptively, obnoxiously populist as his uncle’s once were. But, over the years, I’ve asked around about the new citizenship and multiculturalism minister, and, overwhelmingly, the reviews have been good. He does his homework. He gets along well with others. He tries to be a positive force in public life. He does not keep an enemies list. And he really makes an effort to be an effective, nice guy.
Ford has taken a risk with this appointment, and he surely knows it. No doubt, his advisers recommended against putting his nephew in cabinet, worrying not only about the optics but also about whether Michael is ready for prime time. If the minister trips up early in his time in cabinet, there’ll be no shortage of advisers and observers who will say, “We told you so. The kid wasn’t ready, and you didn’t listen to us.” Not only that, there are many veterans on the Tory backbenches who will silently be fuming that they were passed over for someone who had no provincial experience but did have the right bloodlines. That could also prove to be a headache for the premier down the road.
But the premier is banking on his own personal knowledge and confidence that his nephew can do the job.
I’ve racked my brains to think of any previous Ontario premier who’s appointed a family member to cabinet, and I can’t think of one. The closest comparable situation I can recall: when the newly chosen Ontario Liberal leader Dalton McGuinty hired one of his brothers to be his chief of staff. McGuinty, like his fellow Irish-Catholic political hero JFK, wanted someone close by whom he could trust. And his brother had the qualifications to do the job. But an uproar ensued, and the experiment ended almost as quickly as it had begun.
But those circumstances were different. McGuinty was a new opposition leader making a first impression and had no built-up currency in the bank to spend. Ford’s brand is well-known to all, and he’s just won a second consecutive majority government — even bigger than the one of four years ago.
If ever there were a time to take a chance on showing Ontarians the quality of your judgment, it’s now.
And my bet is, the uncle has told his nephew, “I’m going out on a limb for you here, kid. Make me look good.”
This will be a story worth watching over the next few years.
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