More Liberal Larceny from those whose sole desire is to put their hand back in your wallet. . . .
Charles Adler - Monday, 26 February 2007 - You don't have to be the second coming of Sigmund Freud, Xaviera Hollander, or Dr Ruth to declare that Dion has been having a sexless honeymoon. This shouldn't surprise educated political observers. Dion wasn't supposed to win the big prize at the gathering of Grits in Montreal.
The consensus opinion emerging from the convention was that Dion won the leadership not because of who he was but rather because of who he wasn't. He wasn't a tourist in the Federal wing of the Liberal Party. He hadn't crossed the floor like Scott Brison He had recently crossed over from provincial politics like Gerard Kennedy. He hadn't crossed over from Harvard, like Michael Ignatieff, from the NDP like Bob Rae, and from the planet pucko, like Ken Dryden. Dion was not a crossover artist. He had a legitimate federal Liberal pedigree, having paid his dues in several governments and having fought the separatist scourge while serving as Unity minister and helping to shepherd the controversial Clarity act, that great big airbag that prevents us from banging heads into the dashboard labelled"Canadian Armageddon."
There is a significant problem faced by any leader who assumes control of a machine because of who he isn't. He gets tagged with the surname nobody wants to wear. It's a three letter word that begins with "w" and rhymes with boo. Remember Joe Who? Joe Clark received that crown of thorns more than three decades ago and when his obituary is written, it will be said that a Conservative leadership convention in the 1970's was won by a man who inspired less enthusiasm in Canadian voters than the sight of rats in a New York City Taco Bell.
Stephane Dion has been branded the Francophone Joe Clark by Canada's punditocracy. It is not exclusively because he wasn't supposed to win the leadership but did. It's also because he seems to have a tin ear on the central issues of our times. He is trying to be the green guy. But he cannot seem to be explain why he wasn't able to colour the Liberal agenda green when he was the minister of the environment. He was part of the government that signed the Kyoto Protocol. In recent days, Jean Chretien's number one advisor, Eddie Goldenberg spilled the beans. The Liberals signed Kyoto but they had no intention of fulfilling the bargain. It was just another piece of Liberal larceny, making Dion just another passenger in the getaway car.
On the issue of investigating and apprehending terrorists, Dion has been caught terrorizing his own caucus into taking his position, despite the best judgments of Irwin Cotler and John Manley and others who served in the Chretien government which responded appropriately to September 11th by giving police special investigative authority. Dion's ideas on how to catch terrorists have also been caught up in the webbing of the RCMP investigation into the Air India mass murder. Relatives of Air India victims have been seen embracing Stephen Harper in his attempt to keep the Chretien legislation in place, while Dion has been whipping his caucus into defanging several key measures of that same body of law.
There is one upside to being Stephane Dion. Expectations are low. If he manages in the next few months to lose an election that still deprives Harper of his coveted majority, some will conclude that Dion has achieved some success. When you're a political who, people don't ask for much.
