These days, voters react to the human qualities of political leaders more often than they absorb policy detail. This makes for elections that seem less filling, and don't taste great.
Take the last Canadian election. Eventually, we will probably have some sort of carbon pricing, but few voters became more informed about this idea, even though it was the most prominently debated policy on offer. This is far from the first time this has happened, and it seems to be getting worse.
In this era that has spawned TMZ, Perez Hilton and built Entertainment Tonight-style programming into an industry, we seem driven to obsess about the superficial. To try to sate this appetite, we've gone beyond A and B-list celebrities and created C, D and X-lists too. We more or less speed-date them, rushing from interest to adulation to boredom at lightning speed. Happily for most politicians, there are more than enough celebrities to attract our gaze. A few get caught in the personality vortex, and when they do, its not pretty. I'm not a big Sarah Palin fan, but I'm pretty sure I don't care what her former, putative son in law Levi Johnston thinks about her.
This hyper-superficialism does come with a price in politics. We're getting further away from elections are about critical policy choices, even as we lament that fact. Our campaigns race by in less than 40 days. America's may be impossibly long, but don't ours seem somehow too brief? We pay attention for the first 3-4 days, then maybe a little more when there are debates. On Election Day, many don't vote, and half of those who do, had their mind made up before the election.
It may seem impossible in this day and age to wage a winning campaign about ideas. But for both Stephen Harper and Michael Ignatieff it's probably worth trying to avoid a campaign that turns exclusively on personality.
I'm not one of those who think Mr. Ignatieff has had a terrible couple of months, but the next few could stand to be better. His personality is starting to develop some definition, not all of his doing. He'll be seen as smart, but smart must be paired with equal measures of humility and purpose, or it can be more drawback than advantage.
In my mind, Mr. Ignatieff needs to evince passion, hope, determination, as well as brainpower. His deepest personal values need to be more on display. The best way to do that is to push a handful of big ideas onto the table. He can then demonstrate those qualities in the pursuit of something other than power itself. Looking passionate about power for its own sake is the fatal flaw of many political figures, the easiest weakness for voters to spot.
Those who say he should avoid the risk will highlight the troubles that befell Stéphane Dion and his Green Shift. Mr. Ignatieff's facility with the English language and a career spent discussing ideas are just two reasons why this a very different situation.
But maybe the most compelling argument for starting to establish visible, big ideas is the risk of letting the next campaign dissolve into a personality contest alone. With a welter of Conservative advertising trying to craft an ugly image of Michael Ignatieff, the Liberal Party will need to stand for more than not being the Conservative Party, and Mr. Ignatieff more than simply not being Stephen Harper.
For Mr. Harper, there are equally strong reasons to position away from a campaign about personalities, and create a new sense of the big ideas he wants to champion. That argument, tomorrow.
Bruce Anderson