The Gods of the Copybook Headings

Do It Like Dalt

Saviour of the Party:

We don't need a “star” to lead us to instant glory, we need a hard-working, decent, smart leader who can grow into the job. Somebody who will learn from mistakes – McGuinty described in detail the mistakes of the 1999 provincial campaign and how he fixed them as of 2003. We need somebody young enough that they get at least two elections and hopefully at least 12-15 years as leader. He talked about not changing horses mid-course – people have forgotten the “dump Dalton” effort after 1999 that, if it had succeeded would likely mean the Ontario Liberal Party would look a lot more like their federal counterpart today than the political machine McGuinty has built. We need somebody who takes clear, bold, forward-looking policy positions.

Bold and and forward looking! Go with it! Why do you keep making mention of Dalton McGuinty?Oh, wait. Seriously? You think Dalton McGuinty is bold and forward looking? Bless political operatives their brazen little hearts. You'd almost think they meant it. Why stop with being bold, why not say that the Ontario Premier is a handsome man and brilliant leader. Men want to be him, women want to be with him. He is the love-child of George Clooney and Pierre Trudeau.

Politicians tend to be bold only in one area: lying. Sorry to be so blunt there but even by the low standards of modern Canadian politics the Dalt is an Epic Fibber. Earlier this month I noted Dalt's remarkable balderdashing of Ontario's economic and fiscal prospects. It is the job of a Premier to talk up his province. Nothing wrong with a bit of boostering. McGuinty, however, comes off as the guy who totals the family sedan and then, nonchalantly, tells the wife it's just a few dents that can be buffed out.

Missing from the narrative of the Dalt as the rebuilder of his party is the other side of the political equation: The Liberal Party's opponents. Winning elections doesn't mean being the best, whatever that might imply, it simply means being perceived as better than your opponents. Dalton McGuinty lost in 1999 because he was facing a dynamic and principled Tory leader. Given the choice of blamanche or bold, the voters opted for Mike Harris.

Fast forward to 2003 and we see a government now long in the tooth, bombarded daily by a virulently hostile media, lead by a compromising figure who offered the province no compelling vision for the future. Common Sense became old hat, so the Tories became old news. Much the same happened again in 2007. The Dalt's muddled record was on the verge of defeating him, until John Tory obliging torpedoed his own party with an ill-thought out scheme to fund religious schools.

The Dalt has been a very lucky man. He narrowly won the party leadership in 1996, after a brutal marathon convention. Blessed with weak opponents he was able to spend and coast his way through eight years of power. To the successful luck does not look like luck, it looks like genius.

This seems to have been the federal Liberal approach to their recent defeats. Stephen Harper got lucky with Adscam and then with Stephane Dion. Third time is the charm. Maybe fourth. It is certainly true that without the impetus of scandal Stephen of Leaside likely would have spent several more years, perhaps the rest of his political career, cooling his heels in opposition. Men of talent don't necessarily create opportunities, they just know when and how to capitalize on them. 

The opportunity here is the slow-motion implosion of the NDP. This is what the Grit High Command is counting on come 2015. Lacking ideas or principles, they are Liberals after all, they must rely upon their opponents making a major unforced error. Specifically they are hoping the Dippers elect some grumpy backroomer (Brian Topp) or a too smooth pol (Thomas Mulcair) to head the party. Neither men, or any of the other likely leaders, conveys the genuine sympathy and enthusiasm of Saint Jack. 

This will leave the Liberals not much closer to power, though perhaps closer to Stornoway. Over the next four years the Grits, or Dippers, may figure out a way of knocking the other out of contention, neither has a compelling strategy to knock off the Conservatives. Dalton McGuinty's creepy smile is unlikely to help.

Inch to the Top

The Bob becomes less interim:

In an intense interview with Peter Van Dusen of CPAC, Mr. Rae seemed to suggest he wasn’t interested. “I don’t have any aspirations to do another job,” he said. So that’s “no”? “It’s not open to me to run,” he said, referring to the rule change the party’s (as yet unelected) national executive would need to institute to allow him to become a candidate. “I’m not going to engage in speculation,” he pouted, when pressed further.

Perhaps Bob Rae is telling the truth. This might be his Horatius at the bridge moment, valiantly saving the noble Liberals from the false Stephen who had wrought the deed of shame. Once the party has been stabilized he'll step aside and let newer and fresher blood come forth. The Liberal Party will be reborn. A Golden Age for Canada dawning soon after.

And upon his release OJ will find the real killer.

The Bob is a political animal. Been in the game longer than Old Publius has been alive. Typically when pols, even very ambitious pols, get shellacked the way Bob Rae did in 1995 they give up and move on. There are very few second acts in Canadian political life. That said, the Liberal Party has seen more than its share of lazarus-like returns: Mackenzie King (thrice), Pearson, Trudeau, Turner and Papa Jean himself. 

Those men, however, did not have the remarkable political baggage carried by the former Premier. The Liberals of ages past, however, were not so desperate. With a decimated caucus and backroom, and grassroots organization still in recovery mode, the Grits need capable leaders. Whatever you think of the man or his political record, Bob Rae is the most experience politician in Canada. Had anyone else been leading the Grits right now they'd probably be broke and doomed. Their recent convention would likely have been held under a highway overpass.

Just as administration is the gritty side of policy, so politicking is the details stuff of politics. What to say, how to say it and who to attack matter as much as ideas or vision. Lord Iggy's disastrous spell can be explained as an untalented amateur in way over his head. The Bob is an experienced operator with a natural touch. Those who remember his cringe inducing speechifying as Premier, much like the grating and grumpy manner of a certain Toronto councillor named Layton, will know how much he has improved. Even his feigned outraged has a casual elegance about it now.

The Bob has actually provided very little in the way of substantive criticism of the Harper Tories. Harassing them on technicalities, twisting innocuous announcements and using any club (including the CWB of all things) to beat over the head of the government. The Grits and Dippers both have interim leaders, the former however have a professional agitator at the helm.

The NDP sits like a large inert cat during Question Period. Orange, mangy and more repellent than threatening. Bob Rae is the leader of the opposition in all but name and garners more and better press than most cabinet ministers. This is what professionalism looks like. Only a handful of Tories can play parliamentary back and forth at the Bob's level. Jason Kenney and Stephen Harper being the most notable. 

Had he simply asked for the job back in May, with Iggy's operatives still being kicked around by the Press Gallery, there would almost certainly have been a backlash. Patience is golden in politics, a field dominated by ADD addled staffers in their twenties. The longer he leads the party, the more inevitable his accession and the more tight his grip on the party. 

At some level the Bob must know he will never be Prime Minister. Still the taste of power, however distant, can drive some men to do strange things, even when time should have made them wiser. The thrill of handling lobby questions from the Press Gallery. Working a room or speeding from one photo-op to the next. To most men this is hell with bright lights. Politicians, however, are different from you and me. 

The former Ontario Premier's best hope now is to replay Jean Charest's resurrection of the Progressive Conservatives. To that end the Bob has several advantages over Charest's position in the early 1990s. These include a larger caucus and better bank balances. The Grits also have the priceless advantage of incompetent opponents. Those eager for a merger with the Dippers believe that the Orange surge in Quebec was not a one-off, but a fundamental shift. My thinking too. Until I got whiff of the NDP leadership candidates. Yikes.

The Liberals have no serious policies (abolishing the monarchy?) and an organization held together with Red Green-style engineering. Peter C Newman, the eminence grise of Canadian journalism, has pronounced them near death. All they've got left is hope, desperation and Bob Rae. Strangely that might just be enough.

Back to Quebec

The Bob goes begging:

In an end-of-year interview with Postmedia News two days later, Rae said that since taking over as interim Liberal leader in May, he has tried to keep the Liberal Party relevant and in the news as much as possible, and to begin rebuilding the party from the ground up. In both cases, the road starts in Quebec.

“My sense is that the future of the Liberal Party as a national party depends on our ability to grow up support from francophone Quebec,” Rae said. “We have to regain the respect of Quebecers. We have to regain the confidence of Quebecers.”

Trivia question: When was the last time the Liberal Party won a majority of the seats in Quebec?

Answer: 1980

Sorry Bob, this is a horse that won't run. What are you offering the voters of Quebec? Aside from your charming self?

And the Children Shall Lead...

A glimpse of the new Liberal elite:

In a blog post published earlier this week, Liberal party member Max Naylor unleashed an avalanche of criticism at his "exceptionally close friend," Zach Paikin, the 20-year-old son of TVO host Steve Paikin.

Paikin is running for national policy chair of the federal Liberals at the upcoming convention in January and has secured the endorsement of Liberal MP and House Leader Marc Garneau, Liberal MPs Rodger Cuzner and Irwin Cotler and former Ontario health minister George Smitherman.

Naylor, the son of University of Toronto president David Naylor, says Paikin is actually far to the right of the Liberals on issues such as Israel and corporate tax cuts.

At what point did the Liberal Party stop being an actual party, and instead become a club for well connected rich kids? Just asking. Max's attack on Zach might seem like a schoolyard takedown, yet after reading it, I came away with one conclusion: Zach Paikin needs to join the Conservative Party. Seriously. Max's review of Zach's politics makes him sound exactly like the sort of person we need on the Right. I understand that the young Mr Naylor is likely exaggerating for effect, not unusual for a blogger, so young Mr Paikin's views are likely more "progressive."

Back in September Johnathan Kay interviewed the aspiring pol. Paikin came off rather well, quick on his feet and well versed in Gritspeak. He's probably a bit too inexperienced, at the grand age of 20, to be a national policy chair. That said, one can foresee great things for Zach Paikin, assuming the Liberal Party doesn't implode before he finishes university.

Poll numbers out of Quebec indicate that the sheen is wearing off the NDP. This has given hope to many Liberals that their party might again become a major force. Having a large base in the province has been vital to the success of the Liberal Party since the 1890s. The Bob has been charming the Quebec media over the last few months, including his famous piano playing, not at all behaving like an "interim" party leader. Polls taken four years from an election, however, are worth less than a politician's promise.

So, you're an aspiring pol in your twenties. Joining the third party in parliament makes sense if you think of it as a ground floor opportunity, in a building that's just collapsed. The Grits are an old and well established party that just needs to be fixed up a bit. 2011 is just like 1984. Give it time and the voters will return to the good solid Liberal brand.

While a fashion for everything 1980s in sweeping the Liberal Party - Hello again Sheila Copps! -  the nostalgia for the Mulroney era is misplaced. 1984 was a skillfully played backlash election, just like 1958, in which a long in the tooth Liberal government was shown the door. Had the Brian not outwitted John Turner again in 1988 with free trade, it's likely the Grits would have returned to power or forced the Tories into a minority. 

The last decade has not seen one or two big defeats for the Liberals, it has witnessed four straight reversals for the Natural Governing Party. Losing once in a long while can be seen as a fluke. Losing four in a row begins to look like a pattern. Much hot air has been emitted during the party's soul searching. Seven years after their first shellacking in the polls they're still searching. Even awkward adolescence can usually find themselves after a back packing trip across Europe. Modern adolescents, however, are not so entitled as members of the Liberal Party.

When testifying on the Meech Lake accords Pierre Trudeau referenced, as he was wont to do, T.S. Elliot's The Hollow Men. While many on the Right might have hoped this was a subtle apology for his sixteen years of misgovernment, he was actually referring to the future of Canada. No country lasts forever, observed PET, so if Canada goes, let it go "with a bang, not a whimper."

Is this how the Liberal Party ends? Not with a bang but with two rich kids fighting over a booby prize?

The members of Club Liberal will have to decide.

 

Bob "Veto" Rae

The former Ontario premier channels Bishop Strachan:

The Liberals are urging Governor-General David Johnston to refuse granting royal assent to the Harper government’s bill to dismantle the Canadian Wheat Board.

The third party’s last-ditch attempt to preserve the agency’s monopoly came Monday in an open letter delivered to Rideau Hall. It cites a Federal Court ruling last week that found the Conservatives broke the law by not putting their legislation to a plebiscite among farmers.

Technically the Bob is not asking that the GG refuse royal assent, he is asking that:

...full consideration be given to awaiting final disposition of this matter by the courts before the legislation receives Royal Asset.

Translating into English: "Wait until the courts have decided." In the letter dated December 12th, 2011 the "interim" Liberal leader cites section 47.1 of the Canadian Wheat Board Act which reads:

47.1 The Minister shall not cause to be introduced in Parliament a bill that would exclude any kind, type, class or grade of wheat or barley, or wheat or barley produced in any area in Canada, from the provisions of Part IV, either in whole or in part, or generally, or for any period, or that would extend the application of Part III or Part IV or both Parts III and IV to any other grain, unless

(a) the Minister has consulted with the board about the exclusion or extension;

and

(b) the producers of the grain have voted in favour of the exclusion or extension, the voting process having been determined by the Minister.

As the small print indicates this section was introduced back in 1998. Who says Liberals can't think long term? A plebiscite was held back in the summer that rejected ending the board's monopsony. Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz ignored the results, questioning the CWB's methods and procedures. Since the Minister determines the "voting process" the vote was not binding.

So, technically, Bob Rae has a point. The Governor-General, however, is not in a position to pass legal judgements. Even if Mr Johnston simply delayed granting royal assent, because of the recent ruling, he would not be following the advice of his ministers. That's a constitutional quandary none of us want to get into. It's also utterly pointless.

Minister Ritz may have violated the law in introducing Bill C-18, An Act to Reorganize the Canadian Wheat Board and to make Consequential and related Amendments to Certain Acts, there is nothing in the Act that says someone else couldn't have introduced legislation to gut the CWB. A fundamental principle of our constitution is that parliament cannot bind its successors. Nor can parliament delegate to one of its legislative creatures an irreversible power. The Wheat Board was made by parliament and it can be unmade by parliament.

The Conservatives may have technically broken the rules, which suggests either arrogance or sloppiness in drafting Bill C-18. An appeal of Judge Campbell's decision is still pending. As leader of an opposition party Bob Rae has the right and duty to attack the government when they slip up. Pointing out that the Tories failed to cross and dot where appropriate is fair game. Going over the head of an elected government, and asking that the GG violate more than a century and a half of constitutional precedent, is grandstanding.

The Governor-General does not have the power of veto. He, or she, must follow the advice of the relevant ministers. I'm sure that Mr Rae is familiar enough with the events surrounding Lord Elgin's granting of royal assent to the Rebellion Losses Bill. Asking the GG to delay granting royal assent is far more arrogant than failing to observe a legal technicality. The Tories may have committed a venial sin, but Liberals have committed a mortal one.

The Grits have been engaged in a full-court press over the CWB. The board's remit applies only to the three Prairie provinces and a region of British Columbia. The Grits have exactly four seats west of the Ontario-Manitoba border. If fighting to retain the board's monopsony wasn't a vote getter before May of this year, what makes them think it will be a vote winner in 2015? 

Bob Rae represents the riding of Toronto Centre. As the name implies, wheat is not a significant part of the local economy. His constituents are unlikely to have strong opinions on western grain regulation. This is a club to beat the Harper Tories. Fine. That's his job. But demanding the GG, in effect, violate constitutional convention is not the leader of the third party's job. It's cheap grandstanding that does little service to the party or the country. It does however get Bob Rae's aging mug on the front page. Which is ultimately the point of Rae's "interim" leadership.

 

Point of View

From the Bob:

"Civility isn't about everybody being nice to everybody," he said. "Sort of on a superficial basis patting people on the back. Civility is about something much deeper. It's about listening, it's about saying, 'Well, I understand your point of view and here's our point of view.'"

Well, Mr Rae, you didn't show much understanding of my point of view while Premier. For nearly five years you damned your government's critics as being uncompassionate, ignorant and borderline bigoted. When columnists at the Toronto Sun and talk radio hosts attacked your affirmative action programs their arguments were considered tantamount to racism. You've never shown much time or patience for those who disagreed with you.

The former Ontario Premier speaks of the "triumphalism" of the Harper Tories. As opposed to the sweet humility demonstrated by Jean Chretien? Or the gentle touch of Pierre Trudeau? Back in 2008 Bob Rae compared Stephen Harper to Herbert Hoover. That didn't show much understanding of the Prime Minister's point of view. It was a shot as cheap as it was obscure.

The Bob is like one of those soccer players who feigns injury every time an opponent comes too close. When the roles are reversed, and he is the one trying to get the ball, every dirty trick is permissible. Question Period is one long mud-slinging session and has been for years. Whining that the government isn't being "fair" to your minority point of view is hardly compelling. Politician, heal thy self.

Most calls for "civility" in Parliament, an institution Emily Post would have avoided like the plague, are disingenuous. Politics is a contact sport and you win by kneecapping your opponent. What about ideas? Ideas are hard and complicated. They make people's heads ache and their hearts yearn for the simple cartoonish world of "reality" television. Parliament was, in many ways, reality television avant la lettre.

Was this always so? Overheated rhetoric, underhanded personal accusations and distortions of your opponents position is a more established political tradition than the ballot box. Even in his sober moments John A Macdonald could launch the crudest of invectives at opponents. Our first Prime Minister's public descriptions of George Brown, his bitter long-time rival, were often libelous. Something which Brown was able to prove during an inquiry, though he was unable to take to trial because of parliamentary immunity. 

Politics is theatre. Whatever the sensible notions of public policy analysts, reasonably minded pundits and engaged citizens it is not they, or people like them, who decide elections. You need to play to the cheap seats. Fighting dirty is a way of connecting with the many voters who are bored, ignorant and apathetic. When the tables get turned you cry foul. The old truism remains: Politics is show business for ugly people.

Is this the only way? A political discourse where failed actors preen at each other, all while the freedom and prosperity of the nation is whittled away. Events of great pitch and moment are ignored. Europe teeters, America slides and Bob Rae complains that Stephen Harper is a big old meanie. When our elected masters get around to something more substantive it's Peter Mackay's travel itinerary. 

Perhaps happy is the land not in need of heroes. Our mediocre politics a testament to a general contentment in the land. The last time our political life was about something we spent twenty years haggling over the constitution. Anyone want to do that again? Didn't think so. Yet what about tomorrow? The politics of nothing is ill preparation for the day, not too distant, when Canada's welfare state, like its European forerunners, hits the wall.

Politics will be much less "civil" then. 

Back to the Liberal Future

She's back!

“In the few short months following the majority Conservative government win, Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s true Reform colours are showing.

“Gay ministers do not come out.  The parliamentary secretary to the Prime Minister launches a frontal attack on public broadcasting. The arm’s-length relationship between the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the government is breached by a new reporting mechanism that requires police to participate in integrated government communication messaging.”

The above is from Tequila Sheila herself. Yes, you can take the girl out of politics but not the politics out of the girl. Much like that faint Hamilton musk you can't quite get out of your clothes. It lingers on, some how finding its way into the furniture and even the dog. Nor is Sheila the only artifact on display in the Natural Museum of Liberalism. There is, of course, the party's "interim" leader Bob Rae, last seen in the early 1990s wrecking the economy of Ontario.

These extended trips down memory lane no doubt brings great joy to the Liberals. Why confront the future when the remembering the past is so pleasant? As Kelly McParland notes above, the Copps strategy is pretty much the same one the Grits have used since 2004. Because if it's failed four times in a row, why not go for a fifth attempt? The working definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Logically speaking the Liberal Party is now officially insane.

Yet the party faithful still considers Sheila the front runner. She cut her political teeth launching invectives at Brian Mulroney. The Brian has since found other employment, yet Sheila and the rest of the Liberal Party can't move on. It's still 1988 and Preston Manning and Stevie Harper are loading up the crosses and the gasoline into the pickup truck.

There is no hidden agenda. The Harper Tories have basically done what they promised to do, albeit very, very slowly. They have even done things they never promised to do, like run up the deficit and engaged in epic pork barrelling worthy of Papa Jean himself. The longer the G20 fiasco lingers on the more Tony Clement begins to look like Alfonso Gagliano. If I was Tony I would ask for Sweden rather than Denmark. Why should the Danes have all the fun?

It is a pattern among failing organizations to blame the sales department: The problem isn't the product it's the salesmanship. So the easy solution is to fire the sales force and bring in some new cold callers. To that end they ousted Papa Jean, a stupid move since the old bastard was the last competent man in the party, and replaced him with the golden boy, Paul Martin Jr. The golden boy was now in his sixties and his ideas were about as fresh as a truck stop sandwich. For a widely admired finance minister who supposedly "tamed" the deficit he was remarkably indecisive.

Paulie dithered himself out of a job and was replaced by Stephane Dion. At the time many of us questioned the wisdom of making Dion the leader. The party replaced someone who couldn't make up his mind with someone who couldn't complete a coherent sentence in English. All this because they didn't like Michael Ignatieff. The end result was that Lord Iggy became leader anyway, after a historic electoral drubbing in 2008 and then a bizarre failed coup a few weeks later. Not to be outdone Iggy then bested Dion's miserable electoral rout with his own epic defeat.

Liberal party politics these last eight years has been like an atonal rendering of Gilbert and Sullivan. Yet at no point did the Liberals actually ask themselves who they were. Power had held the party together for decades. Now with power an increasingly distant memory the Grits became the Seinfeld Party, about nothing yet far less amusing.

There have certainly had many "re-thinks" and policy conferences. The end result of these confabs has been to reformulate the last party platform in ever more esoteric jargon. How many ways can you spin a national daycare program? How long before you realize that it is simply not a voter winner? The problem, to the Grit High Command, is just the marketing.

Some hard facts: The Conservative Party of Canada is not considered to be extremist, at least to people living outside the urban bubbles of Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. The Liberals are not the center anymore, the Conservatives now occupy that piece of electoral real estate. Jokes about the Reform Party, dead these last eleven years, only convince people how out of touch the Grits have become today.

The NDP are not scary anymore, at least not to middle class voters in urban Ontario and most of Quebec. The days of selling Liberalism as water-downed socialism in a business suit are gone. Jack Layton was the smiley face of the Canadian Left. Having broken through the psychological barrier of respectability and plausibility, the Dippers are now a serious party of opposition, in an election or two they might even be a party of government.

The Liberal Party's business model is broke. Papa Jean has already figured this out, using his influence to try to negotiate terms with the NDP before the Grits lose even more seats in 2015. There is always the possibility of a dead cat bounce in four years time, the Grits recapturing a few GTA and Montreal area seats. Long term the situation is bleak. The Liberal Party simply makes no sense. Putting has-beens in leadership roles, while they continue to fight the last political war, is the surest path to electoral oblivion.

Not that I'm complaining. 

 

 

Night of the Living Grits

The return of the Natural Governing Party?

But the Liberals don't see it that way. They are palpably uncomfortable being out of power, like a proud car owner forced by circumstance to let someone else take the wheel. As far as they're concerned, the Tories have used their "stealth agenda" and "message discipline" to send "the right coded messages" to their voting base, which is driven by "underlying extremism."

How I wish.

The theme to be drawn from Matt Gurney's piece is that the Liberals believe that the Tories and NDP have pulled a fast one on the Canadian people. Everyone knows the Tories are all hard right-wingers and the Dippers are all granola munching socialists. The sensible people of Canada understand that only the Liberal Party will chart the middle way.

Unfortunately for the Grits the number of "sensible" Liberal Party voters is declining at a fair clip. Have Canadians become radicalized over these last five years? No, not really. They've become more anxious about the economy and immigration, though not in a seismic way. The Liberal Party has for 90 years been a moderately statist brokerage party run from Ontario but resting on its Quebec base. The math was fairly simple; about 70 to 75 seats from Quebec, plus about half the seats in Ontario, throw in most of the Maritimes and little bits of the West and - voila! - you've got a majority government. 

The Liberal Party has been in terminal decline in Quebec since November 4th, 1981. The temporarily divided Right obscured this fact through out the 1990s, allowing the Liberals to win Ontario seats through the Chretien years thanks to many three way races. A united Right could count on most of the West, at least a third to half of Ontario and bits of the Maritimes. Without Quebec the Liberal Party makes no sense. It's just an Ontario rump party.

The Liberal rhetoric of moderation served two purposes: 1) It calmed fears in Quebec that the English would try to overwhelm them 2) It persuaded urban Ontarians that someone could keep the western cowboys and the Central Canadian granola munchers at bay. No one was really for the Liberal Party, they were just against what the Liberal Party was not.

The Liberal Party's pragmatism worked because the typical Quebecois voter felt the party defended their interests. Today the Grits in Quebec are the party of the Anglos and Allophones in and around Montreal. The two most recent Liberal Party PMs from Quebec, Trudeau and Chretien, are considered to be vendu in much of the province. Jean Charest, the province's Liberal Premier, is among the most hated people in politics. Only the ineptitude of the pequistes has kept him in power this long. 

Desperate parties tend to look for saviours. Unfortunately for the Grits the party is bereft of saviours. Bob Rae, the party's "interim" leader, can practically see himself sitting in 24 Sussex's overstuffed leather chairs. Does anyone outside of downtown Toronto see the same thing? A leader past 60, with the mark cain so far as most Ontario voters are concerned, is not a viable candidate for PM.

Justin Trudeau is frequently mentioned, by people who are friends of Justin Trudeau. The Tory High Command goes to bed every night praying that the Liberals make such an obviously stupid mistake. Justin as Grit Leader would make Stephane Dion look like Winston Churchill. Who does this leave? Some Chretien-era has beens and, unbelievably, Dalton McGuinty.

Christina Blizzard recently floated the idea. I like Christina, really I do, but I think she fell out of the wrong side of the bed that morning. Perhaps the thinking is that since Ontario voters can barely tolerate McGuinty, therefore everyone else will take a serious look. The reason that the Dalt is still in the Premier's office is that his opponents in recent years, John Tory and Tim Hudak, could not make a plausible impression of a conservative. Stephen Harper might be a centrist but he knows how to sound conservative.

For McGuinty to become PM several things would have to happen. Stephen Harper would have to fall through the ice on the Rideau Canal, Jim Flaherty would have to be hit by a bus and Jason Kenney choke to death on some butter chicken. Mr Harper is a fine skater, Mr Flaherty always looks both ways and Mr Kenney is an expert dinner. The odds are slim. But let's assume that the Tories do implode. Stranger things have happened. Like Dalton McGuinty winning a third mandate.

To become PM the Dalt would have to win seats federally he lost provincially. Then he would have to convince Quebec voters to give him a try. That's not happening. The Dalt's French is passable and not anywhere near that of Jack Layton's easy eloquence. He is also stiff and awkward. That's fine as far as it goes in boring old Ontario, where dullness is equated with earnestness, the Quebec voter is less easily impressed. They want passion, drive and charm in their leaders. Dalt's prospects in the West are even bleaker. If this is all the Grits have got, they're done.

 

Just A Simple Guy

Stephen from Leaside:

"The West Block with Tom Clark" on Sunday. The interview was taped last week during the G20 leaders' meeting in Cannes, France. Clark remarked that winning a majority government was the ambition of Harper's lifetime. Harper politely disagreed.

"Obviously I'm pretty proud of the achievement. I would say, probably my even bigger ambition of a lifetime is the ambition that most families have, and that's to see my children grow up and be happy, and be productive citizens," Harper said of his children Ben, 15, and Rachel, 12.

You know I want to believe him. Really I do. Stephen Harper is the most normal man to have held the PM's job since Lester Pearson. By normal I mean that he does not seem to be unusually weird by political standards. Still, we should not forget that he has an IQ north of 130 and a political erudition that is frightening to behold. Most of his waking hours over the last quarter century have been spent plotting the destruction of the Liberal Party of Canada. The rest of his time seems to be divided between his family, considering the history of the slap-shot and patronising the worst barber shops in the country.

It's a relative normality.

Most normal people do consider the success of their children an important life goal. It would not be unusual for Stephen Harper to have the same warm and fuzzy ambitions. I still gagged when I read the above quote. The thought running through my head? Please. You're a political obsessive. People like that often regard their families as something between props and encumbrances. 

Politicians, as I keep having to remind myself, are people too. While Harper does sometimes go a bit heavy on the fluffy blue sweater shtick, he does project a sense of genuineness. No one ambitious for high office would ever strive to be that awkward and wonkish. It's who he is. God help him. If the guy says he hopes for family happiness and health, I'll take him at his word.

Now compare him with that great also ran of 2011, one Michael Grant Ignatieff. Among the many reasons Lord Iggy lost was that he was being a phony. I don't mean that the former head of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy is a phony by nature, he was just a phony while in electoral politics. Rather than trying to be Michael Ignatieff he pretended to be an ordinary guy.

This he obviously is not. He tried to be plebeian when every inch of him is patrician. He tried to converse with the voters by means of talking points, ejecting into the air the sort of meaningless platitudes he used to skewer as a journalist. Pretending to be the guy next door is difficult when being short-listed for the Booker Prize is a footnote on your CV. The sensible thing would have been to calmly and coolly admit he was, dare we say it, a world class intellectual and then moved on.

"Hi, I'm Michael and I am smarter than most of you. This is what I can do for Canada."

If he'd tried that approach, perhaps more tactfully than I've presented it, he might not now be cooling his heels at U of T. Even when Trudeau tried to be common he never forgot he was still Trudeau. Iggy forgot about Iggy.

The Liberal Party war-room, blessed with a tin-ear that puts many American Idol contestants to shame, decided that transforming an accomplished academic into a political drone was a good idea. A decade of block headed moves like that have allowed the vultures to place themselves in permanent orbit above Grit HQ. The party of Mackenzie King is being outwitted at the moment by the NDP, which is run by trade unionists and people who couldn't get tenure at Ryerson. Somewhere C.D. Howe is scowling. 

Image is everything in politics, except when it is not. Try Jack Layton. The bon homme Jack routine took decades to perfect. Watching old tapes of Councillor Layton and he come off as a cranky hippie with a Ph.D. Twenty years of municipal politics seem to have worn off the grumpy philosopher king sheen. Yet Layton did not try to be the guy next door. He was the cool guy you knew in college, who is nice enough to remember your name when you meet on the subway.

Bob Rae understands the comfortable in your skin approach. He's a dork. He knows he's a dork, but he's a dork who has mellowed through the years. In someways he's kind of a cool dork. A decent blazer and a well timed shoulder shrug in front of the cameras balances out the inherent dorkness of the man. The ex-Premier is also as well practiced a pol as exists in Canada. He helped bring down Joe Clark's government when Stephen Harper was still in university. 

This all should make Bob Rae electoral poison. That he is also a contender for the title "Worst Ontario Premier Ever" does not help his electability. Still, there he is, trying to lead the Grits out of their near oblivion. He's there because unlike most pols he's a likable guy who repeats talking points without sounding like he is repeating talking points. He sounds sort of like a natural human, though hardly "an average guy."

The mistake far too many political handlers make - Hello to Team Hudak! - is to imagine people want to vote for someone like them. This is not true. If it were they'd vote for incoherent schleps. By definition someone who is a serious candidate for high office is not the guy next door, he or she has distinguished themselves, if only in the art of not tripping over their tongue in front of a camera crew. 

Voters want someone who is smarter than they are and understands their concerns. It's not being the guy next door, it's being relatable. I can see where this politician is coming from, so hopefully he can see where I'm coming from too. Humanizing does not mean levelling. Putting an ordinary schmuck in 24 Sussex is the plot for a bad CBC sitcom, not a winning political strategy. One of the many things the Conservative Party of Canada understands far better than the Liberals.

 

All My McGuintys

Kelly McParland:

Inconveniently enough, Mr. McGuinty chose the weekend for his latest change of mind, abruptly cancelling plans to build an unpopular power plant next to a shopping mall in a hotly-contested Mississauga riding, even though the site has been cleared and concrete footings poured. It’s the second power plant the Liberals have renounced, having earlier abandoned an equally unpopular project in another critical riding in Oakville.

Hmm. Isn't Oakville a rather affluent community? Wasn't much of the power that was to be generated from that plant suppose to go to the wider GTA grid? Did the Dalt shaft ordinary Ontarians to appease wealthy weathervane voters? No. That would be the cynical as well as the obvious interpretation. No doubt there are deep public policy reasons for his dramatic volte face. Reallly. I'm sure the Premier will be giving a clear and concise explanation shortly. Very shortly...

While the wind whistles through the leaves of happy Oakville, those of us not so blessed as to live in a riding favoured by the Sun King Dalt are left wondering how this man got into office. A little while back I wrote about the Incredible Mendacity of Dalton McGuinty. Upon reflection that title simple does not do justice to the subject. To accuse him of being a liar, even by the low standards of modern politics, is par for the course. What is remarkable is how utterly incompetent the man actually is.

During the leadership debates last week the redoutable Michael Coren mentioned that he had interviewed the Dalt on several occassions. After prolonged exposure to the Ontario Premier, Coren's observation was that he was "not an impressive man." That's rather the point. You could hate Pierre Trudeau. The man had so many aspects to his character and beliefs one could spend a lifetime attacking him, his accomplishments and his political impact and still be left hating for more. How do you hate something as insubstantial as Dalton McGuinty? It's like ranting at gray clouds.

I've never really understood why serious people like Coren waste their time talking to politicians, especially ones as inherently nebulous as the current Ontario Premier. It's a nice headline, sort of, about them interviewing a very important person. The actual substance of the interview, no matter how well framed the question, is immaterial. The politician's response is almost always evasion and ambiguity. It's all like nailing jello with a hammer.

It is the nature of the political game that its players cannot be bluntly honest. This goes for life in general. There are many situations in which truth must be compromised for the sake of tact. These are generally small truths whose proclamation is of limited value. Saying that the voters of Quebec, to take an example at random, are in general a bunch of spoiled children living off the taxpayers of Alberta and Ontario is certainly true. Saying it would be political suicide. Spoiled children don't like being called spoiled. The same point, however, can be made in a more tactful manner. Talk instead about the need for greater fiscal balance. Same point, different tone.

Tact is at times necessary. The occassional bit of ambiguity in the interests of public safety is sometimes acceptable. When a politician lies for no real reason except the most immediate and narrow of electoral gains, with little thought of how this will impact the wider electorate's perceptions, then something else begins to emerge: Is the Dalt a compulsive liar? 

Politicians need to be elected which requires at least a plurality of the electorate to support you. Wining that support is a matter of rhetoric and calculation. I doubt Stephen Harper particularly cares if anyone loves or hates him, outside of his immediate circle of friends and family. Even the famously thin skinned Brian Mulroney could utter a few profanities at his enemies and then move on. Same with Papa Jean, PET and Mike Harris. Politics is a game they played well, won and then did something else. What they did they did for power and whatever personal or ideological goals that power would help meet.

You don't get that sense from the Dalt. A human being with goals and ambitions who is just doing his job. The vacuous stare, the automatic smile and the slow clipped tone convey a non-entity. He doesn't know why he's there, he doesn't know what he's doing, he just doesn't want to leave. Gertrude Stein famously quipped that once you get to Oakland "there isn't any there there." The same applies to the current Premier of Ontario. 

There seems to only one consistency in the career of Dalton McGuinty, a desperate desire to be liked. It's why he appeased the government unions with fat contracts, lest there be "strife" on the lawn of Queen's Park. It is also why he flip-flopped on the power plant issues in two key ridings. The Dalt isn't a pol on the make, he's that nerdy kid in high school who wanted everyone to like him. He has earned instead our contempt. 

Bright Young Man

Mr Paikin runs for office. No, not that Mr Paikin. This Mr Paikin. Jonathan Kay interviews the aspiring pol:

Kay: You’ve given a lot of thought to this. Yet you’re very young. I’m looking at you and thinking “What are you, like, 12?” How old are you?

Paikin: Thank you for the kind words. I’m 20.But I would hope that my campaign will be judged by my fellow Liberals based on my hard work and the force of the ideas that I’ll be presenting to our party’s membership.

Kay: You were 4 when Chretien won his first majority. Can you understand the culture of the Liberals given that this is a party whose grandees still rhapsodize about Trudeau? Or is it an advantage not to have all that baggage?

Paikin: Correction: I was two when Chretien won his first majority.

For those wondering, Pater Paikin is actually 51, he just looks 35. Still the young Paikin has plenty of chutzpah, the essential ingredient for success in politics. Under the grilling of JK the wannabe Liberal Party Policy Chair comes off well. He's got the Gritspeak down almost pat. I've met party apparatchiks twice his age without the same fluency in the "split the difference" rhetoric that has been the party's hallmark since the days of King. Take this choice bit:

We can do this because both the NDP and the Tories have failed to provide these things to the regions they represent. The Tories have spent us into a deficit, have failed to negotiate FTAs, and won’t touch supply management or the one-tier healthcare system. The also have prioritized, wrongly, the reduction of consumption taxes instead of income tax. Lots of room for the Grits to seize ground on the economic centre-right.Similarily, the NDP’s focus in Quebec on “constitutional issues” (e.g. proudly stating that Bill 101 should trump the Official Languages Act) is unsustainable over the long term; and the party might go the way of the SoCreds (short of being destroyed though) who also had trouble balancing between appealing to the national sentiment of Quebecers and the economic centre of English Canada. The Liberals need to rethink the appropriate balance between social values and embracing Quebec nationalism their its messaging to Quebecers.

A bit too long winded for anyone wanting to be an MP. Definitely the sort of thinking processes you want for say a future Chief of Staff to a Premier or Prime Minister. He's even got a bit of Oprah worked in there: "But we can’t change Canada without first changing ourselves. " Is there a gift under the chair too? 

Most of the interview is the old talk about building on the accomplishments of the past toward a glorious future. There is even the careful hedging of admiration for Trudeau and multiculturalism, while talking about Laurier and individual liberty. Can a leaf be all red and all green? It can if it falls at a Liberal Party conference.

Paikin rejects a merger with the NDP - clever lad - on sound grounds:

Despite common perception we actually have very little in common. How a Frank McKenna-type Blue Grits is supposed to be as integral in a party as a socialist is beyond me.

Been saying that for years. He then goes on and strains credulity with this one:

My party believes in broadly reducing taxes, in the free market, in free trade, in protecting the oil sands, and in fiscal responsibility, among other things. 

Now you're to the Right of Stephen Harper? But wait weren't you defending "universal health care" just a few moments earlier? Then you criticized the Tories for not taking on "supply management or the one-tier healthcare system." My head hurts. Left, Right then Right again? Damn it. The lad's a Liberal through and through. It often takes decades for an ambitious pol to develop such ideological "flexibility."  

Until this interview was published I wasn't aware the Grits had a policy chair. I thought they just had an intern photocopy the NDP and CPC platforms and then shuffle them together. Perhaps that's why Zach is running. His campaign site is a bit, well, threadbare. So is his bio for obvious reasons. There's a screenshot of him on the Michael Coren show. Damn it Michael! Am I the only one in this country who hasn't been on your program? The Coren screenshot indicates him as a "journalists." This seems to be in the sense that Publius too is a "journalist." 

Exposing small children to politics, like to pornography or graphic violence, has the potential to distort their development. This isn't always fatal. Many young people exposed to large doses of political rhetoric can, with careful assistance, be restored to health and lead active and productive lives. Should intensive therapy not be started early the patient might be beyond hope. 

Those crippled by political mania can, in the very worst cases, go onto become career politicians. Nor are these simply Left-wing politicos but nominally Right-wing elected officials as well. To cite only some of the most prominent victims of this tragic disease: John Tory, Tony Clement, John Baird, Jason Kenney and Stephen Harper himself. The young Brian Mulroney was giving advice on Quebec politics to John George Diefenbaker back when the latter was still the Chief. 

Is this what we expect of our youth? To spend their days haggling with their elders over "universal" as opposed to "single tier" health care in policy documents? Shame that we have come to such a time and such a place. O Tempora! O Mores! This young man should be out getting drunk and not doing his homework. Are there no sidewalks he cannot be sprawled out upon? Is there no mindless activity he could not now be engaged in? If he insists on being a serious and responsible adult, shouldn't he at least be training to get a real job? Or starting a business?

Our wayward youth.

 

The Canadian Art of Pandering

The Bob steps in it:

According to a letter sent by the chairman of the Greek Community of Toronto, Nikonas Georgakopoulos, the Community expresses a strong opposition to the temporary leader of the Liberal Party, Bob Rae, due to the salutation of the Independence day of Fyrom as Democracy Day of Macedonia.

To those not in the know, including it seems the Bob, the Greeks object to Macedonia calling itself Macedonia, since there is a region of Greece also called Macedonia. Instead Macedonia is officially known as "former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia" or by its acronym FYROM. 

For we the distant observers this spectacle has the faint air of two beggars arguing over the naming of a cardboard box. But Bob is no ordinary observer. He's the "interim" Liberal leader and therefore must engage in that most time honoured of Liberal traditions, the ethnic pander. Along with that other hallowed tradition, the corporate shakedown by Grit bagmen, the art of the Liberal pander has been essential to the party's success since the days of Mackenzie King. Before then the Grits would occasionally fight on matters of principle. Many moons ago.

So Bob the Rebuilder, as Charles Adler calls him, accidentally pissed off the Greeks while trying to pander to the Macedonians. The life of a modern Canadian politician is not without its hazards. Yet should not the Bob, now well into the uglier precincts of middle age, not have grasped that most essential of democratic skills, electoral math. In Canada there are far more Greeks than Macedonians, therefore you pander to the Greeks and tactfully ignore the Macedonians. One of the reasons, perhaps, the Bob was premier for only a single term.

While multicultural themed pandering is certainly a blight in our politics, it is hardly new. John A Macdonald was a master at pandering to the Orange Irish, the Catholic Irish and the French Catholics, often within the same day. Much of politics is patronage and pandering. The Bob just goofed. Petty stuff in the back and forth of political life. These things happen. They also pale before the greatest pandering racket in the history of the Dominion, that directed at la belle province.

Quebec should join B.C., Alberta and Ontario in getting extra House of Commons seats when Canada's political map is next redrawn, says New Democratic Party leadership candidate Brian Topp.

Topp, first out of the starting gate Monday to replace the late Jack Layton, addressed the potentially divisive issue in advance of his first leadership campaign appearance in Western Canada on Tuesday.

He said giving extra seats to Quebec would be a way to recognize its status as a nation within Canada.

And all must have prizes. Parliamentary seats too. Mr Topp went onto say that we need to find "an appropriate Canadian compromise." That's political code for "shut up and cave into Quebec." Giving Quebec extra seats rather misses the point. The goal of giving more seats to the West and Ontario is to correct their under-representation in the House, moving us somewhat closer to the ideal of representation by population. Those with long historical memories may recall that rep by pop was one of the reasons the Fathers pushed for Confederation. It was certainly the main political goal of George Brown. 

Dead white men matter little in modern political discourse. What did they know? Should those DWM also have spoken English, rather than an appropriately oppressed language, we can safely dismiss their opinions as racist and reactionary. Even those of the abolitionists and reformers. In our enlightened age we have evolved past such silly nonsense as equality before the law, One Canada and individual rights. The French are special and so should be treated especially well.

To those beleaguered survivors of the Enlightenment, clinging to our batter copies of Locke and Smith, special privileges for members of a particular group sounds rather like blacksliding into tribalism. Saying that Quebec is a nation within a united Canada, as the Harper Tories did back in 2006, is saying there is no such thing as Canada. There can be no nation within a nation. To suggest otherwise is to invite tribal conflict.

In most countries such a policy would be dangerous, in a nation as diverse as Canada it is suicidal. How can we turn to the assembled ethnic groups that have come to Canada since the war and demand assimilation? If Quebec is a nation within a nation, not a subset of a wider whole but an actual nation, why cannot the Chinese of Vancouver or the Italians of St. Clair make the same demand? If there is no One Canada there is no Canada. 

Such thoughts, which should concern the statesman, trouble not our political leadership. Content are they to pander and to bribe those willing to kick up a fuss:

The air force won’t be able to meet the Harper government’s promises to create a new aviation unit in Quebec because it doesn’t have enough personnel, according to documents obtained by the Citizen.

Air force commander Lt.-Gen. André Deschamps has been told to come up with alternate ways to meet a 2007 promise by the Harper government to create a new air expeditionary wing at Bagotville, Que.

Hmm. Is the St Lawrence again being menaced by U-boats? Perhaps the Fenians are plotting additional raids. Why must Quebec have its own aviation unit? For the same reason it must have more seats than it deserves in the House of Commons. The Quebecois are different from you and me. They are from Quebec.

 

Bob and the Talkers

Please make it stop. 

The immediate solution to the leadership vacuum on the Canadian left is blindingly obvious: Bob Rae either rejoins his former party, or leads an NDP-Liberal coalition to victory over Stephen Harper.

It makes perfect sense. The Liberals are a tired, waning party led by one of the most articulate, engaging and experienced politicians in Ottawa. The New Democrats are bursting with new recruits and renewed vigour, but in desperate need of a seasoned, bilingual, likable leader.

It is well known that Bob "Super Elite" Rae has many friends in the MSM. Unique among former Ontario Premiers he even has groupies of a sort. In the aftermath of Jack Layton's death both MSMers and the groupies are working very hard to remove the "interim" from the Bob's current job title. Partly this is driven by desperation. There are very few plausible figures on the Left who can challenged the Harper Colossus. 

The Trudeaumaniacs, who are endemic to downtown Toronto, still whisper about young Justin making a bid, despite him approaching the ugly shores of middle age with a mediocre resume and a historonic speaking style. The son of Pierre seems to know that being an MP in a safe riding is pretty steady work. Why risk it with a leadership bid that will just demonstrate he's a lightweight?

Rae is an attractive figure on the Left because he embodies all that they hold dear. He went to the best schools (U of T, Oxford), advocates for the best causes (water downed socialism) and speaks eloquently in both official languages (bafflegaffe mostly but it sounds nice). The Bob is a smart and savvy talker for people who think of themselves as smart and savvy talkers. He's one of us and who doesn't want to be ruled by one of us?

The choir invisible of the MSM should not get their hopes up too much. Here is the Canadian Napoleon plotting the overthrow of the Harper Regime:

His strategy, he told the Liberal gathering, is to challenge Conservatives on their chosen turf, the economy, calling for a focus on growth instead of Harper's "forced march to austerity." Rae would counter Conservative calls for "cuts, cuts, cuts" - particularly dangerous at a time when global economies are contracting - with "jobs, jobs, jobs", he said.

Ah. Well then. I guess poor Angelo has got his work cut out for him spinning that away. Saying "jobs" repeatedly is about as original a political strategy as kissing babies and shaking hands. Boilerplate stuff like beginning a stump speech with "it's great to be here in Hicktown with all your fine folk." It's also not true. The Harper version of austerity has seen government spending increase at its fastest pace in a generation. With parsimony like that what's the Bob's idea of spendthrift?

Yet it sounds nice. People like jobs, or more precisely they fear not having one. Bob Rae sounds intelligent, well informed and amiable when speaking. After more than three decades in politics the Bob has nailed the tonal aspects of the game perfectly. He could be reading names out of a phone book and the Press Gallery hacks would still be swooning.

Tone matters in politics. Stephen Harper has been able to carry the CPC's base this far down the road to serfdom because he sounds and looks conservative. You can always trust a man in a fluffy blue sweater. Meanwhile on the opposite side of the aisle there is the Bob in his argyle sweater. Yet both men, satorial differences aside, are saying much the same thing. Here is the Prime Minister talking about "jobs":

In his Parliament Hill speech, Mr. Harper acknowledged his government must be “flexible” – meaning further Canadian stimulus measures may also be required if the economy worsens. That’s a clear change in tone from earlier this year, when erasing the deficit was the dominant Conservative priority after two years of stimulus spending.

That's your choice Canada: Bob "Spend Till You Drop" Rae versus Stephen "flexible with your money" Harper. Despite both men being intelligent, well educated and experienced in political affairs, neither of them offers concrete proof that stimulus spending actually works. In fact Stephen Harper, MA candidate, criticized the idea of Keynesian pump priming. Harper 2.0 seems to have different views of Lord Keynes.

There has been nothing in the economic history of the last century that would suggest "stimulus" spending can revive a moribund economy. Rather the opposite. When governments' rack up deficits businessness and consumers prepare for the inevitable tax hikes, or spending cuts, that will come once the bond market forces the Minister of Finance's hand. This leads them to reduce investment and employment, counteracting whatever benefits might be gained from government spending.

Let's be kind to Bob and Stephen and assume that Canadian consumers, employers and investors will swallow the bait. They respond to government spending with their own spending. What happens to all that stimulus spending? There is no such thing as a "shovel ready" project. Moderning zonning, planning and environmental assessment procedures mean that even building, or upgrading, a road can take months or years. By the time you actually get down to the actual stimulating the crisis is over, or you've run out of money.

The "bridges to nowhere" theory of economic development might sucker in the ordinary voter, victimized by decades of government run schooling, but do the men at the top really believe this nonsense? It probably doesn't matter. In politics nonsense sells. People want to hear that their problems will be solved, their freebies kept free and the world made safe for their way of life. Truth is the first casualty of political rhetoric.

Bob Rae is a great talker. Stephen Harper somewhat less so. Yet that is what both have done for almost all of their adult lives, just talk. Neither has ever run a business, think tanks (National Citizens Coalition) and law firms don't count since both are talk shops. Politicians talk but rarely have to do. The sort of people who do in Canada are busy paying everyone else's way. They don't want to waste their time talking to journalists, a class of people who write about other people's talking, or lobbyists whose work is even more ephemeral. The ruling classes are a gigantic echo chamber run at public expense.

 

 

A Bad Idea Reborn

Orange and Red?

Hard-liners in both parties will no doubt campaign for leadership conventions to be held before too many months, and it will be interesting, indeed, to see whether any in either party will speak up in favour of even preliminary discussion of the possibility of a merger that would be followed by a single leadership convention.

Of course, that raises the hypothetical question of who would be best suited to lead the new party.
As we see it, the person best qualified to take on the job is clearly Bob Rae.

Although currently the interim Liberal leader, Mr. Rae has unique credentials, not only as someone who has worked in both parties but also as the only opposition MP who has experience in running a government.

Yes, running it into the ground. Suggesting Bob Rae as a plausible candidate for 24 Sussex is like saying that the former executive team at Nortel should replace Steve Jobs. The editorial goes on to largely relieve the Bob of any blame for his disastrous reign, the fault lying with the recession of the early 1990s. Hmm. So why did Ontario underperform most of the jurisdictions in North America during Rae Days? Then from 1995 to 2003 we magically outperformed most of the continent. These are strange coincidences. 

Opposition does funny things to the mind. Those Right wingers with long enough memories will recall the dozen years of political wilderness between Kim's collapse and Harper's toe hold. After the 2000 election, in which Papa Jean did not so much defeat as tap dance around Stockwell Day, the Canadian Right slide into near madness. Flush with more recent successes most of these sordid details have since faded from political memory. 

Reform's lack luster finish in 1997 had already provoke conservative introspection. How could people keep voting for an ex-Trudeau cabinet minister with the scruples and manners of a ward heeler? Papa Jean looked and sounded like a stock junior minister from one of Maurice Duplessis later cabinets. Looking at the vote tallies the answer seemed simple: The Right was divided.

In many Ontario ridings the Grits were simply walking up the middle, capturing seats where the combined numbers for PCs and Reform were either a plurality or majority. Unite the Right, so the thinking went, and Papa Jean would have been kept to a minority. A few percentage points swing toward the boys in blue and the Governor General would be calling.

The first attempt at union was the Canadian Alliance, which was really just a repackaging of the Reform Party with more operational strength from Ontario. The goal was not so much to unite the Right as shove the Red Tories over at PC HQ into the shrubbery and move on. No such luck. Voting is often a tribal thing and large swaths of Ontario and the Maritimes would vote for a sack of potatoes painted blue.

Stock's thumping in 2000, plus some maladroit caucus management, provoked a back-bench rebellion the following year, culminating in the short-lived Chuck Strahl led Democratic Representative Caucus. Once Harper had replaced Stock as Canadian Alliance leader the DRC gang mostly returned to the fold. In 2003 Harper at last engineering a successful merger, a complex process that included running - literally - after Peter Mackay. Blessed by Tory grandees such as Bill Davis, Brian Mulroney and Don Mazankowski, the deal stuck and the rest is history.

I rehearse all this because of the light it sheds on the current Orange-Red merger chattering. Desperate politicians do desperate things, like create the DRC which was technically a splinter group from another splinter group. This sort of petty factionalism is best suited to the granola munchers on the far-Left, not the Tim Hortons and C-suite set of the Canadian Right. Still it happened.

Uniting the Right was bringing together two political parties that had once been one. There was an organizational, logistical and electoral logic in uniting the Right. There is very little logic in uniting the Left. While at the margins, the Dipper Right and Liberal Left, support has sometimes been porous, with members of one party jumping to the another out of electoral expediency, they are still two separate parties.

The old Liberal Party was an alliance of Quebec federalists (and some of the mushier nationalists), Ontario Blue Grits (business minded Liberals), Ontario ethnics and Maritime welfare addicts. The old NDP was a labour-farmer grouping that evolved to include urban professionals and ethnic groups not satisfied with the Liberals. These are culturally different amalgamations.

The Blue Grits, who have historically comprised the party's operational core outside of Toronto and Montreal, detest the NDP's water downed socialism. A union with the Dippers would push the Blue Grits over into the Conservative camp. With the Liberal advantage among ethnic voters now largely dissipated, that would  leave the party of Trudeau and Chretien with not much of anything. Putting the Bob at the head of such a motley coalition would guarantee decades of Tory rule.  Whatever that might do for the conservative cause in Canada.

"People are going to come back to us"

Like the little boy at the end of Shane? Come back Bob! Come back!

"While our defeat was serious, our defeat was not permanent," he said of the May election that left the Liberals with fewer than three dozen seats. "People are going to come back to us."

Members of the media were not allowed to attend the meeting but in an interview later Rae said there was an overwhelming concern over building strength within the organization and for the Liberals to fight back.

Bob Rae is not a stupid man. Foolish, economically illiterate, vain while affecting a lovable dorkish manner but not in the usual sense stupid. Nor is the former Premier especially young, even by political standards, turning 63 earlier this month. So why is he doing all this?

A fully paid up member of the Super Elite, in his own words, the Bob must have better things to do with his time than try to rebuild the Liberal Party brand. You don't see David Peterson, whom Rae trounced back in 1990, out their doing the rubber donut and overheated coffee circuit. A comparison is often drawn between Bob's current efforts and those of Jean Charest post-1993. The current Quebec Premier and former PC leader faced a much steeper climb in the mid-1990s, he was also a much younger man.

Jean Charest in 1993 was a thirty-five year-old up and comer whose party of choice, rather unfortunately for him, had a political implosion of historic proportions. It made sense, looking very long-term, to take what was left of the Tory machine and rebuild it as best he could. Charest knew he didn't have a chance in heck of returning to power federally. But by making the best of a bad situation he would earn huge merit points with the political elite on all sides.

His success in 1997, raising the Tory near dead to a semi-comatose state, was an impressive enough feat that he was able to jump into the Quebec Liberal leadership in 1998, nearly knocking the Bloc out of power in that year's election. He won outright in 2003 and has hung onto the Premier's chair with the tenacity of a terrier since then.

It was a shrewd game plan, though like most political strategies it was partly accidental. Does anything Charest did sound like a plausible strategy for Bob Rae? What is the Bob after? Aside from a first class seat on Air Canada and the divine right to bump obscure writers?

It's not money, Rae could make more in private practice, even though he is not in the rainmaker class of Peterson or Mulroney. Groupies? There is such a thing as a Rae Groupie. They are typically middle aged professionals with horn rimmed glasses, eagerly reciting the latest Globe and Mail lifestyle piece on living in Campania.

Most are lawyers, higher end interior designers, journalists, university professors (or prof wannabes) and the odd CFP or CFA. Few are engaged enough in politics to form the nucleus of a fully fledged organization, they are few enough in number overall to be electorally irrelevant outside of downtown Toronto. Bob Rae is Liberal leader because no one else was crazy enough to take the job, and because this small and somewhat enthusiastic group keeps plugging for him. They will also keep plugging for him until the "interim" gets dropped from his title.

Barring the most bizarre string of political disasters, say Stephen Harper falling into the Rideau Canal and being replaced by Belinda "Minister of Complex Files" Stronach, it's going to take at least two elections to get the Tories out of power. That's assuming the economic winds continue to blow ill and people blame the Big Blue Harper machine. At best the Bob can hope to be in Stornaway in the summer of 2015, at which point he will be 67 and approaching the ugly side of seventy. All for what?

The most compelling explanation is vanity. Not the usual sort of vanity that drives people to seek fame and fortune. There is nothing very glamorous about leading a third place, and arguably third-rate, party out of the political basement. Any gains will be inherited by younger and nimbler men than yourself. No, Bob is a political addict.

Only addiction can explain why a man, lacking neither in skill or eloquence, who was handed so thumping a defeat in 1995, would seek to re-enter politics a decade later. The need of the crowd cheering you on. The painful white lights of the camera crews. For some people such a life is a terror, to others an adrenaline rush. Bob Rae needs politics and he'll take his hit anyway he can get it, even if that means leading the Liberal Party of Canada.