During these dog days, what with all the back and forth hereabouts regarding the merits and demerits of Michael Ignatieffs presence or absence before the local and or national press, I was struck particularly by a line in Les Campbell's contribution to the debate:
"He is being portrayed as an aloof intellectual more interested in spending time in England than small-town Canada, and its starting to stick. As implausible as it is given his impressive credentials and reputation as a thinking man, there is also a criticism that hes short on policy [italics mine].
I'm not so sure that Ig's policy prescriptions, whether delivered to big foots or scrubbers, are really the answer. When a pol speaks it's not the policy that remains as the affective residue, it's the underlying point of view.
Ronald Reagan, his conservatism notwithstanding, was the most competent politician of the contemporary era. Leave aside that his published diaries put paid to the malarkey that he was a dunce, Reagan made his constituents feel better about themselves for having heard his message.
And while you might have agreed with Mario Cuomos electrifying, another-city speech to the '84 Democratic convention, you couldn't help but be disarmed by Reagan's brand of sunny, sturdy optimism. And this wasn't simply a matter of charisma. Part of a politician's intellectual skill set is a capacity to dress his or her core beliefs in garb appropriate to the occasion.
I'll go way out on a limb here and say that when Barack Obama is re-elected, pundits will look back at his impromptu appearance before the White House press core last week as his finest hour.
It could have been a disaster. He was looking for a mulligan on the Gates matter. He claimed he should have calibrated his words more carefully (weasel!), but when he stared the room down and disagreed with those who suggested he ought not to have weighed in on the matter, he hit a monster shot clear out of the park. Commenting on the racial divide in America was, he said, in his portfolio.
Voters want to know what their representatives think. Not so much because they want to agree or disagree but because only in that way can they sense whether he or she is their guy.
What Ig's doing this summer I don't know and I don't care. What I'd like to know what he thinks about something, anything. And in a way that makes me care. The rest is noise.
