Silly Little Country

Politics!

I devoted pretty much the whole of yesterday and continue today to do so to the Liberal leadership convention and its outcome, and also in the background to the Alberta leadership meeting. Both saw the emergence of an underdog.
Stephane Dion, who won the national Liberal leadership, was my second choice behind Michael Ignatieff. This preference over the others has little to do with his stated words and policies (he uttered much the same inane Liberal pablum as every other candidate). He is clearly a tough figure and a hard worker, and appealing individually, in many ways compared with what we saw from other candidates; Ignatieff is patrician (it is why he is running, for Pete's sake), and Rae showed he was little less patrician and far more petulant when Gerard Kennedy shot his dreams apart of running on failure to create further Rae-induced failure. I am not sure I agree with my sister that Dion is 'trivial' (though I am not sure what she means) - he is reflexively giving statements occupying every space of the Liberal political universe - he says he is right of centre on economy and all for social justice (Milton Friedman's stark, and it seems empirically correct, "The society that puts equality before freedom will end up with neither," should be a caution in this mix.)
Ignatieff had choices and likely relied too much on his advisers suggesting he lie low and not take strong positions and not defend his difficult ones. Rae looked throughout an operator; I suspect I would like him but he really just wants to be on top and in the action (as he perceives it).
I think some of Rae's claims to learning were justified, and. weirdly, I rather liked him as the Ontario Premier, but I can sure see why others would never forget his time in office and think of it quite differently.
The thing that troubles me most is that I think Dion may have some principles, and that his environmental emphasis is hooked to those. He seems to think the European approach (ludicrous subsidization of technologies that MIGHT make sense, and hiding the costs of energy usage and carbon emission from the electorate as much as possible - these are policies that promote the promulgation of lies to the people, you and me, who should be making decisions about what our future is). I continue to stand on Greg Mankiw's Pigovian team, insofar as it makes any sense to do anything. My hope is that he can learn, but I am not sure I have seen a Liberal who understands much of these distinctions, so it is not clear where this economically ignorant leader will want to take us. But I believe he is no complete fool, and may find the skills to learn. And I would say, I don't see why Dion cannot learn as much about economics as Rae did, though I sure hope it takes him less than ten years of reflection!.
Dion still charms, relatively speaking a day later, though let us not forget that the great Martin-Dion Liberal initiative to meet Kyoto had zero in it that actually might have led to meeting it. I am sure the Conservatives will find a way to make that point, and soon.
A party that could just assume election invested almost a year in finding the right guy for the future; it all went somewhat arbitrarily and yet I do not feel bad about this. I do wonder whether Dion can gets seats in Quebec, and we shall see, and in the West.
The party is still not remotely free of its infantile and reflexive anti-Americanism, and it is sad to see how childish even past leaders are on needing this sort of thing to boost their egos. The recent by-elections, with the amusing demotion of the NDP under the Greens in London, and the moderately goofy results in Quebec, suggest this whole thing is going to be really entertaining in the future.
One small report I saw truly disturbed me. Pat Martin of the NDP on the CBC kept referring to this delegated convention as undemocratic. Well, for me, all I really fundamentally require of a 'democracy' is that there be a process by which one ruling group gets removed from power by something that looks like an election. A very tiny minority of countries meet this simple criterion.
And we could apply that to a party! And hey wait, is that not just what happened?

posted by Alan Adamson @ 12:10 PM