Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s National Post is a commentary by Conrad Black (Lord of the Realm and convicted felon):
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http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2008/12/13/conrad-black-harper-and-ignatieff-promise-a-rivalry-for-the-ages.aspx
Conrad Black:
Harper and Ignatieff promise a rivalry for the ages
Posted: December 13, 2008, 9:30 AM by Kelly McParland
Despite appearances, Canadian political life (at least from this distance) seems to be working out sensibly. The arrival of Michael Ignatieff as leader of the opposition returns the Liberal Party to what was, for nearly a century, the principal factor that kept it in office through three quarters of that time as the democratic world’s most successful political party.
Sir Wilfrid Laurier, W.L.M. King, Louis St. Laurent, Lester Pearson and Pierre Trudeau were all party leaders called from obscurity, or late to politics, who had not sought political leadership before. They all lost at least once, but on balance, they were all winners, and won 17 of 25 general elections they fought.
John Turner, Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin were all Buggin’s Turn: Each was the surviving runner-up from the previous leadership convention. Add in Stéphane Dion, who was a gesture to alternating English and French-speaking leaders, and who won his party’s leadership as the beneficiary of tactical errors in Ignatieff’s leadership campaign. Despite the disintegration of the opposition for a decade, this quartet won only four elections, while losing four.
The earlier method of leader-selection was, I have long thought, the most unpredictable, ineluctable, process of choosing a leader of any important organization in the world except the Holy See -- and it worked.
Michael Ignatieff is the first Liberal leader not of Anglo-Saxon or French ancestry, and has spent even more of his life outside Canada than did Pearson or Trudeau. His intellectual standing could only be rivaled, among his predecessors, by Trudeau, and, in a stretch, King. His writing, which is a worthwhile body of work, reveals an affecting connection to his country all through long periods outside Canada.
One of his problems three years ago was that his rivals managed to portray his return to Canada to enter political life as condescension rather than the closing of the ring that it really was. He was responding to the equivalent for him of “the cry of the loon and the dip of the paddle,” as have many others in different fields, from Peter Munk to Mordecai Richler. The original Thomas Wolfe was not entirely correct: In Canada, you can go home.
In policy terms, the only area where Ignatieff seemed to be in a time warp three years ago was his concern to resolve outstanding issues with Quebec nationalists. They don’t want to reach agreement; and their strength, in both relative and absolute terms, is withering. The constitutional anomalies can be eliminated when the Quebec federalists are strong enough to make an arrangement with Ottawa without fear of nationalist reaction. The time will come, and fairly soon.
Taking psychological liberties with public figures is hazardous, and often odious, but there may be a matter of finishing off some family business here. George Ignatieff, the new Liberal leader’s father, was a prominent contender to be governor general about 30 years ago, but was passed over. He and his wife would have done honour to the position. If this weighs in Michael ignatieff’s ambitions, and his writing reveals a lively interest in his ancestry, it is certainly creditable to set right the short-changing of one’s forebears.
Michael Ignatieff removed any lingering doubt that he had the character to lead when he did not scheme against the hapless Dion, and kept his distance from the hare-brained exploration of a coalition government with Jack Layton and Gilles Duceppe. Canada needs, and surely deserves, deliverance from the sort of nasty, hyperactive political adolescents who confected that mad enterprise.
Michael Ignatieff will be only the 12th federal Liberal leader in 142 years of Confederation. As all but Edward Blake and Stéphane Dion have served as prime minister, his chances of doing so are good, although the Liberal hammer-lock on Quebec following the 1917 conscription controversy for 67 years until the rise of Brian Mulroney, cannot be resurrected. The Liberals are not the sure thing in almost three elections out of four that they were between the death of Sir John Macdonald in 1891 and the retirement of Pierre Trudeau in 1984.
The joust between Ignatieff and Stephen Harper should be an interesting one; as well-matched, and surely more coherent, than the nine-year, four general-election battle between John Diefenbaker and Lester Pearson (1958-1967).
Perhaps because of the brilliance of the Florida summer sun, compounded by the foibles of my American hosts, I have been conducting a completely unnoticed, rear-guard argument in favour of the theory that Stephen Harper is something of a Mackenzie King, an ungalvanizing public personality but a cunning political operator.
It is conceivable that there was an element of calculation in his suggestion of ceasing to finance political parties, reviewing some of the rigidities of pay equity, and revisiting the right to strike in the public service. These are all respectable policy options, and my impression is that the country was more offended by the absurd opposition response than by Harper’s heavy-handed, yet sneaky and reckless introduction of these thoughts in a financial message. This episode should be out of mind when the budget is presented in January, but Harper can still revive these issues more promisingly, later.
Harper showed great tactical skill in putting the opposition back together at the start of this decade, and in making inroads in Quebec. It is obvious now that he was astute in provoking the last election when he did. This distances him from the ineptitude of many previous Conservative leaders, but it doesn’t make him a Mackenzie King.
King made a virtue of indecision, timidity, hypocrisy and obscurantism. As Frank Scott wrote of King in a moment of exasperated brilliance: “He blunted us. He never let his on the one hand know what his on the other hand was doing. The height of his ambition was to pile a parliamentary committee on a royal commission. Postpone, postpone, abstain … Always he led us back to where we were before.”
He was also a political genius who held the country together with what Scott called “the smokescreen of his politics,” and struck like a leopard when he had the chance to extend his own incumbency (an astounding 22 years as prime minister).
Stephen Harper will not abase himself, as King often did. He may be authoritarian and seem a bit wooden. But he too makes it as a comparative intellectual, and he is now a proven political strategist, notwithstanding the events of the last few weeks. The ideological gap between the main parties should be quite narrow, so it should be a good hand-to-hand combat between the most apparently intelligent pair of alternative prime ministers Canada has had since the young Laurier and the old Macdonald, (1887-1891).
National Post
cbletters@gmail.com
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A few days, maybe a week ago, one of our members, here on Army.ca, posited that Harper had a deep and devious plan to provoke the Liberals and NDP to overplay their hand and fall into the lap of the BQ. Black gives credence to that idea in saying, ” It is conceivable that there was an element of calculation in his suggestion of ceasing to finance political parties, reviewing some of the rigidities of pay equity, and revisiting the right to strike in the public service. These are all respectable policy options, and my impression is that the country was more offended by the absurd opposition response than by Harper’s heavy-handed, yet sneaky and reckless introduction of these thoughts in a financial message.”
Would the person who made that suggestion please provide a link to it? Thanks, in advance.
I agree with Black that the ‘ideological gap’ between Harper’s Parliamentary Conservative Party and Ignatieff’s Parliamentary Liberal Party are quite narrow. The gaps between the party bases, the rank and file in the riding associations, are wide and deep: the Conservative base is far to the right of where Harper knows he must be to win elections and the Liberal base is far to the left of where Ignatieff wants to position the Liberal party. The battle is for the mushy middle and both leaders must reject the siren songs of their respective bases and fight for the only ground that matters – the middle ground. Iggy will have a harder time because while Harper’s hard right wing has nowhere to go, right now, the hard left of the Liberals are being invited into Taliban Jack Layton’s NDP.
