Taking the Red Door

The Liberals contemplate going back to the future:

The race has begun. Justin Trudeau hasn't thrown his hat into the ring, but he's definitely testing the waters for the impending campaign to decide who will lead the federal Liberals.

"I don't feel I should be closing off any options," Trudeau, 39, said in a telephone interview Wednesday.

Is suicide painless? Well the Liberal Party is about to find out. It must be awfully tempting for the Grit deadenders to bring Justin into the leadership. Some have been planning it since his father's funeral. They hope - very much in vain - that the Trudeau magic will once again be sprinkled across the land. Glory days are here again! Such an act, however, would be a monumental delusion. It would be an open confession by the Liberals of their bankruptcy as a viable party.

Justin Trudeau is a mediocre MP unqualified to head a major political party.  His accomplishments both in an out of public life do not warrant the profile he has garnered. That he is discussed as a serious contender for the leadership is by virtue of his surname and histrionic public speaking style. Beyond the now shrunken confines of the Liberal Party base his name is at best a historical curiosity. In the West and Francophone Quebec it is utterly toxic.

As I noted earlier this week the Liberals were set for defeat this election. What transformed that defeat into a rout was the party's taking for granted of its ethnic pillar. It was a sign of arrogance by the party leadership. So too was Michael Ignatieff's refusal to properly prepare for the leadership debates. Lord Iggy would not stoop to conquer. His charming demeanour and rictus grin would carry him and the party through. That is until Jack Layton side-swipped him with his poor attendance record. The question wasn't itself fatal. It was a side-swipper in because of how Iggy responded. 

The very least the Grit machine should have done is anticipate such an obvious question. Nope. So Iggy just blustered his way through the answer. Instead of pointing to his extensive cross-country meeting and greeting he jumped on his high horse and declared: “So don’t give me lessons on respect for democracy.” It was just a few steps short of declaring: "Do you know who I am?" 

Sadly we do. As well as the party he until recently lead. The conceit is enormous. While working my way through university I could usually smell the Grit apparatchiks in the making. Literally. They tended to wear cologne. Good old Irish Spring just wasn't enough for them. There were a few ethnics preparing for a profitable career in establishment grievance mongering. The Liberal Party was their ticket to patronage heaven. Most, however, were WASPs (or at the very least WASPish) whose parents were lawyers, doctors and the odd engineer thrown in for good measure.

They were upper middle class. Working as a barista was considering "slumming it." They did not get their hands dirty. Uncles and aunts hovered in the background with internships and well placed phone calls. Granddad had fought in the war, yet they always spoke highly of peacekeeping, though few understood the concept beyond the image of nice men in blue berets handing out bags of grain.

Their conversations revolved around networking, status symbols and which professors were the easiest. When pressed they would offer political opinions. The more practiced ones could deliver pitch perfect sermons on the conventional wisdom. Multiculturalism, multilateralism, the importance of French (at a university were Mandarin was the unofficial second language)  and the value of preparing for a globalized world through increased public investment in R&D. Trudeaupian Newspeak. 

Some of the shrewder kids - marked for political greatness - would throw a radical thought into the conventional soup. Not an actual radical thought, for radical thoughts were extreme and any form of extremism is very bad. No this was something which sounded radical but was really just conventional. I recall one young minister-to-be speak of carbon credits and the importance of markets in allocating resources. The next moment he regaled his compatriots about the equally vital importance of preserving our single-payer Medicare system. 

For the Liberals of Tomorrow reality was something that happened to other people. They did not have to haul garbage out to dumpsters in the freezing cold. The travails of a small business person were not real for them. They did not have learn to read English in a household where no one else even spoke it. They did not have to spend their adolescence evading the ethnically themed gang wars of Toronto's public schools. Education was just another bromide. Diversity was a pleasant and solemn word that flowed easily passed their lips. The danger that would become clear to us all on 9/11 simply did not register. They could be what they were because others bore the price.

Justin Trudeau is their candidate. An unreal leader for an unreal party. He is where he is because of his father and grandfather. Just like the Liberals I meet in school. Unfortunately for both of them they are almost the only Liberals left in the country. 

Comments

[copinacus]

No hyperbole here, Publius. That's exactly what it was like back then and still is now.
They really do think they know better and we ignorant peasants are just too slow to understand.

[Fred]

Justin Trudeua is so perfect to lead the decaying corpse of the Liberal Party past the grave yard where voters put right into the crematoria where the smell, the deacy and putrifaction can be finally eliminated from the Canadian political landscape. What Daddy started, the Son can preside over the elimination.

40 years of Trudeaupia are now dead and gone, Canada can start to recover, we have a bright future ahead.

[Peter Wloch]

Maybe a little harsh on the poor souls but on the whole an accurate description of those Liberals I met at school too. I was part of a group of engineers who worked for the PC's one election all of us children of auto workers. Anecdotal for sure but true nonetheless.

[The Rat]

"Granddad had fought in the war, yet they always spoke highly of peacekeeping..."

I don't know how many times I have had that particular line thrown at me by Liberal partisans who then went on to denigrate our soldiers. These people would never consider the military as a career and would actively discourage others, yet they seem to think that their granddad's or uncle's service somehow gives them some moral highground to pontificate from.

In that vein, I found Iggy's education for veterans bill rather offensive. It played on the Liberal/left stereotype of the poor soldier with no other choice but to join up and if only we could educate the poor bastards...

[Robert of Ottawa]

Boy, you said that well, avoiding the venom I would normally apply.

[clype]

swipe, swiper, swiped.

Other than the spelling, you is right. :)

[James in Canada]

UBC?

And yeah, exactly every Liberal Party supporter I've encountered in my university career (at UBC) has been exactly this type of person. All conventional wisdom, no risks, and viewing the party as a vehicle for personal advancement. At least NDPers know they're not likely to get rich from their politics.