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So easy to ridicule.

A right eyebrow that a diver could do a backflip off; a sense that his handlers’ instructions – furrow for seriousness, use a reporter’s name, smile now – are written in ballpoint on the palm of his hand; and a gnawing uneasiness that his mouth contains not just a silver spoon but a platinum memory stick.

And yet Michael Ignatieff came across pretty well for once.

Perhaps not satisfactory to those wet-your-pants Ottawa media who need their daily cup of crises, but good enough for those of us who would reach for pitchforks if they called an election at a time like this.

He wants to make things work, he says, and he spoke, ironically, at precisely the same moment Speaker of the House Peter Milliken was admonishing the Member for Yorkton-Melville for not even bothering to show up for the second reading of his bill to amend the firearm registry. He hadn’t shown up last time, either.

“The ‘Big Prize,’” Ignatieff said as he listed for four points – call them demands, call them clarifications, who really cares? – is “to make Canadians feel we’ve got a pretty good system here.” Well, we don’t – at least not lately. But at least Ignatieff is opening a door to the Prime Minister that could, rather simply, win Friday’s confidence motion and prevent a summer election no one wants.

The Leader of the Opposition says he is “seeking co-operation, not confrontation.” He says that, under the dire circumstances of 2009, he’d be open to the House sitting a little longer rather than rising for an entire season.

Unemployment, isotopes, actual infrastructure spending, and plans to dig out of this hole – how can that be too much to ask? Or, for that matter, answer?

We have had record low turnouts in the last federal election and a string of provincial elections – the “can’t be bothered” side winning the day. Is this message not getting through?

People have lost faith. A little common sense this week won’t cure that, but at least it won’t feed into the revulsion Canadians are lately showing for their political institutions.

IT’S TIME TO MAKE IT WORK

If there is one wisdom to be gathered from sorting through the grapeshot that makes up most “comment” strings in the political portion of this newspaper and website, it is that Canadians may never before have been so polarized.

If a columnist or news report dares mention either Stephen Harper or Michael Ignatieff in even dim positive light, or thin negative light, the battle rises in a shelling of thunderous keyboard strokes. I count myself “balanced” simply because I have been equally attacked as a Liberal hack, a Conservative defender of the indefensible and, of course, a socialist plant.

How ironic, then, that all parties would seek the middle ground when it appears few who are not in politics want nothing whatsoever to do with it.

But perhaps that is not true. Perhaps the shunning of the political process in this country is saying something loud and clear when you have the worst turnout in history for last fall’s federal election, record lows in Ontario, Alberta, British Columbia and near-record lows in Quebec. In 1960 in Nova Scotia, more than 82 per cent cast votes; in 2006 and 2009, record lows.

How many of those who aren’t voting are actually raising a fist in favour of a widespread sentiment that politicians and politics have failed the country, that they cannot work together for the most part and, at the federal level, will not even attempt to work things out.

Liberal Opposition leader Michael Ignatieff asked for four things. He wants to hear, a bit earlier, the government’s promised reforms to Employment Insurance – not a bad idea, given the amount of jobs being lost each day. He wants to know what the government plans to do about the shortage of isotopes for cancer treatment – an excellent idea, as anyone battling cancer or living with someone battling cancer would agree. He wants to know how much of the already passed stimulus package has been spent – surely the simplest of all requests. And he wants to know what the Tory plan is to dig Canada out of the current massive deficit – which, of course, is going to be meaningless gobbledygook no matter which party tries such an impossibility.

Pretty simple, surely.

While it didn’t seem dramatic enough for those on the Hill who have come to believe they, not Torontonians, live at the centre of the Canadian universe, it needs to be said that most of the rest of the country lost absolute interest in such dramatics over this past ridiculous winter.

It’s time to make it work, as Ignatieff says.

And Harper’s magnificent opportunity here is to make that attempt – call Iggy’s bluff, if you need to cast it in that light – and see if, for once a little common sense can find its way into the sacred Middle Ground that too many Canadians seem lately to have misplaced.