The Globe and Mail

In what might well be the worst week of his political life, Michael Ignatieff is taking it from all sides. His poll numbers are heading straight south. Columnists are taking dead aim. And all the while his younger Liberal cousin Nick Clegg is ripping it up, reducing Count Vronsky to the least successful politician in his own family –and by a goodly margin. Perhaps the Grits need to rethink Ig’s current profile, which intends for him to be the sagacious-intellectual-with-a touch-of-the-everyman (see Trudeau, Pierre) but gets interpreted by the public as yet another in a string of bumbling, fidgeting, flibbertigibbets (see Martin, Paul and Dion, Stephane). Well, as nothing else is working, how about this courtesy one Dale Peterson – a Republican running for Alabama agricultural commissioner. Ig might want to lose Peterson’s gun prop but the get-tough attitude and the Stetson could have legs.