All eyes on Ignatieff

[a_majoor]

So, in conjuction with Edwards posting immediately below, he has somehow managed to become both philosopher king and the national village idiot at the same time? Big surprise there.

More like the Emperor and his clothes. As long as you ignore the "fabric" of his policy robes, he can still seem to be the Philosopher King.

Like I said, my take is he seems to be trying to trim his sails to catch the prevailing political breeze, so we will probably end up with the "Dithering King" instead.

 

[GAP]

Whether it is Ignatieff or one of the other hopefuls, I think you are going to find something similar to what has happened each time a long term PM has been replaced. The opposition becomes the government, in this case the Conservatives, with either a majority or a likelyhood of a majority in the next election. The new leader of the former government that got turfed, rushes in with high hopes of being PM in waiting, only to discover that he/she is nothing more than a caretaker (see: Turner, Cambell, etc).
Why do you think all the supposedly "Power Houses" backed out??..There's nothing in it for them and they don't want the loneliness of being a nothing leader of a nothing party.  Watch the leadership reviews 2 to 4 years (depending on how well the Conservatives do) for the next leader of the Liberal Party

 

[exsemjingo]

Are people still talking about Micheal "Soviet Union" Ignatieff?

In my opinion, should anyone support him as a canidate for the Liberal leadership, it would only be because they though that would destroy thier chances of winning the next election.
That said, I wholeheartedly support his bid for leadership of the Liberal Party.  Conservative Majority, here we come!

 

[Edward Campbell]

I am posting this in two threads: All eyes on Ignatieff and What Countries Should be Part of the Lebanon Security Force?? (pace, Mods) because, despite the fact that Bob Rae has raised the most money and that some pundits note that Martha Hall Findlay is the dark horse who might be the late vote compromise at a convention, Ignatieff is still the front runner  in the Liberal leadership race and he might be prime minister of Canada in a few years; what he thinks and suggests, therefore, should matter.

Here is what he says, as quoted in today’s Globe and Mail (reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act) (my emphasis added):

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20060803.IGNATIEFF03/TPStory/

Ignatieff details ceasefire proposal

BRIAN LAGHI
OTTAWA BUREAU CHIEF

Michael Ignatieff has elaborated on his plan for creating a ceasefire in the Middle East, saying it can probably only happen if Israel continues to apply military pressure to get Hezbollah to the negotiating table.

Mr. Ignatieff wrote in an opinion piece, published earlier this week in The Globe and Mail, of his desire to see a ceasefire.

He said in the interview that a ceasefire could take effect only if Hezbollah agrees to talk, which will happen only after a sustained military action on behalf of Israel. "I'm a realist," said Mr. Ignatieff, considered the front-runner in the race to become the next Liberal leader.

"I understand that a terrorist militia -- and that's what Hezbollah is -- is not going to accept a ceasefire unless it believes it's in its advantage to do so and it will only believe it's in its advantage to do so if it's under severe military duress."

The Ignatieff position surprised at least one senior Liberal this week, who said the former Harvard academic may have realized that it's a good idea to maintain some distance from the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush.

Mr. Ignatieff already supported extending the Canadian mission in Afghanistan and backed the U.S. mission in Iraq when he was in academia.

In his submission, Mr. Ignatieff said after a ceasefire is agreed to, a country such as Canada should propose and take part in an international interdiction force that could prevent missiles and military technology from entering Lebanon, where it would be used to assault Israel. He explained that despite a porous and long border, the heavy artillery that would have to come into Lebanon would do so through the road system, where it could be stopped. Israel has also been successful in intercepting Iranian shipments on the high seas, a process that Canada has helped with in the Persian Gulf in the past.

"None of this is easy," he said.

Mr. Ignatieff said Canada can play a particularly useful role in the current conflict, because the United States is so busy in other areas.

"Canada can play a constructive and useful role, but time is running here and we've got to get moving," he said, noting that an escalation in the region that brought in other countries would be a disaster for the global economy and global security in general.

He added that he hasn't heard any concerns from the Jewish community in Canada, some of whose members are anxious about the Liberal position, which is more nuanced than that of the Conservatives, who have argued that the Israeli response in Lebanon is a measured one.

I think there are three points worthy of note:

• Ignatieff proposes that Canada should join whatever peacekeeping force is authorized;

• Ignatieff does not propose that the aim should be to disband Hezbollah – rather he suggests that it will be sufficient to ” prevent missiles and military technology from entering Lebanon, where it would be used to assault Israel”; and

• Ignatieff proposes that Canada act, in part, as a surrogate for the US.

The views of the politically active (and generous – in money, skill and time) Jewish community are reported to be of concern to the Liberal Party’s brain-trust.  Some fear that important Jewish community leaders/members will, at best sit on their hands (and wallets) in the next election or, worse (for the Liberals) actively support the Conservatives.  The larger and generally loyally Liberal Arab/Islamic communities are, I hear, regarded as less important because they are less politically active, less wealthy/generous and their active support is also seen as a disadvantage.

 

[PPCLI Guy]

Let's be honest here - if we weren't in AStan, we would be all over this like a fat kid on a Timbit, or a Logggie on the last slice of pie...

 

[Edward Campbell]

I am posting this in two threads: All eyes on Ignatieff and What Countries Should be Part of the Lebanon Security Force?? (pace, Mods) because, despite the fact that Bob Rae has raised the most money and that some pundits note that Martha Hall Findlay is the dark horse who might be the late vote compromise at a convention, Ignatieff is still the front runner  in the Liberal leadership race and he might be prime minister of Canada in a few years; what he thinks and suggests, therefore, should matter.

Here is what he says, as quoted in today’s Globe and Mail (reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act) (my emphasis added):

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20060803.IGNATIEFF03/TPStory/
I think there are three points worthy of note:

• Ignatieff proposes that Canada should join whatever peacekeeping force is authorized;

• Ignatieff does not propose that the aim should be to disband Hezbollah – rather he suggests that it will be sufficient to ” prevent missiles and military technology from entering Lebanon, where it would be used to assault Israel”; and

• Ignatieff proposes that Canada act, in part, as a surrogate for the US.

The views of the politically active (and generous – in money, skill and time) Jewish community are reported to be of concern to the Liberal Party’s brain-trust.  Some fear that important Jewish community leaders/members will, at best sit on their hands (and wallets) in the next election or, worse (for the Liberals) actively support the Conservatives.  The larger and generally loyally Liberal Arab/Islamic communities are, I hear, regarded as less important because they are less politically active, less wealthy/generous and their active support is also seen as a disadvantage.

This is related to the last point in the earlier article.  It is from today’s Globe and Mail and is reproduced here under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.

Liberal power couple back Harper on Mideast

CAMPBELL CLARK

OTTAWA -- Liberal power couple Heather Reisman and Gerry Schwartz have publicly broken with the Liberal Party line on the Middle East crisis and are turning to Prime Minister Stephen Harper because of his support of Israel.

Mr. Schwartz, a confidante of former prime minister Paul Martin and one of Canada's most influential businessmen as the head of Onex Corp., is one of the eight signatories of an advertisement placed in a newspaper in Cornwall, Ont., where the Conservatives are holding caucus meetings.

The ad welcomes the caucus to Cornwall and expresses appreciation to Mr. Harper, Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay and Conservative MPs for "standing by" Israel. It also lauds other G8 leaders and Australian Prime Minister John Howard for their stands on the war.

Mr. Schwartz's wife, Ms. Reisman, says she is leaving the party to support the Conservatives under Stephen Harper.

Mr. Harper has expressed firm support for Israel during the Middle East war. It's not clear whether Mr. Schwartz is also leaving the Liberals for the Conservatives.

In an e-mail to friends, Ms. Reisman applauded film producer Robert Lantos's statement at a weekend rally that he would "hereby take off [his] life-long federal Liberal hat."

"I [am] right there alongside Robert. . . . after a lifetime of being a Liberal, I have made the switch," Ms. Reisman wrote. "Feels strange, but totally and unequivocally right."

A recipient of the e-mail confirmed that Ms. Reisman, who was the Liberal Party of Canada's policy chairwoman in the 1980s and who worked for Pierre Trudeau in his first election in 1965, had sent the e-mail to several friends, and that she has told others the same thing.

"She has told her friends in person and in e-mails that she is supporting the Conservatives under Stephen Harper this time," a close friend said yesterday. "She thinks that his position on the Lebanon issue is the right one."

The philanthropic business couple is reacting to Mr. Harper's early support for Israel's strong military response to the capture of its soldiers by Hezbollah forces crossing into Israel three weeks ago and the shelling of its northern territory.

On July 17, Mr. Schwartz observed that: "Earlier this year, Prime Minister Harper demonstrated great courage in expressing opposition to the new Hamas government -- a position quickly adopted by the international community. Today, the Prime Minister has again assumed a leadership role through his unequivocal support of Israel's right to defend itself against terrorism.''

Much of the ire of the prominent Liberals who are lauding Mr. Harper is directed at interim Liberal leader Bill Graham, who criticized Mr. Harper's strong support of Israel, saying it will harm Canada's credibility as an arbitrator in world crises.

In a piece for The Globe and Mail clarifying the party's position this week, Mr. Graham said Mr. Harper's government is risking Canada's ability to act as a peacekeeper and honest broker, and may be jeopardizing domestic harmony.

Several of the Liberal leadership candidates, including front-runner Michael Ignatieff, have also been critical of Mr. Harper's position, and have called for Canada to press efforts for a ceasefire.

Senator Jerry Grafstein said that Mr. Graham's stand has distorted the traditional Liberal position of supporting countries when they are attacked by a "clear-cut aggressor," because, in this instance, Hezbollah is the aggressor whose aims are to extinguish the democratic state of Israel.

This time, Liberals are calling for neutrality even though Hezbollah is the aggressor, he said, and a ceasefire without a robust military peacekeeping force will only allow Hezbollah to rearm in Lebanon.

"I'm confused by that, and a lot of Liberals are confused by that," Mr. Grafstein said.

Two Liberal leadership candidates, Joe Volpe and Scott Brison, have backed Israel, Mr. Grafstein said. "The rest of the candidates are all over the place."

But Mr. Grafstein said he doesn't agree with leaving the party over the issue, saying the best tack is to stay and convince people of his position.

"That's their decision. But for me, what I want to try to do, is to convince my colleagues to look at the facts."

The Liberal Party has traditionally enjoyed strong support in Canada's Jewish community, but now there are questions as to whether Mr. Harper's stand may win their backing. The movement of prominent lifetime Liberals like Mr. Schwartz and Ms. Reisman suggests that is a very real possibility.

Organizers for several Liberal leadership candidates have said Canadian Muslims have signed up in relatively large numbers -- and many are dismayed when a candidate takes a strong pro-Israel stand in the current war.

Mr. Volpe's former campaign manager, Scarborough MP Jim Karygiannis, left the campaign over a disagreement with Mr. Volpe's strong pro-Israel stand.

This issue is divisive amongst all Canadians – Liberals are no different.

I am, relatively, shocked by the depth of emotion which this issue creates amongst Canadians who are neither Jews nor Muslims and who have had little if any contact with the region.  I am even more shocked by the reactions of those who neither Jewish nor Muslim and who have had some experience in the region.  The latter should know that this is an intractable problem for which negotiation and compromise are of dubious utility.  As I have said elsewhere: we had best prepare ourselves to receive tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees when – as I believe will be the case – one or another radical Islamic movement or government manages to mate a nuclear or chemical warhead to a sufficiently long range missile or manages to smuggle a so called suitcase nuke into Israel.  That will provoke a full scale nuclear/chemical war which will result in the destruction of Israel and the death of tens of millions of Arabs in the firestorms which will result from Israel’s awful, massive retaliation.

A friend, an active Liberal, opined in a recent E-mail that massive, visible Muslim support for some Liberal candidates (and the consequential visible opposition to others) will hurt the party.  My friend worried that some newspapers and (worse) TV stations will report extensively on Muslims making violently anti-Semitic and anti-Western remarks in front of Liberal Party of Canada banners.

 

[Good2Golf]

Let's be honest here - if we weren't in AStan, we would be all over this like a fat kid on a Timbit, or a Logggie on the last slice of pie...

...unless it's a KBR piece of pie.... 

 

[Edward Campbell]

Here is an excellent counterpoint to Michael Ignatieff’s recent musings re: peace in the Middle East from  Lysiane Gagnon (my choice for PM of Canada!) of La presse, writing in today’s Globe and Mail.  Her column is reproduced here (with my emphasis added) under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.

Is Ignatieff now too Canadian?

LYSIANE GAGNON

Three weeks after the beginning of the latest Middle East crisis, Michael Ignatieff, the purported front-runner in the Liberal leadership race, finally came back from holidays to present his position on the issue, in an op-ed article published in this newspaper.

His belated stand is somewhat troubling, coming from a renowned specialist on human rights. Nowhere in his opinion piece does he distribute moral blame; nowhere does he chastise Hezbollah for starting the conflict, for hiding behind civilians and for aiming at the destruction of Israel.

Instead, Mr. Ignatieff espouses an eschatological view: Both sides, he claims, are engaged in "this march to the abyss," the abyss being the risk of a nuclear war between Israel and Iran. He believes that Hezbollah cannot be defeated, so Israel should withdraw from Lebanon, go back to square one and pray that an "international force" can protect its inhabitants from Hezbollah's attacks.

"Canada should be saying to Israel that there are no further military options in Lebanon that do not risk destroying Lebanon and ultimately endangering its own security," Mr. Ignatieff writes. If he were the PM, would he really have the chutzpah to call Ehud Olmert and tell him he knows better than Israel what's good for Israel?

Actually, Mr. Ignatieff seems more worried about what the crisis does to Canada. "The conflict is sowing discord among us," he laments -- as if in Canada, as elsewhere, the Mideast conflict hasn't been controversial for decades.

His Canada-centred view of the conflict then takes a strange turn. He thinks Canada can play a major role because it is "a country of peace-makers" with "a special vocation for peace." This vocation, he says in a very questionable assertion, comes from Canada's being "a country of immigrants."

A special vocation for peace? Does this mean that other nations have a special liking for war? Canada has no such "vocation." It has just been very lucky never to have had a war on its territory since Confederation.

A country of peace-makers? Far from it. Canadians bravely fought alongside their natural allies in all of the 20th century's major conflicts, the sole exceptions being the wars in Vietnam and Iraq. As for Canada's much-touted, albeit fictional, role as an "honest broker" in recent world conflicts (this is the mantra of the opposition parties), one would be hard-pressed to find a case where Canada played a key role in bringing belligerents to a peace agreement. (We tried in Haiti, but without much success.)

Like other Liberal luminaries, Mr. Ignatieff calls for an immediate ceasefire and the deployment of an international force. The former Harvard professor is a bit more explicit than his colleagues, though. He suggests the international force "should be deployed at all Lebanese ports and land borders" and "should be authorized by the Security Council to seize any weapons destined for Hezbollah." But, in an apparent contradiction, he then says the force should not "engage in direct confrontation with Hezbollah or with the Israelis." Missiles are not delivered by FedEx. Wouldn't seizing them necessitate a confrontation with Hezbollah?

And Mr. Ignatieff doesn't explain how a United Nations-led force patrolling a buffer zone between Israel and Lebanon would be more effective than the existing UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), which was supposed to prevent cross-border attacks and to supervise the disarmament of Hezbollah after Israel retreated from Lebanon in 2000. A collection of teddy bears wouldn't have been less efficient than UNIFIL. For six years, its observers watched passively as Hezbollah fired rockets into Israel.

On the whole, Mr. Ignatieff's position on the Middle East is in perfect sync with his party's (as well as with the polls). What is truly original is his inflated view of Canada as a country whose mission is to bring peace to the world.

But then, maybe Mr. Ignatieff felt the need to ingratiate himself with those who suspect him (unfairly, I think) of not being "Canadian" enough and of being a warmonger cozying up to the Americans. Now he embraces Canada to the point of going overboard.

lgagnon@lapresse.ca

This should be required reading in both the Conservative and Liberal lobbies on the Hill.

The ”march to the abyss” is, I repeat, the most likely outcome and, in this case, I suspect Ignatieff is more ‘right’ than Gagnon: both sides are marching in lock-step; neither has the wherewithal to fight this war in any other way.  Israel is a modern, liberal-democratic nation-state which is bound by and generally follows the “laws and usages of war” while Hezbollah is a movement (mass movement?) with one clear, focussed aim; it is totally unconstrained by any 19th and 20th century Euro-centric ideas about ”humane warfare”.  If, as I suspect might be the case, a nihilistic terrorist organization cannot be subdued by ”conventional” military operations and an Islamic nuke is inevitable then we see the edge of the abyss.

On the other hand: Ignatieff and his backers are smart Liberals.  Power is their clear, focussed aim and they are totally unconstrained by such 19th and even 20th century ideas like intellectual consistency and morality in public service.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Here is an interesting backgrounder, from today’s Globe and Mail, which ties all the way back to the start of this thread: Michael Ignatieff’s address to the Liberal Party of Canada’s convention.

One of the things I find interesting is that Ian Davey wasn’t looking for Ignatieff, per se, just for a certain type who would provide continuity in power.

Here it is, reproduced here under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20060807.DAVEY07/TPStory/TPNational/Politics/ 

Rainmaker's son keeps legacy afloat

Senior political writer JANE TABER explains how a famous father's off-the-cuff remark gave birth to Michael Ignatieff's Liberal leadership campaign

JANE TABER

OTTAWA -- Sadly, Keith Davey, the Rainmaker, will never know how this story ends, a story whose narrative he inspired.

His 48-year-old son, Ian, has picked up in politics where his father left off so many years ago, and is now attempting to write the conclusion -- one that will see Michael Ignatieff win the leadership of the Liberal Party and eventually become prime minister.

Ian Davey is the director of Mr. Ignatieff's leadership campaign.

Ian's father, the famous Rainmaker -- so dubbed by Globe and Mail columnist Scott Young in the 1960s for his bold and sometimes ruthless political manoeuvres -- is 80 years old and suffers from Alzheimer's disease.

Legendary in Liberal circles for his inclusive style and political backroom savvy, the former Liberal senator now lives in a residence in Toronto where he knows that his wife, sons and daughter are important to him but he doesn't know why.

But in January of 1998, Keith Davey, his political antenna still well intact, told his friend, long-time Liberal Rocco Rossi: "That guy should be prime minister one day."

That guy was Michael Ignatieff.

Mr. Davey made the observation after listening to Mr. Ignatieff, then a scholar living in the U.K., deliver the second Keith Davey Lecture.

His topic was "Does the Liberal Imagination Have a Future?"

The Davey lecture series had begun the year before; renowned economist John Kenneth Galbraith delivered the first one. It was established at the University of Toronto's Victoria College (Mr. Davey's alma mater) by his friends and family to honour his retirement from the Senate and his contribution to public life.

Mr. Rossi, the chief executive officer of the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Ontario, has always remembered that casual observation.

And so it came to pass that in May of 2004, Mr. Rossi was having lunch at a Toronto restaurant with Ian Davey, the middle child and second son of Keith, and a man on a mission.

A filmmaker and veteran Liberal, he is not your typical backroom boy lurking around the capital. Although he is the spitting image of his father -- having inherited the bushy eyebrows that shutter the eyes, the height, the presence and the lumbering gait -- few know him in political Ottawa.

Indeed, Ian Davey has stayed in Toronto, sticking close to his Don Mills roots, helping on campaigns but always in the background.

His one foray on to the Ottawa scene, as the senior strategist on John Manley's 2003 leadership campaign, was brief and ended badly with other strategists disagreeing with Mr. Davey's advice.

Mr. Davey left the campaign abruptly, and Mr. Manley eventually dropped out of the race against Paul Martin.

But Mr. Davey did not give up. In 2004 he and several of his political friends set out on a quest to find the next Liberal leader.

"We were looking for people that could come in and get involved in political life who were outside the political framework," Mr. Davey said in a recent interview.

"The idea was to get somebody to run, a notable person to come in and then go into cabinet, get some experience, and then when Paul Martin steps aside you'd have somebody that could or couldn't be a good candidate [for the leadership]."

Mr. Davey said the search was initiated partly because of the damage inflicted on Liberals by the sponsorship scandal and partly from a sense that it was time for someone "who wasn't a politician to get involved in public life."

For too long, he felt, the Liberal Party had been closed and cliquey. He and some of his friends thought renewal, new blood and new ideas were in order.

"You've got to be able to put the establishment part of the party, the lifetime Liberals who go and fight for you every day and, you've got to bring new people to it and put the two together and that's what the party has to do," said Mr. Davey, who clearly leans to the left.

The group collected a long list of names, but none were compelling.

And so back to the lunch in May with Mr. Rossi during which Mr. Davey explained his mission. As Mr. Davey recalled: "[Mr. Rossi] says to me, 'Well the only name I've got you're not going to believe where I got it.' He says, 'I'm at the Keith Davey Lecture . . . at the end of it your father walks out and says to me that guy should be prime minister one day.' "

Clearly intrigued, Mr. Davey asked, "Okay, which lecture?"

"He said, 'Michael Ignatieff's.' A light bulb goes off in my head."

Mr. Davey also remembered that lecture, where Mr. Ignatieff's intellect impressed him. So he got to work cold-calling the academic who was, at this point, teaching at Harvard University.

His father taught him that to succeed in politics, you have to attract the best and the brightest.

In late 2004, together with Alf Apps and Dan Brock (both successful Toronto lawyers who had worked on the Manley campaign), Mr. Davey travelled to Massachusetts to meet with Mr. Ignatieff.

"He was flattered by the idea and kind of shocked," Mr. Davey said about their initial meeting. "I think he was interested but not overwhelmed. . . . My point to Michael was, 'Come and try this and go and talk to the Martin people in the PMO, we'll find you a seat. You come in and do it, come in cabinet and see if you like it. You might not even like it. . . . You might get into this and say this isn't for me.' "

One thing led to another and Mr. Davey and his friends arranged for Mr. Ignatieff to speak at the Liberal Party's policy convention in March, 2005, in Ottawa. "But at that point it was just an idea [running for a seat and the leadership]. It wasn't something that was real," Mr. Davey said. "We hadn't talked to the party or the Martin people about Michael doing this. . . . We didn't know if this was something that would appeal to him, let alone if it would appeal on the other side."

In the end, it appealed to both sides and within months -- after having to convince the senior Martin strategists, who were being rather difficult, that it would be a good thing to find a riding for Mr. Ignatieff -- the former professor had a seat in the House of Commons and was on his way to seek the leadership of the party.

He is now considered the front-runner to win the vote this December at the Liberal convention in Montreal.

"One of the unfortunate sidebars to the story is that there is a possibility that what [my father] said could come true, and he'll never know," Mr. Davey said.

 

[MarkOttawa]

And a rip at Mickey I. from John Robson of the Ottawa Citizen:

Wake up, Mr. Ignatieff, please wake up
http://www.thejohnrobson.com/columns/2006/060804.htm

Excerpts:

'Dreamland is a place where the enemies of the West cannot be defeated militarily or politically and Canada is a neutral nation that speaks with a voice like thunder. Where something called "pressure" is forever building on right-wing politicians to do what left-wing journalists want and we trust news stories filed under the watchful eye of Hezbollah guys with guns.

And Michael Ignatieff, a certified Deep Thinker, just hurled a thick sheaf of nonsense into my file with his Aug. 1 statement on the Middle East.

One cannot even take seriously his initial warning that "Hezbollah's strategy is to lure Israel into an escalation of violence that will radicalize the Arab world and cause Israel to lose its remaining international support." Would that be the Arab world where the grand mufti of Jerusalem spent the Second World War in Berlin urging Hitler to bomb Tel Aviv? Where the secretary-general of the Arab League in 1948 predicted "a war of extermination and a momentous massacre"? Where the Protocols of the Elders of Zion is widely available, government newspapers explain how Jews put the blood of gentile children in Purim pastries, and the answer to any problem from corruption to poverty is a public chant of "Death to Israel, Death to America"? Shall we take policy advice from a man who fears the consequences if these people now get "radicalized"? Phooey...

...we get Mr. Ignatieff's own "solution" that, improbably, manages to be even more absurd: "Canada ... should call for an immediate ceasefire, authorized by the Security Council. It should line up with the Europeans and moderate Arab states ... Israeli forces would withdraw, aerial bombardment would cease and Hezbollah would stop rocket attacks and incursions into Israeli territory. Once a cease-fire has taken hold, Canada should propose the deployment of an international naval, air and land force to prevent the movement of missiles and other military technology into Lebanon.... authorized by the UN Security Council to seize any weapons destined for Hezbollah or any non-state actor ... Such a force would not engage in direct confrontation with Hezbollah or with the Israelis but patrol a buffer zone between them." We're lost in the "woulds" of dreamland here. Hezbollah won't stop trying to kill Jews until someone does "engage in direct confrontation" with them. It's the whole reason we're in this mess...

Mr. Ignatieff winds up (or down): "As a nation of immigrants from the zones of war, we have a special vocation for peace, and it is by exercising this vocation that we maintain our unity as a people. We have a voice that other countries listen to. Let us use it." I didn't even know most of us came from war zones, and if other countries listen to our voice, how come Cuba got more votes for the new UN Human Rights Council than we did? But see, it doesn't matter. It's not about the Middle East. It's about us. We maintain our unity as a people by yelling into our own navels in response to foreign crises. It's both goofy and repellent...'

Mark
Ottawa

 

[Edward Campbell]

Inevitably the media backlash has begun.

Here are two opinion pieces from today’s Globe and Mail – by Jeffrey Simpson and Rex Murphy; they are reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060901.wxcosimp02/BNStory/National/home

It's all about Ignatieff— but it shouldn't be

JEFFREY SIMPSON
From Saturday's Globe and Mail

Now that the Canadian media have all but anointed Michael Ignatieff as the next Liberal leader, what will the other candidates do for attention?

In a two-week stretch just ended, Mr. Ignatieff got full coverage of his environment comments (in contrast to former environment minister Stéphane Dion's statement this week that was largely ignored), a seven-page profile in this paper, a full-page interview in the Toronto Star and four pages in Maclean's to outline his “vision” for Canada.

The media's laying on of the hands will not elect Mr. Ignatieff, but it will certainly help. Details of what's written aside, the avalanche of coverage, contrasted with the absence of comparable attention for other candidates, creates the impression of an unstoppable campaign that wavering Liberals would be wise to join lest they be stuck with a loser.

There's no doubt that the Ignatieff campaign enjoys impressive support all across the Liberal spectrum. Take Yukon, for example. There, MP Larry Bagnell recently endorsed Mr. Ignatieff. Larry Who? Well, Mr. Bagnell is hugely popular in Yukon, which, because of the aboriginal and northern allotment for delegates, has more than the usual 12 delegates for each riding.

Mr. Bagnell will deliver most of Yukon's votes to Mr. Ignatieff, who, by virtue of being out of Canada for 30 years, knows Yukon less by first-hand experience than other candidates who, as former ministers or a provincial premier, will have visited the place.

No matter. A Larry Bagnell in Yukon or a Doug Richardson in Saskatchewan or a Denis Coderre in Quebec or a Senator David Smith in Ontario will get the organizational work done and the delegates elected for Mr. Ignatieff because they think, presumably as the media do, that he is the “new, new thing” in Canadian politics — interesting, arresting and alluring.

Of course, the Ignatieff campaign is not unstoppable when the candidate goes off script.

This week, Mr. Ignatieff told the Toronto Star that he wasn't committed to running in the next election if he failed to win the leadership. The questions he answered were straightforward, not hypothetical as he insisted the next day when he changed his answer to: I'm running regardless.

His first answer, to the Star, was the one he had given publicly before. There was nothing new in it. That had been his script. It presumably represented his genuine intentions: to take stock after the leadership convention and then decide his future career.

Which, of course, would lead Liberals to ask: Is this race about Michael Ignatieff or is it about the Liberal Party? After all, while Mr. Dion (for example) was taking ferocious abuse in Quebec for defending federalism as a Liberal cabinet minister, Mr. Ignatieff was lecturing at Harvard University.

Mr. Dion could have returned to teaching, saying who needs this: cartoonists making him look like a rat, separatists calling him a traitor, former academic colleagues excoriating him. Instead, he fought the good fight. He didn't say, well, I'll see how things turn out, then ruminate on my future. Even when stupidly spurned as a Chrétien minister by the Martinites, Mr. Dion kept working and was eventually rewarded with re-entry into the cabinet.

Mr. Dion is not the “new, new thing.” The media presumably think of him as someone the country knows, which is a complete media conceit. If we know anything about public opinion, it is that the vast majority of people have somewhere between zero and impressionistic information about all federal politicians except the prime minister.

A poll taken three years after the Mulroney government was elected in 1984 found that barely a third of the respondents could even name the finance minister (Michael Wilson). Most of the other Mulroney ministers were recognized, if they were at all, by fewer than 20 per cent of the respondents.

The disproportionate attention paid to Mr. Ignatieff is presumably rationalized because he is less well known. That presumption assumes, quite wrongly, that people know the other candidates.

Indeed, anyone who reads serious publications probably knows a great deal more about Mr. Ignatieff than any of the other candidates, including his reflections on the meaning of history, the relationship of individuals to society, the definitional pulls of ethnicity and language, and the reasons why invading Iraq were so compelling.

Gerard Kennedy was a minister in Ontario. Who had ever heard of him outside the province, let alone inside? Bob Rae hasn't been in politics for years. Who knows what he thinks about today?

True, Mr. Dion has been around for years, but was working largely in federal-provincial affairs and environment portfolios. Who knows what he thinks about managing an economy or tackling aboriginal problems? Is Maclean's going to give him — or the others — four pages to outline his “vision” and put his face on the cover of the magazine? Is my own esteemed newspaper going to offer a seven-page profile about Mr. Dion's pre-political career — he wrote an awful lot as an academic — or that of Mr. Rae to match Michael Valpy's outstanding profile of Mr. Ignatieff?

Maybe these things will happen in a race that has already gone on too long and will not conclude for another three months. And maybe if these things happen, Mr. Ignatieff will still win, and rightly so, because when every candidate's ideas and persona have been exposed and parsed, he will have deserved his victory as the best candidate on offer.

We are yet a long way from that state of affairs.

jsimpson@globeandmail.com

As is so often the case the Canadian media is preoccupied with <drum roll> and <surprise, Surprise!> the Canadian media and, equally surprising the print media is preoccupied with the print media’s contributions to the political debate.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060901.wxcomurphy02/BNStory/National/home

So how new is the new guy?

REX MURPHY
From Saturday's Globe and Mail

The Ignatieff campaign for the Liberal leadership took a severe hit this week. The hit was self-administered. In politics, all the good smacks really are. Bill Clinton was mauled by the Republicans relentlessly, but the nuclear hit on his presidency was all his own: “Drop by some time, Monica.”

Michael Ignatieff was asked by the editorial board of the Toronto Star whether he would run again for Parliament if he did not win the Liberal leadership. His open-ended reply: “Depends who's leader.”

That's very close to being a terse version of the schoolyard whine: “If I don't win, I'm taking my marbles and going home.”

It earned Mr. Ignatieff a headline the next day that fell like a wrench into the guts of his campaign machine: If He Loses, Will He Quit?

Mr. Ignatieff is a novice in Canadian politics — heck, he's a novice in Canada — and to indicate that, should he not become top dog on his first try, he might leave the game altogether seems immensely self-focused, even prideful. Mr. Ignatieff is a very capable contender, but he's a few birdies short yet of being the Tiger Woods of Parliament Hill.

It was a hit of double force for Mr. Ignatieff. If another candidate — let us say Stéphane Dion — had been asked the same question and given the same reply, the worst that could be said of Mr. Dion would have been that he was showing signs of being a poor loser. Mr. Dion, as opposed to Mr. Ignatieff, could quite properly lay claim to having done a fair bit for Canadian politics already.

Mr. Dion, as that wonderful theatrical expression has it, has “paid his dues.” Whereas, up to now at least, within Canada, Mr. Ignatieff's entire contribution to Canadian politics since his return to this country after 30 years of living outside of it, has been either to situate himself to run for the Liberal leadership or, as now, to actually run for it.

He's missed a lot of Canada during those 30 years, from the night of the near-death referendum when, for a couple of hyper-anxious hours, it was plausible that the great experiment of this country was about to be halted for good, to a thousand lesser moments and lesser common experiences that have shaped our continuous identity. A whole lot of Canada has been happening while Mr. Ignatieff was away and, while he may have read the newspapers or trawled the Internet, receiving the common experience of a country as “news” is not the same as living it. Being absent from the day-to-day life of a country for three decades is not an ideal tutorial for planning to govern it.

Distance and remove place an embargo on a certain kind of learning.

Every country has its codes and nuances, its special idioms of encounter and response, the texture and tone of a national identity, all of which are only acquired via the pulses of lived experience. They are not so much facts to be ticked off a list, as gradually acquired and always evolving insights, acquired over time. There is not any “next best thing” to being here.

Knowing this country in any depth or intimacy, sensing its regional and ethnic energies, understanding the immense varieties of its many “politics,” appreciating the ebb and flow of its national dynamic — these are learned through living here.

So, when the one candidate most lacking in direct experience of the country he hopes to lead offers speculation that, should he not win his party's leadership, he may not run in the next election, it highlights what some may interpret as a campaign of personal convenience.

It was not surprising, then, that the next day, Mr. Ignatieff “clarified” his statements. Actually, by “clarified,” he meant retracted and contradicted. A clarification attends a statement that was confusing. And there was nothing “confusing” about “depends who wins.” Both as to grammar and content, it was pellucid.

But it hurt his campaign, and it should have. Politics, I repeat, is a team endeavour. Those who seek a party's leadership have a tacit understanding. Each gets a shot at the title on the understanding that, whoever wins, all will support the team and continue the common effort. It's another of those codes.

So now, Mr. Ignatieff has pledged that, win or lose, he will run. This is, however tacitly, an obligatory position for any candidate in a leadership campaign to take. The “clarification” is at least as much a tactical necessity for the Ignatieff campaign as it is a corrected expression of Mr. Ignatieff's heart.

This was a bad week for the perceived front-runner. It gave a sense that he was out of touch with some of the rules of his new profession, and reminded the audience outside the Liberal Party of just how “new” this new guy is.

Rex Murphy is a commentator with CBC-TV's The National and host of CBC Radio One's Cross-Country Checkup.

It is important to remember a modern definition of journalism (By Rupert Murdoch? I think, maybe) as being the business of filling up the white spaces (and air time, too, I guess) between the adverts with something newsworthy - which means salacious, bloody murderous, bizarre (man bites dog) or, at the very least, controversial.  Simpson and Murphy are trying to manufacture controversy (with apologies to Noam Chomsky) because they, and their publishers, really, really want to fill some white spaces with Liberal leadership gossip and none will be forthcoming if Ignatieff gets a stranglehold on the leadership too early and too easily.

Personally I rather like Brison, Dion, Dryden and Ignatieff (in alphabetical order) because, I think, as Brian Mulroney famously said of Stephen Lewis they think in complete sentences.  None is likely to make me change my 40 year old voting habits because none is likely to wring the vestiges of Trudeau’s policy vandalism out of the Liberal Party.  Tom Axworthy (see: http://forums.army.ca/forums/threads/41980/post-436029.html#msg436029 ) interesting and unintentionally (given his own background) might accomplish that whoever succeeds for whichever of the 10 becomes leader at the end of this year; but that’s a different topic.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Here is yet more, this time from Adam Radwanski in today’s National Post; it, too, is reproduced here under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.

Radwanski raises a good point: the next Liberal leader may have to be a Pearson and hold the fort through successive minority governments, mostly Conservative, while the national political scene sorts itself out.

My personal guesstimate is something like:

• Another Conservative minority after a summer 2007 general election;

• Liberal minority, with NDP support – à la Peterson/Rae in Ontario in 1985 (with similar downstream results: the ‘governing’ party being discredited for consorting with the NDP while the economy is eratic, or worse) - after a late fall 2009 general election; and

• Conservative majority after a spring 2011 general election.

I wonder is either Ignatieff or Rae is up for the job.

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/issuesideas/story.html?id=05781c44-12b9-477d-b512-f83290eda686

It's time for Liberals to read the tea leaves
Adam Radwanski
National Post

Saturday, September 02, 2006


There, next to a photo of Michael Ignatieff on the cover of Wednesday's Toronto Star, was a headline intended to give Liberals pause: "If he loses, will he quit?"

The question of whether candidates will stay on as MPs after losing a leadership campaign is one of those goofy loyalty tests that partisans get far too worked up about. Unless your belief is that parties should only be led by lifelong politicians, as opposed to people who might have better things to do than sit as opposition MPs after their own parties reject them, it's not entirely clear why leadership candidates should campaign on what they'll do if they're not elected leader.

When it comes to Ignatieff, though, it's not a bad idea for the Liberals to start reading the tea leaves. In this case, they should be asking themselves a slightly modified version of the Star's question: If he wins, then loses, will he quit?

In other words, does he have the stomach to stick around after leading his party to a crushing defeat at the hands of Stephen Harper's Conservatives? Because that's by far the likeliest scenario awaiting the Liberals.

Whoever wins the leadership will be taking over a broken party with no policies, empty pockets and a non-existent organizational structure. The Tories will likely call an election by next spring or summer -- well before the new Liberal leader has had a chance to get his party's house in order, much less plan out a national campaign. That leader can then expect the unique pleasure of being humbled -- possibly humiliated -- in front of the entire country, as a gaffe-filled Liberal campaign falls prey to a slick Conservative machine.

If that's enough to drive Ignatieff back to academia, then he was never the right guy for the job. Because it's only at that point that the real work will begin.

The Liberals don't need a facelift; they need to be wholly remade and reinvented. That will take years, not months. It will take not only vision, but patience. It will take a leader who learns from his mistakes, not one who comes in assuming he has all the answers.

This is how it often is in opposition. Of the seven current provincial premiers who took their parties from opposition to government, four suffered at least one defeat first. Jean Charest lost a Quebec election he could have won; Gordon Campbell lost an election in B.C. he should have won. Gary Doer took four campaigns to get the Manitoba NDP into power. Dalton McGuinty looked hopeless losing to Mike Harris, then remade himself and his party en route to a majority victory.

Turning defeat into victory, as these leaders did, requires both patience and determination. They had to to stare down the doubters who wanted to throw them overboard, and then sit through years of tough slogging -- grilling the government, working the barbecue circuit, going to an endless number of fundraisers. And this, if anywhere, is where the questions about Ignatieff start to arise.

If the campaign were just about who will be most exciting on the campaign trail next year, he'd win hands down. While other candidates are penning 750-word op-eds that serve only as studies in how to say nothing as politely as possible, Ignatieff is explaining how to "strengthen the spine of our citizenship" in five-page essays for Maclean's.

But it's his own spine that still has to be questioned, for fear that he'll concede to his critics and step down if his first election as leader goes badly. If Ignatieff is only here for a good time, not a long time, the Liberals would do better to choose someone like Gerard Kennedy -- a younger candidate who would start off slow, but work around the clock between elections to rebuild the party.

Asked why he refused to commit to running in the next election if he loses the leadership, Ignatieff said this week that he doesn't feel the need to answer hypothetical questions. That's perfectly reasonable. But how much time and effort he'll put into rebuilding the party can't be brushed off as hypothetical. Whenever he's asked that question, he'd best have an answer ready.

aradwanski@nationalpost.com

© National Post 2006​

Edit: spelling Peterson

 

[paracowboy]

the thing that annoys me is the media's interpretation that this current Conservative gov't is merely a mild inconvenience to be borne out until the Rightful Rulers of our nation can once more reclaim the throne and lead us poor, misguided, simple-minded, fools along the Golden Path, helped along, of course, by those brave champions of all the is Canadian, the media.

 

[canadianblue]

If the Liberals were to win the next election then this country has truly lost its way. The conservative's have actaully stayed true to their election promises, have held principled positions that for the most part were not influenced by polls. I'd have to agree that the media is trying to make us all believe that the conservative minority is simply an inconvenience until the Liberals find the right leader. Right now I've noticed that all the hype is on Ignatieff, but that will probably cause more problems for the party, remember what happened to two political leaders [Paul Martin, Stockwell Day] in the past who failed to live up to the hype.

 

[Kirkhill]

Here's the interesting bit -

The Conservatives, Liberals and NDP are roughly where they were at the time of the last election.  There was a lot of speculation that the Conservatives were just getting the fairweather "Chuck em out" vote and that those numbers were soft.

Guess what after all the negativism those numbers are now firm.  They can be counted on as a fairly solid base - including that portion of Quebecers that voted with the Conservatives last time.

What has been lost is the spike that happened after the election, especially in Quebec, when the focus was on fiscal imbalance, sovereignty.  With those and the environment coming back on to the radar there is an opportunity for the government to regain ground.

In the mean time most Canadians feel that Harper has been principled, moderate and reasonable, that he has exceeded expectations and that he deserves to be re-elected, and that includes about 20% of Liberal party members.

This at a time when Liberals are all things to all people.  Sooner or later they will have to nail their colours to the mast and present a stationary target.

Look at it this way - Harper secured ground during the last election and has gone firm despite raids and harassing fire. In the meantime he has had some succesful raids of his own where he exploited forward and found further exploitable axes of advance.

I think the next election is still the Conservatives to lose.  If only they will quit harassing me with so many phonecalls and letters requesting donations.  They are becoming worse than that company that constantly calls wanting to steam clean my carpets.

 

[a_majoor]

They are becoming worse than that company that constantly calls wanting to steam clean my carpets.

You're getting calls from the Conservative carpet company too? (Let us get the Adscam out of your carpet!)

 

[canadianblue]

I think the next election is still the Conservatives to lose.  If only they will quit harassing me with so many phonecalls and letters requesting donations.  They are becoming worse than that company that constantly calls wanting to steam clean my carpets.

Yeah I know what you mean they kept on bombarding me with phone calls when I was a member. Strangely enough when I was with the Canadian Alliance I would rarely get those annoying phone calls, but then again I was on the BOD.

 

[TCBF]

" If only they will quit harassing me with so many phonecalls and letters requesting donations.  They are becoming worse than that company that constantly calls wanting to steam clean my carpets"

- Same guys.  Same list.



- I told them "I got you there - you want money?  Earn it: dump the SAP (Prohibited 12/5) regulations".  I want to be able to teach my son how to shoot my FN C1A1 legally.

 

[a_majoor]

I suppose the mark of a philosopher is the ability to keep two contradictory ideas in his mind at the same time. Just imagine what will happen when people start taking some of these policy prescriptions seriously.

http://dissonanceanddisrespect.blogspot.com/2006/09/iggys-master-plan.html

Iggy's Master Plan

The Liberal Party's would-be next great philosopher king has finally unveiled his policy platform. And he's just lost Quebec and the isolationalist left in his party with it, and added another level of confusion to the constitutional debate:

Quebec does not need any more powers and Ottawa should not damage its capacity to bind the nation together by handing over tax powers to the provinces, Liberal leadership candidate Michael Ignatieff said yesterday.

Although his new platform states that Quebec should be recognized as a "nation," as should aboriginal nations, in a Canada that is a "multinational state," Mr. Ignatieff made it clear that he believes Ottawa's power cannot be eroded.

"What you see is that Quebec has all the powers necessary to make its society flourish and grow," he said after a Toronto rally to mark the release of his platform, titled Agenda for Nation Building.

....

Mr. Ignatieff also defended his staunch support of Canada's mission in Afghanistan, an issue that has divided the party and leadership candidates. But he called for Canada to press for more reconstruction efforts and said the "tipping point" that would force Canada to withdraw is if its troops there lost the "hearts and minds" of Afghans.

"You have to get the security situation under control, so at any one given moment you may be investing more in the military than in reconstruction. But I've made it clear that this has to be a balanced mission.

"I think it is generally admitted that the international community has not invested enough in the reconstruction and humanitarian components. There's no question this is a weakness of the mission that has to be addressed. And Canada has to step up and say let's get this done."

Calling Canada a multinational state raises connotations of other failed multinational states, such as the Russian Empire (a reach back into the old family history, Mike?), the Soviet Union, Austria-Hungary, and Yugoslavia. As a definition of Canada, it's even more divisive than multicultural, because nation suggests a people with a right to self-determination and dismemberment of Confederation.

Yet at the same time, he intends to maintain a strong central government through continued meddling in provincial jurisdiction through the federal spending power. Effectively, his constitutional master plan would create the worst of both worlds.

And while he talks common sense about Afghanistan, he's trying to lead a party where a good many members are no less naive, and sometimes malicious, than the mainstream of the NDP.

Does Ignatieff have the chops to become the next Pierre Trudeau, God forbid?

The early betting says no.

 

[Edward Campbell]

The Liberal leadership campaign has finally started.

Some Liberals do not intend to anoint Michael Ignatieff.

This interesting article by John Ibbiston is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from today’s (13 Sep 06) Globe and Mail:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060913.wxibbit13/BNStory/National/home

A hatchet aimed squarely at Ignatieff

JOHN IBBITSON
From Wednesday's Globe and Mail

“This book is a product of surprise and disappointment." And anger.

Denis Smith is an eminent political scientist: biographer of Walter Gordon and John Diefenbaker, founder of the Journal of Canadian Studies and former editor of Canadian Forum. And he can't stand Michael Ignatieff.

So exasperated is Mr. Smith with the Liberal leadership candidate that he has rushed out a book critiquing Mr. Ignatieff's writings, called Ignatieff's World: A Liberal Leader for the 21st Century? The emphasis is on the punctuation mark.

Actually, critique is too nice a word. Mr. Smith has written a hatchet job.

For this political scientist emeritus, Mr. Ignatieff's many books, television programs and newspaper articles reveal a mind of superficial brilliance, whose evolution from liberal humanitarian to apologist for the War Party in Washington and London represents a betrayal of both principle and logic.

As Mr. Smith sees it, Mr. Ignatieff began his career as a liberal internationalist, one who believed in a world of expanding democratic and human rights, shepherded by a Western coalition under the leadership, but not the control, of the United States, preferably headed by a Democratic president. This is a world with which Mr. Smith appears to have been comfortable, and whose passing he mourns.

But as the West's victory in the Cold War gave way to a succession of regional conflicts, Mr. Ignatieff's writings grew more militant. The human-rights agenda, he argued, could only be secured by an activist United States in the role of global policeman: all other powers were either too weak or too weak-willed to handle the job.

By 2003, Mr. Smith writes, Mr. Ignatieff had become an apologist for George W. Bush and Tony Blair's imperialist invasion of Iraq.

In his most devastating paragraph, Mr. Smith accuses Mr. Ignatieff of being, in effect, an intellectual lackey. "He writes as a courtier in the antechambers of power, periodically adjusting his pronouncements to keep within hailing distance of Blair's Downing Street and Bush's White House."

Almost as bad, Mr. Smith believes Mr. Ignatieff is more a journalist than a political analyst.

"Out in the field, he can draw compelling word pictures of men and women in distress . . . but he seldom offers any detailed explanation of the politics that put them into that distress or of what will, realistically, get them out of it, if anything can."

If elected prime minister, Mr. Smith warns, "Ignatieff's imperial vision and his ambivalence on Canadian sovereignty will perpetuate the legacy of [Prime Minister Stephen] Harper as Washington's viceroy in Ottawa.

"For the sake of the party, for the sake of the country, the Liberal convention should not choose Michael Ignatieff as leader in December, 2006."

Strong stuff. But many readers may conclude from Mr. Smith's book that Mr. Ignatieff has, in the end, a more realistic world view.

The comfortable liberal internationalism of Cold War days has had to evolve into something more robust. Unlike most academics, Mr. Ignatieff has travelled from Kosovo to Kabul, and his thinking has evolved. That evolution contributed to his involvement in Responsibility to Protect, a United Nations resolution setting out conditions in which the international community could intervene to protect citizens from their own governments -- an achievement for both Mr. Ignatieff and the UN that Mr. Smith too-lightly dismisses.

Mr. Smith clearly does not agree with the more aggressive, interventionist and American-centric humanitarianism championed by Mr. Ignatieff. But the tragedies of Somalia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Kosovo have taken the blinkers off many eyes. In struggling to make sense of a world that tolerates such atrocities, and in searching for ways to put an end to them, Mr. Ignatieff has changed his mind, contradicted himself and even, perhaps, made mistakes.

But his final stand -- that only the United States can lead and protect the West, and that only the West can protect the weak and vulnerable from their oppressors -- is an honest stand.

However much Mr. Smith might not like it.

jibbitson@globeandmail.com

The political flat earth society which is the remnants of the Trudeau wing of the Liberal Party of Canada will be energized by one of its own intellectual patron saints, Denis Smith ( http://www.trentu.ca/admin/library/archives/04-019.htm for a brief bio).

I think Ibbitson is right: ”… only the United States can lead and protect the West, and that only the West can protect the weak and vulnerable from their oppressors …” 

That doesn’t mean that Ignatieff is ‘right’ – I, personally, find him too vague on too many important issues and too busy trying to appeal to the Liberal-left because that is the natural constituency of his main rival: Bob Rae.  Maybe Dion will come up through the middle, between the two front runners.

(No. NO! Not Celine! The other Dion.  <makes cross with fingers, to ward off the undead>)