Silly Little Country

Was Dion so Unexpected?

Well, not by me. I suspect my views - I really considered Dion a serious likely winner - were driven partly emotionally, and partly intellectually. I found the Rae arguments about why we should forget how badly he had bungled his Ontario Premiership deeply unconvincing. OK, utterly unconvincing. When you go back and look at the numbers, yes, he was slightly the victim of a non-growing economy, but he induced essentially the whole economic problem with his first rather very NDP-ish budget. And now he wants to blame NDP fanatics, of whom he was the leader? OK so my main point there is that EVERY reasonable Liberal delegate should not want to invite that discussion in the next election campaign.
And as my sister points out, Ignatieff was just too concerned about real issues for a Liberal election presentation of self and his positions on international events, arrived at with far more difficulty than our national delight in deciding we are morally superior to everyone and should never be involved in shooting anyone. So one can see most of the party ducking those tough issues; and much as Ignatieff tried to duck those issues, they were not forgotten.
So we got Dion, everyone to everyone.
I did not originate the idea Dion had a good shot - Paul Wells was an early advocate - and enjoy this amusing rueful comment, and I think even Andrew Coyne made the case - close here. Many media went into the weekend thinking this could be the outcome. So why is the Canadian media just saying this was a total shock? Small guess -ratings.

posted by Alan Adamson @ 12:55 PM