Barrel Strength

Conservatives in Canada still recall the counting abilities of Rt. Hon. Joe Clark which led to fall of the government in 1979.  It seems that that section of the Hall of Fame has another candidate.  Please make way for Nancy Pelosi.  Today the vote on the bailout bill was rejected with Democrats voting 140 for and 95 against.  On the Republican side it was 65 for and 133 against.

Given the importance of the bill why would Pelosi put it to vote?

At first view, it appears merely that Michael Ignatieff can deliver a “hidden agenda” stemwinder that doesn’t induce comas in the audience, unlike his current leader. More to the point, we see that even a supposedly rational, educated man such as Ignatieff can descend to the timeworn tactic of placing all of his opponents’ views beyond the pale of the acceptable. This is not removed that far from the thinking behind Soviet denunciations of dissenters: those who disagree with the state are isolated lunatics.

Many of us have endured these diatribes numerous times to the point where they fade into background noise. But it is worth asking why in the twenty-first century it is still acceptable for some in this nation to presume that legitimate public policy debate cannot be permitted, that to oppose the Liberal Party is not the irrational act of a handful?

There was a hint of the answer revealed yesterday in CBC’s The Sunday Edition, wherein Michael Enright and his panel tried to discuss the question of elitism as a political issue in Canada. I say “tried” because they missed the point entirely. Taking as their cue Harper’s reasonable assertion that most Canadians are not impressed by the sight of gala-hopping arts world figures braying over supposed cuts to arts subsidies, the panel meandered into a chat about anti-intellectualism in North American society.

Could they not even consider the obvious evidence of discomfort over elites in Canada, such as the blatant disconnect between supposed national institutions like the CBC and the taxpayers who bankroll them, as evidenced by the ombudsman findings on Heather Mallick? Or the greater problem having a cadre of francophone and bilingual anglophone bureaucrats, recruited and honed in the heyday of Trudeaupia, presiding over the machinery of government and immune to public will?

When it is so starkly obvious to the rest of Canada, can even one person in the Liberal Party rise above these stale Soviet-era tactics and attempt some real political engagement? Judging by Ignatieff, not likely.

Update:

Here is Harry Flashman’s apt description of Iggy’s great-grandfather, Count Nicholas Pavlovich Ignatieff:

“He looked tough, and immensely self-assured; it was in his glance, in the abrupt way he moved…He was the kind who knew exactly what was what, where everything was, and precisely who was who – especially himself. He was probably a devil with women, admired by his superiors, hated by his rivals, and abjectly feared by his subordinates. One word summed him up: bastard.”