The Globe and Mail

Media narratives are strange beasts, especially when they selectively pick facts to suit a conclusion.

This morning's National Post has an editorial that argues Michael Ignatieff has transformed the Liberal Party from a group of vote-chasing unprincipled chameleons under Prime Minister Chrétien to a principled political party that stands up for truth, justice and the Canadian way on all issues of any importance:

"A decade ago, Liberal ranks were full of America-bashers and noisy cultural nationalists. The party supported anti-Israel resolutions at the United Nations and adopted the fashionable, amoral posture of "honest broker" in international relations. Mr. Chrétien himself flippantly defended slush-fund politics in Quebec and disdained his successor's efforts to investigate the most disgraceful abuses. The party's bosses had one goal - to win votes, principles be damned. All this has changed - slowly at first under Paul Martin and the unpopular Stephane Dion, and now decisively under Michael Ignatieff. Like all political parties, the Liberals still often resort to cynical messaging when it suits them (especially in regard to Stephen Harper's fiscal policies). But overall, the Liberals of today are night-and-day compared to their 1990s-era forebears."

But apparently Ignatieff has achieved this transformation simply by flashing his bushy eyebrows because both John Ivison and this newspaper argue today that Ignatieff has said nothing of any substance since he became leader.

That's quite an incredible accomplishment Ignatieff has pulled off - transforming the party's standing on a range of issues without taking any specific positions. (Oh, and he isn't officially leader for another five days. But I digress.)

The conventional wisdom in Liberal land these days seems to be that Ignatieff shouldn't release any platform planks until an election is called lest Stephen Harper, dastardly devil that he is, steal all of his ideas or launch massive negative ads to make the ideas unsellable. The maxim that smart political parties don't release policy until campaigns are launched is in danger of becoming a truism.

Except of course it isn't true.

There are times when pre-launching platforms is not only a smart strategy, but a necessity. Both Dalton McGuinty and Mike Harris showed that pre-launching well-communicated platforms that help frame the coming campaign months if not years before an election can be a deft, successful strategy.

That said, I'm not sure that Ignatieff should be putting out many platform pieces right now. But it's not for the conventional reasons normally cited (that Harper will steal or go negative on whatever he says).

An election could be weeks away; it could also be a year or more away. There isn't a single person in this country who knows where our economy or the federal books will be a year from now. Anyone who says they do is making it up - we just don't know if we will be out of the recession or in worse shape than we are today.

That leaves the Liberal leader in a difficult position; all people care about at the moment is the economy and yet almost any forward-looking economic policy he puts out (i.e. anything that looks beyond the current economic slowdown) is likely to be out of date - one way or another - by the time an election rolls around.

He can still discuss with confidence non-monetary or low-cost policy issues (immigration reform, for example, is something the Liberals need a new policy vision for), long-term vision pieces (though hopefully not a national electricity grid...) and other policies that give an indication of how he would manage the economy (call them "values pieces"). But that's not what the Globe and others are craving - they want fully costed, very detailed specifics.

I'm just not sure how any opposition leader could release serious, costed, credible economic policies in an environment where the Minister of Finance - with all the resources he has at his disposal - is changing his economic projections seemingly on an hourly basis and an election could literally be more than a year away.