History teaches us a would-be leader who waits until the post is vacated to begin campaigning for it usually loses. Ignatieff's article doesn't mention that lesson, but its very publication suggests it's one Ignatieff has learned.
It's not surprising that an MP not yet halfway through the normal duration of a first term should already be preparing himself in public to shoulder the burden of leadership.
It would be nice if the article provided some context for the thesis that Ignatieff is merely laying in the weeds, preparing the ground for Dion’s ultimate failure. Not even a quote from a “senior Liberal” to qualify the motivations for the NYT piece, just pure, superficial speculation.
There is no election imminent, and absolutely no chance that Dion won’t carry the Liberal banner when that election ultimately takes place. To infer that an opinion piece, written in this context, somehow translates into active jockeying is more imagination that proof positive. Maybe Ignatieff is plotting, but there is nothing provided in this article to support that notion, apart from created controversy.
12 comments:
"the burden of leadership"
Not bad.
Steve, Don says:Ignatieff's article doesn't mention that lesson, but its very publication suggests it's one Ignatieff has learned.
And indeed, it does.
If Dion loses the by election in Outremont, he will be finshed. He is a very smart intellect,but, nobody sees or hears much of him....where is he, and what is he doing?. What about his ideas on SPP?
Since Igs chose an American publication for this piece, I would very seriously doubt it is a renewed bid for leadership. If it were, he obviously hasn't learned much about why he didn't win the first time.
Another article in The Gazette the same day thinks what Ignatieff in honourable in doing this. No one seems to refer to that one.
Everyone is always so, so suspicious of everything.n Could it be that he constantly attacked on his Iraq view in the past and just wants to get rid of it? Hmmm, maybe? Maybe the NY Times approached Ignatieff to write - hmmm, maybe?
Meet the Press had a panel on yesterday - discussion: a list of traits of all the "best" leaders/presidents.
Good Traits - admit errors, congenial, doesn't show anger in public. Has people around him that have different views (i.e. FDR, Lincoln and Clinton did this). Have had a politically humbling experiences.
Traits of bad leaders - never admitting wrongs. Believing your right all the time no matter what. Not congenial. Let's frustrations show in public. Doesn't trust. (sound like someone we know?)
In their discussions that is the one thing that they thought was a problem for Barak Obama - he never thinks he's wrong (a trait I didn't know about). Obama hasn't yet had any humbling political experiences either.
The establishment doesn't like having their decisions snubbed.
They went great lengths to assure the Americans that rifts like the one on Iraq never happens again. That unanticipated outburst by Canadians on the war caught them off guard, and it needed to be subjugated.
They promised Ignatieff the top post to pry him from his podium at Harvard, a venue he used to tout the virtues of neo-conservative ideas to "liberal" audiences. And Ignatieff is still awaiting his payout.
Treachery from within is a much greater challenge to Dion than anything Harper or Layton can muster, as Chretien can attest to.
Euf. And I thought that I was cynical? What's with all the conjecture, assuming the worst of Ignatieff with nothing to go on but suspicion?
(rhetorical)
Admitting errors?!
He never apologized, but admitted to two things:
1. He was too trusting of Iraqi exiles. Poor trusting and well intentioned Iggy was misled by them big bad Iraqi exiles whose lies were exposed and debunked publicly one by one (from the Niger uranium, to aluminum tubes, to the AQ meeting in Prague...) in the lead up to the war that he unwaiveringly cheered on.
2. He got emotionally attached to the plight of the Kurds when he visited northern Iraq 1992 AFTER the first US-led invasion. Curious though that this prominent international affairs expert was somehow unaware that the height of brutality against the Iraqi Kurds transpired in the '80s when Saddam was an ally to the West. Somehow the Prevention of Genocide Act which US Congress unanimously passed condemning Saddam's actions against the Kurds but vetoed by the Reagan White House went unnoticed by this foreign policy expert.
Iggy just don't get it. I'm sorry, but he atoned for the wrong sins if any at all.
What most ordinary Canadians disagree with Iggy on is the doctrine of pre-emption and the neo-conservative idea of spreading democracy by force of arms. Neither of these two notions were even mentioned in his NYT piece, let alone renounced.
Instead we get another nauseating piece quoting Machiavelli on the necessary "ruthlessness" of the political elite, ending the argument with a classical Iggy "...NOT".
Iggy then writes "Nothing is personal in politics, because politics is theater. It is part of the job to pretend to have emotions that you do not actually feel.", which brings to mind his remark and then retraction about not losing sleep over the children and elderly killed at Qana during the Israeli bombing of Lebanon.
As self discovery and reexaminations go, this is one poor excuse for one.
Yeah, the not losing sleep quote. I forgot about that gem. Igs should quit while he's ahead and keep his mouth shut. Most politicians don't have to back track in their entire careers as much as this guy did in ten months. Good riddance!
Forget lying in the weeds, what's Iggy's position on weed?
I usually try to pay no attention to these 'leadership' innuendos - i.e 'Dion's not a leader', 'someone's waiting in the wings', 'the knives are out' etc..
but it has become a bit tiresome.
It's all a yawner unless you're inot all the minutiae and the gossip etc...
I'm not, so I YAWN!
Consider these
1) It's summer and parliament is not currently sitting, news is 'slow' politically. Pundits need to write about something.
2) Someone somewhere is always waiting for the leader to fall. That's any party, any time. You think there are not others in the CPC or NDP with leadership aspirations?
3) Dion hasn't even led the party in an election yet.
And most importantly.
4) Do this little expirement. I did. It was illuminating. Go back and check out news sources from the summer of 2005. What will you find, you ask? You'll find that everything that is being said today about Dion's 'leadership' qualities was being said about Stephen Harper's 'leadership' qualities.
Face it folks. Every leader of the opposition goes through something remarkably similar to this. Even Stephen Frickin' Harper.
Parody from HuffPo
Seriously, let's repeat this quote: "Few of us hear the horses coming." We are really getting into Cormac McCarthy territory here:
"They saw the WMDs over the hill, staggering under the weight of their own nonexistence like some funereal assemblage of bent-backed phantoms. Ignatieff crouched in the mulberry copse, glassed his target, cursed the Chomskian dust that risked his weapons ruin, then raised The Ultimate Task of Thomas Jeffersons Dream and sent its buckshot tearing into Iraq-- tatterdemalion, sanction-wracked-- and the rocks behind were splatter-stained with a crimson decoupage like some chromatic inversion of all that is holy and lawful. I kindly reckon we just shot the shit out of Iraq, Ignatieff said. And Friedman said, Lets move in to get a better look at her. And they tried hailing a cab with an anecdotaholic driver but they couldnt find one because they were stranded in a featureless semantic apocalypse, meaning-raped and apostropheless like some joy-smudged, italicized parody of Cormac McCarthy. And on the crest of the hill they heard Kanan Makiya weeping soundlessly like the very enabler of evil itself."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-rees/cormac-ignatieffs-the-r_b_59363.html
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