Summertime, and the livin' is easy. At least that was George Gershwin's opinion. It certainly seems to be true as far as Canadian politics is concerned.
Since Parliament closed its ornate doors in June, despite the melodrama of its concluding days, it's been as placid a political summer as I can remember. Apart from the factitious controversy stirred up by a New Brunswick newspaper over Stephen Harper's reception of the Eucharist, the vilely branded “wafergate,” there has been very little political noise. Even Karlheinz Schreiber has departed, to try the patience and dexterity of stenographers in courts and hearing rooms other than our own.
Which is fine. Perhaps all the MPs – they are the foot soldiers after all – are unobtrusively tending to their districts and reconnecting with the voters at large. More power to them if they are. Connection of this sort is an evermore necessary thing in Canadian politics. Mr. Harper is largely offstage, but that is his disposition. It is the relative silence and invisibility of Michael Ignatieff that is curious.
A recent poll follows the yo-yo of almost all polls since the last election. Liberals ahead one week, Conservatives the next. This one gives the Conservatives a meagre lead. It should worry Mr. Ignatieff.
Consider. The Liberals are a long way from the scandals and feuds that did so much to scatter and reduce them. Stéphane Dion's uncertain and brief tenure as leader, together with the baggage of his ineffable green plan, is history. But most of all, the Liberals have a new leader, a man of international prestige, an intellectual, a dependable performer in the House of Commons – all this, too, if we take a cue from events south of the border, in a “time of change.”
Repaired party. Brand-new leader. Time of change. The Liberals have a perfect recipe. Why then are they, if only by a cat's whisker, trailing the Conservatives? Why has Mr. Ignatieff been so low-key, almost withdrawn from the public scene? Where is the charge and élan we should expect to see in a political party that has, finally, the leader to unite them and expel the frictions and factions of the past?
By all logical understanding, the Liberals shouldn't be stalled; they should be in upward flight. They are not. Have they been handicapped by Mr. Ignatieff's strange reticence on policy? I call it strange only because articulation, the ability to present and argue, is, of all his many virtues, surely the primary one.
This is a man whose strongest supporters are fond of relating to Pierre Trudeau, another intellectual with an envious ability to state his ideas with force and clarity. Mr. Trudeau deployed that ability. Why is Mr. Ignatieff holding back? Why is he not taking advantage of the very novelty of his leadership, claiming the spotlight to define his tenure, mark it off from the dour example of Mr. Harper? Why is he not, through some sketch of policy on matters of central concern to Canadians, selling himself and his party before the next election – as soon it will – arrives?
Mr. Harper we know. The Canadian public has sized him up, and then some. Whatever advantages accrue to the Liberals from the spikes and bristles of the Harper persona have already been gathered. There is nothing new for them on that front. It follows that to crawl out of their near equivalence with the Conservatives, they and their leader must build on something more than the perceived discontent with the policies or manner of Mr. Harper. But, if this summer, so far, is anything to go by, they evidently believe they have merely to wait for the fruit to fall. That is a delusion.
There is no sign that, since Mr. Ignatieff assumed the leadership in early May, the electorate has been in a hush of expectation, waiting for the chance to pull the polling levers massively in the Liberals' favour. In fact, as that recent poll declares, they are a little more pleased just at this moment with Mr. Harper. Mr. Ignatieff has a great job of persuasion on his hands. He has to show that being leader of the Liberal Party is more than the skill of getting the job. He has to put some substance to the expectations of those who thought so highly of returning him to Canadian politics in the first place.
There is something, however, in the Liberals' approach that suggests that, maybe from their long habit of being in power, they expect it will be theirs again simply by default. Maybe that's why Mr. Ignatieff has had, in terms of visibility and profile, so relaxed and ruminative a summer. Maybe he or his party don't think much work is required, that they also win who only sit and wait. This is an error. It may be summertime but for politicians, the bewitching Gershwin message to the contrary, the livin' is never easy.
Rex Murphy is a commentator with The National and host of CBC Radio's Cross-Country Checkup .
