JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY JEFFREY SIMPSON IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

Well said, indeed.

You’ve captured many aspects of the person and the situation perfectly.

The words about Harper being an actor who understands his own limiting persona are brilliantly discerning.

I’m quite concerned about the charming and attractive Justin going for the leadership.

First, his presence in the race may well intimidate other, possibly more talented and suitable candidates.

He does very much appear to lack the fierce intelligence of his father, his personality traits being more like those of his mother, albeit without her excesses.

But even a Pierre Trudeau might well not succeed today, our interests and attitudes having changed a great deal.

There is a huge burden on the shoulders of the next Liberal leader: Harper’s thugs are changing almost everything we have understood Canada as representing, and our international reputation has plummeted as we are seen as a complete servant of American-Israeli interests. Another majority would be hideous.

We desperately need a strong, effective leader of the Liberal Party, someone who can at least prevent a majority, and someone with shrewd political judgment. The NDP certainly has selected the right kind of leader for the times with Mulcair.

Another amateur-hour Ignatieff, a man with no support from people and no expertise and a man with weak personality traits, would be disaster.

The Liberal Party’s insiders are responsible for the entire Harper Era.

First, there was the infighting against a very popular and competent Prime Minister.

Then there was the nasty work inside the Party against Chretien supporters.

Then there was the poor handling of what was in many ways an understandable scandal whose roots were in serious concern with the country’s future, not just graft.

Then there was the failure to select Bob Rae, one of the most polished politicians of our day.

The less able but likable Dion was given no chance and inadequate support.

The pompous and surprisingly thinly talented Ignatieff was stuffed into the leadership with no democratic support, just as the insiders had intended when they recruited him in the United States.

His judgment proved a disaster.

The Party insiders have failed us entirely, and one hopes their role with Trudeau is not similar.

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 POSTED RESPONSES TO A COLUMN BY REX MURPHY IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

Three decades in Canada is only part of what Ignatieff is missing.

Perhaps more important is his lack of any real contact or bond with people. There is something, not just aristocratic, but almost autistic about Ignatieff.

He just does not reach the emotions because he just does not feel them.

Contrast him with a wonderfully earthy and charming politician like Chretien, and you feel there is nothing there.

Even in the sphere of the intellect, supposedly Ignatieff’s great strength, I find him surprisingly wanting. Again, compare him to Trudeau whose brilliance shines in every photo and is burned into memory, and there is little there but mannered words and the indulgent remembrance of a well-connected family.

Ignatieff is altogether an unimpressive politician.

If you add his absence and long lack of interest to Canada, he becomes even more unappealing.

And if you add his past defense of torture, mass murder, and imperial brutishness, there is nothing there worth talking about.

This sad situation is made sadder still by the utterly soulless Harper, a robot with no personality and no sense of ethics, giving us nowhere to place a comforting vote of trust.

__________________________

“Whether Canada ends up as one national government or two national governments or several national governments, or some other kind of arrangement is, quite frankly, secondary in my opinion.”

– Stephen Harper

Many thanks to the person above for posting this. Of course, we must also rememmber Harper supported America’s mass murder in Iraq, and wanted us to join in the slaughter.