So called Tory 'negative ads' are dead on
During the 2006 federal election, Michael Ignatieff, who had been lured back to Canada to run for the Liberals after 34 years abroad, made it quite clear in an interview with The Harvard Crimson newspaper just how dedicated he was to Canada.
[FONT=Arial,sans-serif][SIZE=-1][/SIZE][/FONT]If he didn't win his Toronto riding, he said, he would move back to Massachusetts.
No great surprise there. After all, this is a man who continually referred to himself as an American, both in his speeches and his writing. In fact, in 2004, just one year before he was coaxed into coming north to grab a chance at his party's leadership, Ignatieff appeared on C-SPAN, the congressional cable channel, and said this:
"Look, this is America and you have to decide what kind of country you want. This is your country as much as it is mine."
At that time, by the way, Ignatieff was one of then president George W. Bush's strongest supporters of torture, the Iraq war and the Bush doctrine against terrorism on U.S. soil.
And now, just a few short years later, Ignatieff would have Canadians believe that Tory advertisements openly questioning his allegiance to his birth country are not only insulting to him, but to every Canadian who has ever lived or worked abroad.
What a hypocrite.
So too are his fellow Liberals, who are currently pretending to be outraged by those Tory ads.
Yet, during Ignatieff's first run at the leadership - the one where he actually contested the job and lost, as opposed to his second run, where he maneuvered his way into the job without having to run for it - Ignatieff's Liberal opponents where making exactly the same point as Prime Minister Stephen Harper is making now.
Bob Rae - then seen as Ignatieff's main opponent (that's before the disastrous Stephane Dion sneaked up the middle and won) - said bluntly that, "there are things about a country that you don't learn from a book," things that you can only learn by being here and taking part in the rough and tumble of constitutional and economic debates.
Another leadership hopeful, Toronto Liberal Joe Volpe, added that nobody who has been away for more than three decades could possible be an expert about either his country or his party.
In other words, these senior Liberals felt that Ignatieff was not fit to lead a party and/or a country when he had been absent pretty much his entire adult working life.
Which, of course, is precisely what the Tory ads are saying.
Does that make them qualify as the dreaded "negative ads?" You bet it does. But so what? They're dead on.
Ignatieff says those ads are an insult to all Canadians who have worked abroad. That it implies they are less Canadian than those who stayed here.
No, it doesn't. But the difference here is that all those other Canadians who spent however many years abroad, are not now claiming that they have the understanding and the knowledge of the country and its' people to be their leader. Ignatieff stands alone in that category.
And the Tories - whether people like negativity or not (personally, I don't see anything wrong with it, nor, as history shows, do Liberals and the NDP) - are simply hoisting Ignatieff on his own foreign-based petard. Supporters of Ignatieff like to point out that the man was born in Canada and, for the most part, educated here. He can also trace his ancestors in Canada back four generations.
All this is true. It's also beside the point.
The fact remains that Ignatieff left the country in the early 1970s and lived and worked abroad - in England and the U.S. - and became so comfortable in his skin in the United States that, as mentioned earlier, he consistently referred to himself as an American.
He's also the same guy who once dissed the Canadian flag - the one brought to us courtesy of Liberal prime minister Lester Pearson, who Ignatieff now says is one of his heroes - by telling a British journalist that the flag reminded him a "beer label."
Nice. There's no record whether the beer label he had in mind was Canadian, British or American, but it does indicate a rather smug and cavalier attitude towards the country he now wants us to believe that he loves above all else.
Indeed, the reason the controversial Tory ads have the Liberals in such uproar is really quite simple: it's because they're true. Politicians aren't accustomed to that.
During the 2006 federal election, Michael Ignatieff, who had been lured back to Canada to run for the Liberals after 34 years abroad, made it quite clear in an interview with The Harvard Crimson newspaper just how dedicated he was to Canada.
No great surprise there. After all, this is a man who continually referred to himself as an American, both in his speeches and his writing. In fact, in 2004, just one year before he was coaxed into coming north to grab a chance at his party's leadership, Ignatieff appeared on C-SPAN, the congressional cable channel, and said this:
"Look, this is America and you have to decide what kind of country you want. This is your country as much as it is mine."
At that time, by the way, Ignatieff was one of then president George W. Bush's strongest supporters of torture, the Iraq war and the Bush doctrine against terrorism on U.S. soil.
And now, just a few short years later, Ignatieff would have Canadians believe that Tory advertisements openly questioning his allegiance to his birth country are not only insulting to him, but to every Canadian who has ever lived or worked abroad.
What a hypocrite.
So too are his fellow Liberals, who are currently pretending to be outraged by those Tory ads.
Yet, during Ignatieff's first run at the leadership - the one where he actually contested the job and lost, as opposed to his second run, where he maneuvered his way into the job without having to run for it - Ignatieff's Liberal opponents where making exactly the same point as Prime Minister Stephen Harper is making now.
Bob Rae - then seen as Ignatieff's main opponent (that's before the disastrous Stephane Dion sneaked up the middle and won) - said bluntly that, "there are things about a country that you don't learn from a book," things that you can only learn by being here and taking part in the rough and tumble of constitutional and economic debates.
Another leadership hopeful, Toronto Liberal Joe Volpe, added that nobody who has been away for more than three decades could possible be an expert about either his country or his party.
In other words, these senior Liberals felt that Ignatieff was not fit to lead a party and/or a country when he had been absent pretty much his entire adult working life.
Which, of course, is precisely what the Tory ads are saying.
Does that make them qualify as the dreaded "negative ads?" You bet it does. But so what? They're dead on.
Ignatieff says those ads are an insult to all Canadians who have worked abroad. That it implies they are less Canadian than those who stayed here.
No, it doesn't. But the difference here is that all those other Canadians who spent however many years abroad, are not now claiming that they have the understanding and the knowledge of the country and its' people to be their leader. Ignatieff stands alone in that category.
And the Tories - whether people like negativity or not (personally, I don't see anything wrong with it, nor, as history shows, do Liberals and the NDP) - are simply hoisting Ignatieff on his own foreign-based petard. Supporters of Ignatieff like to point out that the man was born in Canada and, for the most part, educated here. He can also trace his ancestors in Canada back four generations.
All this is true. It's also beside the point.
The fact remains that Ignatieff left the country in the early 1970s and lived and worked abroad - in England and the U.S. - and became so comfortable in his skin in the United States that, as mentioned earlier, he consistently referred to himself as an American.
He's also the same guy who once dissed the Canadian flag - the one brought to us courtesy of Liberal prime minister Lester Pearson, who Ignatieff now says is one of his heroes - by telling a British journalist that the flag reminded him a "beer label."
Nice. There's no record whether the beer label he had in mind was Canadian, British or American, but it does indicate a rather smug and cavalier attitude towards the country he now wants us to believe that he loves above all else.
Indeed, the reason the controversial Tory ads have the Liberals in such uproar is really quite simple: it's because they're true. Politicians aren't accustomed to that.
