In B.C., we don't set our political leaders aside with a gracious thank you and let someone else take over for a while.

We wait until we absolutely cannot stand them anymore, and then give them an unceremonious heave-ho.

From nearly the very beginning, our premiers have obliged us in the process, making it easy for us to cast them out without so much as a hint of guilty conscience.

Arrogance, bald-faced lies, deceit. some have flirted with criminality (and some made it past second base) to ensure our passionate desire for their departure.

And none of those even factor in outright incompetence.

Once even the dullest of voters among us develop a clarity of understanding, we wash over our leaders like a tsunami.

We don't just fire our premiers, we bury them.

And the soil we toss upon their political graves is usually built of the very party they have led into that inglorious oblivion.

But you have to give Christy Clark some marks for loyalty to her party. well, a sort of loyalty.

Fabled leaders of yore passed along leadership of their floundering parties like handing off the baton in an underwater relay race.

Premier Glen Clark very nearly scuttled his entire party by setting his unlucky successor Ujjal Dosanjh adrift on a leaky sun deck.

Before that, Bill Vander Zalm successfully sunk the entire Social Credit Party, but managed to hand over the helm of that unseaworthy craft to Rita Johnston.

Remember Premier Rita Johnston? No, neither does anyone else. Except maybe those who care that she was Canada's first female leader of government, federal or provincial, before her political life was summarily snuffed by the flotsam and jetsam of Fishy Willy's destructive force.

The only recent premier with less historic profile is Premier Dan Miller.

Yup, he was actually premier for a little while. He commandeered the poop deck while the NDP was looking for someone (turned out to be Dosanjh) to throw into Glen Clark's fast-ferry propellers.

As Premier Christy Clark nears the dissolution of her political career, the only admirable quality she has left is her apparent willingness to go down with the ship herself.

W.A.C. "Wacky" Bennett almost singlehandedly manoeuvred B.C.'s Liberal and Conservative parties into the shallows, to emerge as the leader of the Social Credit Party that was eventually almost single-handedly devoured by Fishy Willy.

Unquestionably one of B.C.'s greatest premiers in his heyday, voters dumped Wacky in a fit of pique, handing the wheel to Davey Barrett, who was then dismissed with disdain by the very labourers that had orchestrated his predecessor's defeat.

Premier Barrett was replaced in a right-wing love-fest with Bennett the Younger. Politically, Premier Bill Bennett was Wacky's son in name only. He was one of few B.C. premiers able to stick his finger in the air and accurately measure the force of the ill winds blowing his way.

Uncharacteristically in B.C. politics, Baby Bennett dropped anchor, offered his famous "mea culpa" speech to take the heat off his party, and sailed off into the sunset. before being pushed overboard. (Truth be told, he actually was pushed overboard, but at least he didn't wait until the gangplank was set.)

Now it looks like Premier Christy Clark will ride the ebbing tide - and even if she's actually Gordon Campbell's Rita Johnston, she is offering her party a red herring that may serve as a life-line when the bodies drift ashore after the May election.

It will all have been her fault alone.

editor@langleyadvance.com