More on Ignatieff and the Liberals
April 5, 2005 · By Tom Cerber
Tony Keller writes a not entirely insightful feature in today’s Nat Post (subscription required) on Michael Ignatieff and why he’s getting plugged as a possible new leader for the Liberals. He shows how Ignatieff runs to the right of the Liberals on international issues (though is squarely a Trudeauite on domestic issues), while charismatically convincing the green-haired anti-Bush folks that Bush was in fact right about the big things:
I’m not sure the audience gets it — which is why Ignatieff may have the makings of a great Canadian politician. He has a talent for convincing a liberal crowd that his heart is on their side (which, in fairness, it is), even as he’s pushing ideas with which they disagree. He charms them with magic phrases — multilateralism, United Nations, international law — and then, before you know it, he’s telling a packed university auditorium that yes, we really are in a global war against terror; that the United States is a leading force for good in the world; that Ronald Reagan was a champion of human rights; and that the Bush White House is led by radical idealists.
Ignatieff is effective because 1) he’s one of them on enough issues and 2) because he’s one of them, he can talk some sense into them. If Harper said the same things, he’d be dismissed (by Liberals and by most media elites). But one of their own says them, which is more important.
In other words, ideas and interests aren’t nearly as important as who’s speaking them. Ignatieff is a key player in identify politics, Liberal style.
Mind you, as we’ve noted before, Ignatieff isn’t as much of a realist as the MSM has portrayed him (and here and here).
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