You have been Punked!

I could not believe that La Presse actually ran that full front page character assassination on Michael Ignatieff today. I had to read it twice. Ignatieff sipping martinis with friends and plotting the defeat of the party in the next election.

La Presse knew full well that, if Ignatieff said what was reported, there would be a line-up of good Liberals stretching clear across the country ready to give Ignatieff a verbal smack down. It would be wildly dumb --buck-tooth wide-eyed dumb-- because such an attitude makes the rank and file, the people who really believe in the issues advanced by the party, look like total suckers.

Ignatieff recognizes how damaging this would be to his reputation and has resolutely denied the story. And I am guessing he and everyone connected to him hopes it fades away. I am not sure that it will. We might see this again in Harper advertising.

Over the years, the Quebec media has attacked Dion in every way. (I am not worried about him though. He’s a grit. He can take it.) But the crap thrown at Dion can also be thrown at Ignatieff… and maybe a whole lot worse. He might want to watch the company he keeps and how his comments might be interpreted.

Opportunity

It’s not that I want this to continue playing out on the pages of LaPresse, but I think that the situation within the party in Quebec has come to a head and presents a unique opportunity for Stephane Dion, if he acts quickly and decisively, to make the changes necessary for the long-term viability of the party in Quebec. In other words, rather than portray Steve Pinkus’ interview as a nuisance, it should be perceived as a call to action that requires a swift and full response.

The temptation during a minority parliament is to pass over contentious structural and personel changes in favour of “electoral preparedness.” This might make sense if the Quebec wing were even somewhat prepared for an election. It is not.

That these problems are spilling out into the press clearly makes the argument for the leader’s prerogative to take the steps, even the hard ones, that will resolve the crisis. This is an opportunity.

Hope

[Insert name here] are not a leader. Barack Obama is not a Leader. Hilary Clinton is not a Leader. You, Liberal voter, and you, progressive, you are not a leader either.

The Conservative attack line used against Stephane Dion so easily applies to anyone that the neoconservative movement disagrees with. Though it means very little, the Republicans are bound to use a variant of this in the upcoming presidential election. It could be Hillary or it could be Barack. The Republicans are also likely to promote divisions within the Democratic party resulting from their leadership contest. And there might be some gullible democrats who will fall for that trap.

I like both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Although at this moment I prefer one just a little bit more than the other, I fully believe both would make a great president. But I fear that following the heat of the Democratic primary, some partisans of the losing candidate will have so firmly convinced themselves in the value of their own choice they will not support the winner. That would be a huge mistake. The George Bush years were a huge mistake. In fact, I would be greatly disappointed in the losing candidate, Obama or Clinton, if they were not to put their tremendous political connections and rhetorical skills to the service of regaining the White House. In my mind, failure in the next election would reflect badly on the whole Democratic leadership.

To me the leader of the party is a vehicle for the issues I would like to see promoted. It takes time to build a winning leadership profile with the voting public (in Canada historically this process takes several years) and the ongoing Democratic race is perhaps already cutting into that.

There is a lot of advertising for the two candidates. This one makes me totally crack up.



Disclaimer: I don’t understand the language in the ad; I just happen to like Bollywood. So the ad might be a bit mischievious without me knowing. I doubt that this would be a good ad for Obama with the larger part of the American voting public, but that is not the audience of this blog.

Fear and Lies

The Globe and Mail, and in particular reporter Graeme Smith, should be applauded for the excellent series of in depth reports based on interviews with a broad sample of Taliban fighters which will be appearing over the coming week and started today. The interviews can be found online here.

I have had ongoing doubts about the quality of information on Afghanistan available to the Canadian public. Although I don’t believe there is a central conspiracy, these doubts persist because of a confluence of interests from potential misinformation distributed by military industrial lobbyists, to laziness on the part of some in the media who are content to serve merely as the conduits for propaganda, to misplaced patriotic zeal and an irresponsible right wing political movement in the U.S. and Canada ready to fuel the flames of xenophobic terror in order to further their own domestic electoral aims.

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Stephen Harper wanted Canada to invade Iraq.

Yet Jean Chretien and Canadian Liberals were able to stand against the onslaught of neoconservative lies and even turn public opinion which could easily have gone the other way. It takes time to build up a leader like Chretien who can confidently advance Liberal values. Alot of liberals currently seem to forget the hard times while Chretien’s leadership was being established. It also helps in defending Liberal values when we form the government.

We doubted the neoconservative lies about Iraq and the global war on terror. I think we should also be wary of the same with regard to Afghanistan. As the opposition, Liberals can start by exposing misinformation about the Afghan mission and deflating Conservative rhetoric. For instance, global Jihad is a neoconservative boogeyman. Go see the Globe and Mail report.

Poetry Cornered

This is not a criticism of Michael Ignatieff. I am being playful, interactive. It’s Sunday. But can you really corner poetry? The title of his latest blog post caught my eye Poetry Corner which sounds something like an elementary school educational unit safely stored in the sunny corner of the classroom to be visited on specified days in the curriculum; cute pictures and little poems under a fading sign “Poetry Corner” an edge of which has become untaped from the wall near the neglected end of semester. A special place near the window where flies come to die.

My idiosyncratic negative reaction is directed only toward the title because I liked the rest of the post a great deal. Knowing he shares incidental poems with Zsuzsanna, spotting one on the subway, makes me like him more than before.

No, I am just thinking about the title. The poetry is put in its corner, like a picture-frame which tells the bourgeois “This is art!” because otherwise they would not recognize it. But isn’t good poetry the sort of thing that even if you think that you have safely put it in its place its words escape again?

And I think over again

My small adventures

When with a shore wind I drifted out

In my kayak

And thought I was in danger

Of course, I am just joking around about poetry cornered. I am glad to see in an earlier post on the same blog that Michael Ignatieff reconfirms his support for the leader’s decision not to bring the government down over the budget. The media reports about conflict were quite remarkable. There have always been plenty of ambitious men and women in the Liberal party who know their own mind strongly --I wouldn’t want it any other way. So the fact that there would be disagreement over the timing of the election does not seem out of the ordinary. What is remarkable, though, is that the discussions were leaked to the media. There seem to be some rogue elements willing to trade in bad faith, people whose instincts tend toward the self-serving and the destructive. What do you say to people in that mood?

Anyway, since Michael Ignatieff has set such a good example, here is a poem by Frost that I like and comes to my mind from time to time.

I'm going out to clean the pasture spring;

I'll only stop to rake the leaves away

(And wait to watch the water clear, I may);

I sha'n't be gone long. –You come too.

I’m going out to fetch the little calf
That’s standing by the mother. It’s so young
It totters when she licks it with her tongue.
I sha'n’t be gone long. –You come too.