Norman Spector and Gordon Gibson are both, it seems to me, smart and capable guys. I know Spector a little bit Gibson not at all. But in today's Globe they both go way, way off the rails.
First Gibson :
For most people, economics and serious politics are quite boring. All the more reason they should be force-fed to understand the gravity of choices on voting day. I say it again: At the next election, have the circus of multiparty debates if you like, but the networks should schedule one major discussion between Mr. Harper and Mr. Ignatieff they are the only two leaders who can shape the future.
The last time I looked that isn't the way parliamentary democracy works. The idea that in Canada only two leaders can shape the future is - or should be - anathema to our system of government. Gibson is advocating American-style governance through the back door. Good on him. It's a free country. That said, Gibson's authoritarian views simply don't accord with democracy as it is practiced in this country.
And as for Spector:
"If Mr. Ignatieff or Mr. Harper were prime minister in 2004, Canada would still be in Iraq today." - Brad Lavigne
I'm betting that these words, spoken by the NDPs national director, will not come out of the mouth of Jack Layton at the party conference in Halifax this weekend. Not a whole lot of money, mind you, given the kind of things that tend to be said when federal New Democrats get together. But surely Jack Layton, PhD, is too smart to put forward a howler of this magnitude. Then again, he did tell Canadians in the last election that he was running to be their prime minister.
Today, with election speculation again in the background, the NDP's principal objective is to protect its vote against the always-voracious Liberals - a.k.a. Canada's natural governing party. But, while Mr. Layton may be able to count on many Canadians having forgotten that Jean Chrétien opted out of the Iraq war in 2003, not 2004, it's unlikely that we've already forgotten events that took place in 2009. Surely Mr. Layton himself hasn't forgotten that only a few months ago he was proposing that Michael Ignatieff should be our next prime minister. Heck, he was even offering to sit in the cabinet of a man who, as Mr. Lavigne also reminded us yesterday, "has written books defending torture."
If this attack line is the best that New Democrats can come up with, the party needs more than a name change. Desperately.
When Layton signed the coalition agreement the Libs were in the midst of a leadership contest to replace Dion. Where Norman Spector gets the idea that Layton proposed that Ig be the next PM is beyond me. In fact, Ig betrayed the entire coalition cause by reneging on the same deal he signed onto when Dion was still leader.
More's the point, unless and until Ignatieff revisits his thinking on this issue he's essentially consigning the vast majority of voters to a governing party it neither wants nor agrees with. And I can't imagine that either Spector or Gibson would think that a good idea.
UPDATE I see my man Spector is urging me toward his take on the Layton-Ignatieff annulment. I don't disagree with his chronology. It's his use of the word "proposing" that sets my sails to luffing. Layton no more "proposed" Ignatieff for PM than I might fly to Mars. The agreement was between the parties. The NDP was ready and willing to work with whoever the Libs selected as leader (and they were at pains to keep their noses out of their prospective partner's internal contest). Once Ig was in the driver's seat, that's when the equivocations started. There followed a sort of phony war between the Tories and the Liberals. In fact the peace between them was sealed the day Ig ascended to the leadership.