So how might Doug Ford comport himself as premier of Ontario, should he win the provincial election in June?

As that staple of amateur psychoanalysis has it, the best predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour. But the cliché is not precisely accurate. There are caveats.

High-frequency behaviour is more predictive than infrequent behaviour. Past behaviour is usually predictive of future conduct only over short intervals. The situations for the past and predicted behaviour should be similar. And the person in question must remain essentially unchanged.

On the face of it, the new Progressive Conservative leader’s experience as a Toronto city councillor from 2010 to 2014 is recent enough, similar enough and produced behaviours recurring enough to serve as a rough guide.

Two books on the Rob Ford years – Mayor Rob Ford: Uncontrollable, by former chief of staff Mark Towhey, and The Only Average Guy by city councillor John Filion – offer insider accounts of Doug’s temperament.

In all, they provide a study in presumption, impulsiveness, indiscipline, indiscretion, bullying and an inability to put the team first.

For all the Ford talk of business experience, “Rob and Doug had no idea how to” staff the office after Rob’s election, Towhey wrote.

It was also soon apparent that Doug wasn’t motivated solely by the opportunity to serve, but a desire to wield power at elite levels. “If you think I came down here just to be the councillor from Ward 2, you’ve got another think coming!” he reportedly yelled at Towhey and former Ford adviser Nick Kouvalis.

Doug acted as if entitled to a rank and authority he hadn’t earned, Towhey wrote, and would sit “at the head of the table, in the mayor’s seat, and hold court.”

During the transition to the Ford administration, Doug was an unreliable presence, Towhey said. He “popped in and out” of meetings, usually late. “He expected us to go back to the beginning to bring him up to speed.” He’d participate for 10 or 15 minutes, then step out to make a call. “We wouldn’t see him again until he popped into another meeting later in the day, or the week.”

Furthermore, the mayor’s staff believed Doug to be the source of leaks. “We began to guard our conversations around Doug,” Towhey wrote, and changed the topic whenever he arrived.

During the early going, Doug’s impulsiveness caused his brother numerous problems, Towhey said. “Doug was shooting from the hip and picking fights we didn’t need.”

He got into slanging matches with the likes of Margaret Atwood over public libraries and, later, the chief of police. In 2011, he dreamed up a Disneyfication scheme for the waterfront that became an instant laughingstock.

To Towhey, the new PC leader was a bully, even to his brother. “If Rob ignored Doug, Doug would pummel him with endless calls and tenacious harassment. Often Rob would cry uncle, telling us ‘I can’t handle one more call from him. Just do it’.”

As with many who demand utter loyal, Doug Ford was mistrustful of most everyone. “I only trust the person I shave in the morning,” he told Filion. “That’s it. And I nick him sometimes too.”

Doug once told Filion, in the run-up to his 2014 mayoral run against John Tory, that “you’ve never seen the vicious side of me. You watch.”

For all that, while Ford might be challenged by the quotidian details of governing, he is apt to thrive on the campaign trail, where salesmanship, partisanship and an ability to get under an opponent’s skin are virtues.

“He can deliver a message with devastating simplicity,” Filion wrote. “He’ll win you over with generous words and a megawatt smile, all the while observing your every move, ready to pounce.”

Still, Doug Ford’s track record in city government provides ammunition for his current opponents. It’s not for nothing, after all, that Premier Kathleen Wynne used the word “reckless” to describe Ford’s proposal this week to privatize cannabis sales in the province.

There’s always the possibility, of course, that the trauma of his brother’s premature death has changed Doug Ford. His comportment on the PC leadership campaign was more restrained.

But his demeanour this week during a CBC Ottawa radio interview with host Robyn Bresnahan was entirely consistent with the man Towhey and Filion described. Ford boasted. He bristled with anger. He baited and belittled the host. He balked at being asked to explain contradictions in his proposals.

Bresnahan asked how Ford could cut as much spending as he claims without cutting jobs. “Very simple. You haven’t done it. I’ve done it. That’s the difference. Next question.”

It was a burst of condescending man-splaining that may well have had many female listeners rolling their eyes.

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As both the Rob Ford experience in Toronto, and current events in the United States make clear, there’s a vast difference between having the salesmanship to win an election and the competence and temperament required to govern.

Ontario voters, presumably, will be hoping to see a little more of the latter from the new PC leader.

As has been shown over and over again, when simplicity trumps experience, administrative expertise and policy mastery, chaos ensues. We have been warned.

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