Michael Ignatieff hurt by his own tactics
Jul 14, 2009 04:30 AM
James Travers
OTTAWA
There are two basic political rules that rookie leaders break. One warns against taking a position that can't be abandoned without severe damage or high risk. The second, related to the first, cautions against cornering an opponent unless the purpose is to force a fight on advantageous terms.
In roughly six months of on-the-job training, Michael Ignatieff has savaged those axioms. The result is that a party that should be riding high is down in the dumps. It's squandered an opinion poll lead and lost the swagger that carried caucus through spring and toward yet another early election.
Part of the problem is politics is unforgiving as well as not easily mastered. Worse, it's at least as complex as chess and cruelly punishes new players by discounting their experience and success before abandoning real for elected life.
Putting Conservatives "on probation" is a prime example of what happens when a tactic is too clever by half. Instead of putting pressure on the Prime Minister, it creates a periodic test the Opposition leader can only pass by forcing what may be an untimely election.
Ignatieff compounded the error by ignoring Rule 2. Threatening to bring Conservatives down before Parliament's summer recess was only sound as long as Liberals, and particularly their leader, were ready for a campaign. They weren't and Stephen Harper shrewdly called the bluff, sending two parties in different directions.
For Conservatives, the Canadian season of mushy ice is now a time to fill an empty net with pucks. With no one crowding them, they have time and space to enjoy the benefits that flow to current champs. So they are busy announcing, or reannouncing local projects, reinforcing the party base with a narcissist agenda that draws attention away from lousy times and sending the Prime Minister swanning across the world stage.
Liberals enjoy none of those luxuries. They have yet to provide compelling reasons for a return to government, seem content defining themselves as Conservative-lite and are following a leader growing awkwardly into his political skin.
Failings can be fixed. Conservatives did it in 2006 with easily grasped promises, a sharply defined position on the political spectrum and the clear understanding that their prime-minister-in-waiting made many voters queasy.
Liberals remain at the back of that class. As much as Ignatieff brought greater stature, superior staff and firmer discipline to an office short of all three, readying for the coming confrontation is still a work in progress. Liberals can't count on Conservatives to defeat themselves and have plenty to do before fall when some of the country's attention will drift from the picnic table back to Ottawa.
Between then and now, Liberals need to build a platform strong enough to carry the party though a campaign, one with planks that prove their standard-bearing public intellectual is also smart enough to have good, practical ideas. No less significantly, Ignatieff needs what Jean Chrétien and Brian Mulroney had in Jean Pelletier and Derek Burney: A tough, confident, savvy field marshal able to focus the leader, refine and concentrate the message and, most of all, explain why some rules shouldn't be broken.
Looks more and more like Stephy every day; even the Star is noticing.
