Once upon a time, Canada had a perfect political
machine called Liberal Party, also known as the "government
party".
The perfect machine I’m talking about had some
glitches in the past, but their “geek squad” (do you remember people
like Jim Coutts, Keith Davey, Marc Lalonde or, later, Jean Pelletier or
Eddy Goldenberg?) was fast and competent and always able to eliminate
those glitches in time for the electoral appointment. The problem Dion
is facing is twofold because the feud between Chretienites and
Martinites not only messed up the machine, it also destroyed the “geek
squad”.
When I see the present leader Stephane Dion trying
to fix that machine, what comes up in my mind is a not very skilled
restaurateur trying to put together with crazy glue a China vase reduced
to smithereens.
Stephane Dion was elected in Montréal not because
he was the best leader for the party, but only because the rank-and-file
Liberals were not convinced of the alternatives. They wanted a real
change and, rightly or wrongly, believed that other major candidates
were only icons used by the old guards of the past to sell themselves as
the future of the party.
The bold move by Gerard Kennedy to give up his
remaining hopes for victory and push Dion to the top was symptomatic of
those feelings. I’m sure Kennedy is not a happy camper these days.
And, with him, thousands of rank-and-file Liberals.
With the latest moves, giving the party back in the
hands of Sen. David Smith and John Rae, Dion has betrayed the vote of
confidence the Liberals folk gave to him in Montréal. He has brought
back, from the front door, the past that Liberal rank-and-file through
out of the window.
I have a lot of respect for John Rae and Sen. David
Smith and, in the past, they did a good job for the Liberal Party. But I
don’t believe they are the Cincinnatus of the modern era. The Roman
statesman was brought back from retirement to rescues the Roman army
surrounded by the enemy; Dion’s army is not surrounded, it just
doesn’t exist. The party the Liberals voted for in Montréal was a
party able to generate a plan, put on the table new ideas, stimulate the
debate amongst Canadians, reach out to new people, and in a relatively
short period of time take the Conservative minority government to task
and go to the vote.
Dion has not been able to do any of this. Right
after Montréal convention, he has given out titles and positions with
the same criteria MacDonald and “Pizza Pizza” franchise their
outlets.
I remember Dion’s press conference in Toronto on
December 19 last year, the day after he had appointed Ignatieff as
deputy leader, announcing the
“dream team". He said, then, that “we need to win the election
for Canada. We need to offer Canada a very good option.”
All the people on the stage with him that
day, Scott Brison, Martha Hall Findlay, Bob Rae and Gerard Kennedy, are
all talented individual, but in order to do a “specific job”, you
need a “specific talent”. Giving titles doesn’t give you the
necessary expertise. I believe it was Napoleon who was used to say
“give me a lot of medals and I’ll win all the wars you want.”
Well, it’s the other way around, that’s why he ended up alone and
defeated in St. Helena, a puny island in the Atlantic ocean almost 2000
kilometres west of Africa.
He had Bob Rae, a former Ndpier, and Scott
Brison, a former Conservative, co-chairs the development of the Liberal
platform. Obviously he believed that a “middle of the road” policy
is a mathematical average between left and right. Brison said that they
were “the party that cares about the environment and understands the
economy." We are still waiting for them to explain to us.
Gerard Kennedy was appointed “special
adviser for election readiness”. Kennedy is a very dedicated and
talented politicians but, according to some Liberal insiders, “he
cannot organize two shoes in a box”, never mind a national election
campaign.
Martha Hall Findlay, again, a talented
Toronto lawyer, but probably familiar with the Liberal Party like I am
with the Mandarin language, was appointed “platform outreach chair”
and, Dion said, “she will work directly with grassroots members.”
Ok, if I understand that correctly, she was
supposed to talk to the Liberal grassroots and, Dion said, make
"sure what we have to offer is always fed by the ideas of
Canadians". I guess she was supposed to talk to “John” in
Grimsby and, of course, to “Jean” in Chicutimi (possible not
Chinese) and report to Bob and Scott who were supposed to transform that
“input” a Liberal policy. Perfect thinking, only one problem:
didn’t work.
What about Joe Volpe, and Ken Dryden? Well,
they believed so much in the lies they had to resort to in order to stop
Volpe’s organization, especially in Québec, that left him, and the
most talented organizer Liberal MP in Québec, Massimo Pacetti, out.
And Dion, probably anticipating the disaster
he is in, decided, as they do in hockey, to leave Ken Dryden, the
golie and "the heart of the party” out too. “He's so close to
the Canadian people, - said Dion - and I want him to be
everywhere", but not in the party, of course.
So, after ten months, what happened to the
“dream team”?
Well, Ignatieff is still there and by now, I
believe, he has realized the mistake he made in leaving a very rewarding
job as academic. Gerard Kennedy is teaching at Ryerson Institute in
Toronto, Bob Rae probably will soon be in Afghanistan, and I hope that
somebody will tell us about the whereabouts of Scott and Martha.
In the meantime he has failed to establish a direct
dialogue with the members of his caucus, the elected representatives of
the Liberal Party, keeps fiddling with non-elected individuals, has
appointed more co-chairs for his campaign then the numbers of MP he will
elects in case of an election and he has brought back David Smith and
John Rae. Now he is ready, all together, to go back to the future.
