Maybe somebody has taken a baseball bat to my head Mel Gibson style but I want to make sure I am following Tim's logical consistency over Michael Ignatieff:
» For months, Tim's critique of Ignatieff was he was just criticizing Stephen Harper without a positive message of his own. Over the last number of months there has been a none-too-subtle change in tone and substance to Ignatieff's message. So, when he spends the current tour talking more (though certainly not exclusively) about his vision for the country and connecting with Canadians, Tim thinks Ignatieff is turning the spotlight foolishly on himself, instead of Harper. Zing. To paraphrase the Simpsons, Tim is looking for a "realistic down-to-earth message from Ignatieff that's completely off the wall and swarming with magic robots."
» Tim criticizes Ignatieff with a witty Lebron comparison for being overexposed on his summer-long tour. The tour that is now, what, two days old? Given that the meme for almost every other opposition tour ever has been "ha, ha, ha, look, the media is ignoring him... what a failure the tour is... what a chump...", the notion that a leader of the opposition could EVER be overexposed during the middle of the summer while traveling to small-town Canada is a new one to me. I would presume that if Ignatieff was receiving no coverage on his tour, Tim would be cracking opposite jokes but far be it from me to put words in his mouth.
» As a regular reader has pointed out, Michael Ignatieff was not hanging out in France last summer. Tim and other Conservative spinners can repeat it as much as they want, it doesn't make it so.
All of which is to say, I'm not sure that anyone is expecting miracles out of the Liberal Leader's tour - the notion is ludicrous. But if in the first 72-hours Tim's main critique is that it's a bit too in-his-face then I think it bodes well for the rest of the barbecue circuit.