2672...Lorne Gunter Lays It Down

Some sage advice for our next Prime Minister from the editorial pages of the two main papers in Alberta:

Ignatieff bus tour off to bad start
Calgary Herald
Fri Jul 23 2010
Page: A12
Section: The Editorial Page
Byline: Lorne Gunter
Column: Lorne Gunter
Source: The Edmonton Journal

Last week, a talk-show host asked me a question that caught me off guard: What does Michael Ignatieff need to do to get Canadians to like him?

Ignatieff, of course, is off on a seven-week, 10-province bus tour of barbecues, rodeos, country fairs, farmers markets, fish fests, sports days, heritage celebrations and other summer events. The goal of Liberal party strategists is to portray their leader as a man in touch with ordinary Canadians.

Do I think the effort will be successful? No, because, as I told my television host, Ignatieff is not being himself. He's not a Main Street kind of guy.

One of the slags against Stephen Harper in the four years between him becoming Tory leader and being elected prime minister was that he was lousy at retail politics -- shaking hands and kissing babies. He's better at it now, but he's still no Bill Clinton or Brian Mulroney or Ralph Klein. He will never be good at schmoozing and small-talking.

Recall the awful cowboy outfit Harper wore to his first Calgary Stampede breakfast as leader -- collar buttoned up tight, bolo tie pulled taut, bad leather vest, Smithbilt tugged on too firmly. It was clear that Harper, although a longtime Calgarian, had never taken much interest in or paid attention to the social whirlwind surrounding the Stampede. So he was trying to look like what he thought Stampeding Calgarians wanted to see, rather than just being himself.

Or remember Robert Stanfield wearing cowboy boots with his jeans tucked inside. Rather than being seen as a John Wayne, he ended up looking like Woody in Toy Story. Instead of proving he was a man of the people, Stanfield's boot faux pas succeeded instead in pointing out how far removed he was from ordinary voters.

They would have known what he did not: jeans legs go on the outside, over the boots.

In the National Post last Saturday, Parliamentary columnist John Ivison described a scene from Day 2 of Ignatieff's backyard-burger tour. The Liberal leader and his wife Zsuzsanna Zsohar, writes Ivison, were "sitting on the back deck of the Holiday Inn" in Peterborough, Ont. Back deck!? Holiday Inn!? Peterborough!?

Four years ago, when he was director of the Carr Center for Human Rights at Harvard University, the Ignatieffs were likely frequent guests at trendy cocktail parties in Boston's Beacon Hill and Back Bay neighbourhoods.

They would have been invited to weekend soirees at Martha's Vineyard and Cape Cod.

Ignatieff was well known in the foreign policy salons of Washington, D.C., London and New York, too. He often addressed conferences in national capitals and at five-star seaside resorts.

Now, in an effort to connect with voters in Smithers and Steinbach, Bracebridge and Sheet Harbour, Ignatieff and Zsohar are hangin' on the back deck of the Peterborough Holiday Inn.

That's no slight on the Holiday Inn or the city of Peterborough. Both are fine places, but neither is Paris or Madrid or Tokyo.

Moreover, in his previous professional life, Ignatieff was invited to all those exotic locations because his work had already impressed academics, diplomats, journalists, bureaucrats and political leaders. Now he is hanging at budget hotels in small cities and towns, just so he can plead with ordinary voters to give him a chance.

Rumours used to swirl around each summer that Ignatieff would disappear for two months because he was vacationing in the south of France. No such rumours will be possible this year. Canadians will know precisely where Ignatieff is at all times because if he is not in their hometown today, he will be tomorrow or next week.

But the most important fact is that Ignatieff is trying to win support by being someone other than he is. He has to be himself.

And I don't just mean in his choice of summer activities.

It isn't just Ignatieff's barbecue tour that is out of character, many of his policy recommendations are, too.

For instance, he's not opposed to aggressive interrogation of terror suspects bordering on torture. Many times before returning to Canada and entering politics, he praised techniques such as water boarding. Yet now, in an effort to appeal to liberal voters, Ignatieff vociferously attacks the Tories over their position on Afghan detainees.

Also, on China, Ignatieff is very critical now of Harper's decision to link trade and human rights. Ignatieff has frequently complained that the prime minister's insistence on standing firm against China's mistreatment of minorities and its denial of basic democratic rights was counterproductive to Canada's trade with China.

But as recently as 2005, Ignatieff told an Amnesty International conference that China had become an "outlier" on human rights and cautioned it should not build its prosperity on forced labour and suppression of dissent.

The two go hand-in-hand -- the willingness to subordinate one's real policy views for a few centrists' votes and the decision to summer in Flin Flon rather than Provence. More importantly, voters sense insincerity.

If Ignatieff wants to raise his party's poll numbers, he has to stop pandering on the road and in his policy stances.

Lorne Gunter is a columnist with the Edmonton Journal.

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