Michael Ignatieff remembers her name. Zeena. "For that was what was written on her nameplate," he says in the odd, wooden syntax he uses in speeches.
He tells a million-dollar Liberal Party fundraising dinner in Toronto — more than a thousand people in the audience — that, as Zeena is frisking him after he has passed through the security scanner at the Ottawa airport, she says: "Mr. Ignatieff, you did the right thing about that coalition business."
He continues with the Zeena tale: "'You're doing well,' she said. Then she added, 'The Liberals are coming back. You're the party for us, the party of the people.' 'Yes, Zeena,' I said. 'That's what we're trying to be.' The party of the people."
Soaring Obama-ese it is not. "We have a very anti-rhetorical political tradition in Canada, and I think that's a strength, not a weakness," Mr. Ignatieff observed recently.
It's an interesting story for him to tell. What is the message, apart from self-congratulation?
Perhaps an attempt at vindication for using the backlash against the Liberal-New Democratic coalition that tried to bring down Stephen Harper's minority government to engineer the palace coup that made him party leader. Coalition champion Bob Rae, his rival for the leadership, is sitting just a few metres away, having only moments before given him a glowing introduction.
Or maybe it was a momentary step outside his usual oratorical plod, designed to persuade his audience that, as Zeena said, the Liberals are coming back ... and Michael Ignatieff is bringing them back.
An Ekos Research poll published this week shows the Liberals seven points ahead of the Conservatives nationally. With an election almost certain in the next 18 months, Canadians are beginning to envision Mr. Ignatieff as their prime minister.
Two years ago, when he lost his first leadership race to Stéphane Dion, he was an outsider to his party and an unknown to the public. Now, he and his team are working hard to erase that notion.
On the Web, he Twitters, Flickrs, blogs, Facebooks, YouTubes, IggyTubes (on his site) and Diggs. You want to know his musical taste, what books he reads, his favourite movie (The Godfather, Part 1) and what he looks for from others (friendship)? It's all there.
He travels the country to give speeches, meet Liberals and be in front of television cameras. Since moving into Stornoway, the opposition leader's residence, he and wife, Zsuzsanna Zsohar, have entertained vigorously — inviting members of the parliamentary press corps, among others, for canapés and tête-à-têtes.
And although political observer Peter C. Newman wrote recently that the media lie in wait ("Ottawa-based reporters resent him … he has been too successful too fast"), favourable stories about him have blossomed. He appears on the cover of magazines for everyone from seniors (Zoomer) to students (University of Toronto's Hart House publication), while Maclean's features a long interview, and another news organization has been promised exclusive photos of his new kitten.
This week marks the launch of his latest book (Mr. Rae, in introducing him at the fundraiser, said he has written more of them than the entire Conservative caucus has read), part of the choreography leading up to his drum-roll unveiling at the Liberal Party convention in Vancouver at the end of the month.
True Patriot Love is about his mother's family, the intellectual, nationalist Grants. He has said he gives himself away when he writes about his family and, in truth, for him it's a near obsession.
"It's all about creating the ground under your own feet," he has said. "It's kind of a process of self-invention, so that you're standing with your feet planted, you know who the hell you are, you know where the hell you came from, you know where the hell you're going."
The book is not just about the Grants. It's also a detailed look at his own beliefs about his country, its government and his political ideology.
