“What I’m proposing has a simple name – it’s democracy.” – Bob Rae – to reporters in Toronto on Dec. 8.
Guess he didn’t like that name.
CTV reports Bob Rae is withdrawing from the Liberal leadership race.
Remember when the Globe and Mail used to have that little box on the bottom of the front page called ‘The Morning Smile’?
It’s back.
Well, at least I smiled when I read about New Brunswick MP Dominic Leblanc, what’s-his-name from the federal leadership prance (this hardly qualifies as a race), throw his support behind caucus fave Michael Ignatieff.
The third candidate in the Liberal leadership race, New Brunswick MP Dominic LeBlanc, pulled out yesterday to support Mr. Ignatieff, arguing that circumstances require Liberals to rally behind the “consensus” choice as leader – tacitly pressuring Mr. Rae to follow suit.
“The ideal scenario for me is that the Liberal caucus is united behind Michael Ignatieff as the leader,” Mr. LeBlanc said.
How funny to talk of consensus at a press conference organized by Liberal courtiers furiously try to organize a pre-Christmas coronation.
Leblanc threw down his sword – as expected – and declared his fealty to Ignatieff.
Damn if that repentant socialist Bob Rae won’t do the same.
“I don’t think coronations are generally very successful in political parties. … Most people believe it’s better to have a contest, it’s better to have a choice,” Rae, 60, told reporters in Toronto.
“What I’m proposing has a simple name – it’s democracy.” – Toronto Star, Dec. 9, 2008
I have to admire the stubborn obtuseness of a political party that can get so caught up in its own rules, procedures and processes that it fails at the one thing that matters: earning the respect of Canadians.
In his new book, Court Government and the Collapse of Accountability in Canada the United Kingdom, Donald Savoie refers to political parties as empty vessels.
Brian Flemming, a former Trudeau-era policy advisor, wrote a thought-provoking critical essay about Savoie’s argument in the October 2008 issue of the Literary Review of Canada.
In the article, entited ‘Control-Freak Kingdom’, Flemming summarizes Savoie’s thesis:
“The Canadian prime minister has become a Ruritanian king, surrounded by a coterie of courtiers and praise singers.”
Cue the choir; the Liberals and Michael Ignatieff are in the House.
What is this fascination the federal Liberal caucus have with Michael Ignatieff?
After a weekend of anxious phone calls and velvet-gloved cajolling, the Liberals are almost certain to name Ignatieff their interim leader this week.
In a country of 30 million + people, just over 100 (the MPs plus the Liberal senators) will crown him their king, pushing aside Bob Rae and what’s-his-name, otherwise known as Dominic LeBlanc, New Brunswick MP.
Poor old Stephane Dion is being unceremoniously dumped by his party. His greatest mistake, and there were many, was to forget the cardinal rule of Liberals: they play to win and so you better too.
I didn’t warm to Ignatieff during the last leadership race and in the last few weeks, he hasn’t done or said anything to give me any indication that he represents a new style of leadership.
How can a scion of the old order be repackaged as the the leader for a new era?
The evidence laid out by Michael Valpy in his excellent 2006 Globe and Mail profile suggests it can’t be done.
Ignatieff’s most recent behaviour provides further evidence of his inability to understand what the country wants and needs. As Macleans national editor Andrew Coyne points out in a recent blog post, Ignatieff chose to remain silent in the lead-up to the coalition’s creation and then, once it was launched, freed his minions, otherwise known as supporters, to whisper in journalists’ ears that Ignatieff was decidedly cool to the idea.
When I wrote a political column, I reserved my greatest contempt for those politicians who let their backers speak for them, preferring to pull strings off-stage rather than grab the spotlight and let their true opinions be known.
If you can’t speak up for yourself, how can you possibly speak up for Canadians?
We deserve better.
Margaret Wente’s on the money when she writes that there’s something not right about Stephen Harper’s smile.
We’ve got a prime minister whose hubris sent the House of Commons into unnecessary turmoil, a trio of party leaders who can’t see past their own ambitions and a battered Liberal party closing ranks around a bilingual photogenic man with a famous last name.
As Ignatieff prepares to grab hold of the Liberal party, his greatest task will not be to defeat Stephen Harper, but rather, to win back the trust of Canadians weary of political games.
David Williams, the long-time wise man of the Saint John Times-Globe and New Brunswick Telegraph-Journal newsrooms, has released a collection of his favourite stories and columns, entitled When Headlines Spoke in Capital Letters.
It’s a delightful book that illustrates not just what Saint John was once like, but also what great newspaper writing can accomplish.
David’s gift is his ability to draw his reader into each of these stories – some now over 40 years old – with language that feels fresh and inviting. He tweaks and prods the powerful and the pompous with the wit of a truly talented wordsmith.
Take for example, his May 13, 1972 column, “Booze and Business” about city councillors coming to council meetings drunk:
Of course, I would never write a column about it.
To mention liquor and a Common Council meeting in the same connection – even to hint at it by implication – would be unthinkable.
To even to attempt to answer such questions would call for the care and caution of a novice animal tamer in a cage full of lions and tigers.
David, of course, does answer the question and as I read that column, I pictured him at his typewriter in the old Times Globe office, with sleeves rolled up, wearing that half-smile you see on the face of every journalist when they are writing something that sings.
I know David, ever so slightly. He was the letters to the editors page editor and the stamp columnist when I arrived at the Crown Street newsroom in August 1997. I was a business writer for the Telegraph-Journal in those days and so I didn’t have a lot of opportunities to talk to the quiet, well-mannered and always immaculately dressed Mr. Williams.
As someone new to the newspaper and to New Brunswick, I didn’t know anyone’s back story, a distinct disadvantage when trying to build relationships in the Maritimes. So, I wasn’t aware that David had once dined on T-bone steaks with Tommy Hunter, had climbed to the top of the Harbour Bridge to take in the view and had engaged in a thoughtful conversation with the new Catholic bishop about celibacy and the role of women in the Church.
I do know that now, thanks to When Headlines Spoke in Capital Leaders.
But I’ll tell you what I did know.
I knew that David Williams stood apart in that newsroom.
That he was afforded a level of deference and respect that only one other person, the late Glen Allen, received from the staff and managers of that paper.
That he never raised his voice because he never had to.
That he listened with great patience and respect to every person who called him to harangue and harumph either him or their target of disdain.
And I knew that when I wanted to know something about Saint John or New Brunswick, David would have the answer or would know who did.
When Headlines Spoke in Capital Letters is a wonderful discovery.
Treat yourself to some great stories, told by a pretty damn good writer.
You can order the book directly from David at www.DavidWilliamsReports.com
It is also available at UNB’s Inprint Bookstore on King Street in Uptown Saint John and at local Coles and Indigo Bookstores.
Yesterday I went into Canadian Tire looking for enough Christmas lights to create a landing strip for eight tiny reindeer.
Instead, my path was blocked by the four horsemen of the Canadian political apocalypse.
Okay, so Harper, Dion, Layton and Duceppe weren’t literally in my local Canadian Tire store, but they might as well have been.
There, gathered around the Christmas lights aisle was a salesman and two customers yammering on about that mess up in Ottawa. They were mad. Raise your voice mad. I had to detour down another aisle to pick up my Noma outdoor lights and was still able to hear them going on about political party public financing, the role of the Governor-General and voter intent.
Retail politics on full display at a shopping mall near you.
Oh, the inanity of it all.
While partisan supporters have been quick to pick sides in this Harper vs the Coalition of the Willful, their numbers are dwindling as an increasing number of Canadians view the faux drama of this power play/constitutional drama as little more than a poorly constructed pantomime.
This amateur production has it all:
We spent $200 million on a federal election and we end up with a House of Commons that appears to be held together with little more than a few pieces of hockey tape.
Someone owes us an apology.
We’re not likely to get it from a cast of characters that have displayed little character over the past two weeks.
Too strong to tell us they’re sorry. Too proud to tell us they were wrong.
Is it any wonder that Canadians don’t love politics that way we use to do?