Saturday, September 30, 2006
Nerd!
So I've been glued to this all day.
Preliminary thoughts, at a time when Igantieff is leading Rae, Dion, and GerardKennedy with delegate counts of 314, 185, 184, and 135 respectively with 107 meetings reporting:
1. I'm gratified that Dion is so close behind Rae (until the hundredth meeting or so, he was actually slightly ahead), but the ex-officio delegates will swing to Rae over Dion by a margin of at least 2:1. Of course, it seems probably that a lot of the delegate elected this weekend won't make it to the convention anyway, by reason of cost, so who knows what's going to happen? This is the most exciting piece of political theatre since the federal election, but it shouldn't be mistaken for democracy.
2. Dryden's hurting. Badly.
3. Joe Volpe has 41 delegates. I'm trying to imagine the kind of person who could say, with a straight face, that Joe Volpe would make a good Prime Minister of Canada, but my imagination's failing me.
4. Exhaustive list of provinces where Rae is ahead of Dion: B.C., Newfoundland.
5. Rae's doing so badly (fourth place) in Ontario not because he's unelectable in Ontario, but because Ontario *Liberals* learned to dislike him back when they were, you know, opposing his government.
I suppose now's as good a time as any to reveal what my preferential ballot would look like in this race, if I was allowed to cast one:
1. Stéphane Dion
2. Ken Dryden
3. Martha Hall Findlay
4. Micahel Ignatieff
5. Gerard Kennedy
6. None of the Above
7. Bob Rae
8. Scott Brison
9. Joe Volpe
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So I've been glued to this all day.
Preliminary thoughts, at a time when Igantieff is leading Rae, Dion, and GerardKennedy with delegate counts of 314, 185, 184, and 135 respectively with 107 meetings reporting:
1. I'm gratified that Dion is so close behind Rae (until the hundredth meeting or so, he was actually slightly ahead), but the ex-officio delegates will swing to Rae over Dion by a margin of at least 2:1. Of course, it seems probably that a lot of the delegate elected this weekend won't make it to the convention anyway, by reason of cost, so who knows what's going to happen? This is the most exciting piece of political theatre since the federal election, but it shouldn't be mistaken for democracy.
2. Dryden's hurting. Badly.
3. Joe Volpe has 41 delegates. I'm trying to imagine the kind of person who could say, with a straight face, that Joe Volpe would make a good Prime Minister of Canada, but my imagination's failing me.
4. Exhaustive list of provinces where Rae is ahead of Dion: B.C., Newfoundland.
5. Rae's doing so badly (fourth place) in Ontario not because he's unelectable in Ontario, but because Ontario *Liberals* learned to dislike him back when they were, you know, opposing his government.
I suppose now's as good a time as any to reveal what my preferential ballot would look like in this race, if I was allowed to cast one:
1. Stéphane Dion
2. Ken Dryden
3. Martha Hall Findlay
4. Micahel Ignatieff
5. Gerard Kennedy
6. None of the Above
7. Bob Rae
8. Scott Brison
9. Joe Volpe
Friday, September 29, 2006
Steve Goes Cheerleading
Why I am supporting Stéphane Dion
I promise that once this race is over I'll go back to being uniformly snarky on non-partisan. But for the time being, having someone of Dion's calibre at the head of Canada's Natural Governing Party (TM) is an opportunity that ought not to be passed up.
Some highlights from the above links:
On the environment
"So we had these laid out on a matrix about six items down here and we had them from worst, to not so bad, to acceptable but weak, to really strong. And when we started the negotiations on November 28th, and we met as a group we didn't have a single country as supporting the global climate groups' positions, down the line on "very strong." Not one. And by the time the conference adjourned, we had every single decision in the best contemplated possible result strongest decision category. Every single one. And that was thanks to Stephane Dion." - Elizabeth May, Leader of the Green Party of Canada
"One of the questions at the Surrey debate was about soaring gasoline prices. It was, in effect, an invitation to pander to Liberals on a consumer issue. Dion refused to play. "I have bad news," he announced cheerfully. "It will only get worse." With China putting millions of new cars on the road every month, he said, Canada had better use less fuel if Canadians want lower fuel bills." - Paul Wells, Maclean's
"Dion is the only candidate who has made climate change a central priority. His 53-page plan for cutting Canada's output of greenhouse gases includes international carbon trading, burial of carbon dioxide and more public transit. He said yesterday he would rule out federal funding of infrastructure that spawned sprawl." - Henry Aubin, Montreal Gazette
National Unity
"Dion is in a class by himself. His effectiveness in the past dwarfs Rae's. The trenchant logic of his written ripostes to sovereignist leaders in the late 1990s elevated the national-unity debate and left opponents sputtering for words. The Clarity Act, of which he was the guiding spirit, gave Canada an overdue self-defence mechanism. In debates, he is quick on his feet and uses facts rather than hyperbole or personal attack. He might lack charisma, but he radiates intellectual integrity. It's hard, then, to think of anyone in Canada who inspires more confidence on the national-unity file." - Henry Aubin, Montreal Gazette
"Plucked out of academia by Jean Chretien shortly after the referendum, he got elected in St.-Laurent-Cartierville riding, jumping over the boards into the game. There he started throwing body checks at the sovereignists, deploying his limpid logic and academic rigour until separatists grew red in the face. His Clarity Act and his open letters deflated unreasonable Yes-side assertions and assumptions. If another referendum must be fought, Dion would be the man to fight it; no matter who is in power federally, the referendum No committee should co-opt Dion for a major role." - Montreal Gazette
Social Programs
"He shows signs of being an old-fashioned tax-and-spend Liberal; alarmingly, he suggested to our editorial board that "more social programs" are the only way to social justice." - Montreal Gazette
Intellect
"Dion offers only confidence, encyclopedic interests, and a decade at the centre of the nation's most gruelling debates, a trial by fire that he endured, we can say now in hindsight, with extraordinary good grace." - Paul Wells, Maclean's
"In recent debates, he earned kudos for being able to answer questions on just about any theme. "In the debates, I felt I was not surfing as the other candidates were," he told The Gazette's editorial board this week. "I enjoyed it."" - Philip Authier, Montreal Gazette
"When Paul Martin became Liberal leader, he told Dion it was time for new faces with new ideas. "Then I'll send you new ideas," Dion said. Within two days a discussion paper with new policies for the economy, environment and the mechanics of federalism was on Martin's desk. He shuffled Dion to the backbenches anyway. Dion became such a star at weekly caucus meetings -- and then, during the 2004 election, such a key player in the Liberals' late-inning recovery from complete collapse in Quebec -- that he was back in cabinet immediately after the election." - Paul Wells, Maclean's
Political Skills
"Today, after a campaign that allowed him to pump out policy ideas on almost every subject that matters, Dion is sitting pretty, either with a shot at the Liberal crown or in the starting gate of a future cabinet job." - Philip Authier
"Some say Dion is too dry and academic to win an election, a criticism we do not share. People said that about Stephen Harper, too, but he's PM today. Having both major parties led by individuals of undeniable intelligence is not such a bad fate for a country, after all." - Montreal Gazette
"Suddenly Russia wouldn't agree to the language on Article 3.9, which was our key protocol section about negotiating post-2012. At 6 o'clock we broke for dinner, we were supposed to resume at 8pm - didn't happen, midnight - didn't happen. 2:16 AM. Now they're all off in meeting rooms, and we're all working the corridors. At 2:16 AM Dion gaveled us back in and the word was out, he's going to try to bluff the Russians. He knows they won't agree, he's going to smoke ‘em out and make them do it in a room in public and see if we can get them to just let it go through. Dion put forward the good language, and all you have to do in a UN meeting, any one country can block. You just put your flag up. This is like a little nameplate. The Russians flipped their flag up, and they objected. And it was quite an extraordinary moment, the head of Russian delegation said "We never saw this language before, it is new to us, it's not….we are object on behalf of the Russian Federation to this language and we are more than prepared to explain our reasons." And Stephane Dion said, "as you are now blocking important progress for the fate of the world, I suggest you explain your reasons to the world." At 2:16 AM that's pretty good." - Elizabeth May, Leader of the Green Party of Canada
"Metcalfe was meeting every potential candidate, asking them what they would want their legacy to be if they survived a decade as prime minister. Almost none had a persuasive answer. (Belinda Stronach said, "Let me get back to you.") But Dion was ready to describe a legacy. His reply was short and, to Metcalfe's ears, sweet: "A united Canada that offers a better standard of living and uses fewer resources." Metcalfe, too, signed on to the Dion campaign." - Paul Wells, Maclean's
P.S.
Gerard Kennedy
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Why I am supporting Stéphane Dion
I promise that once this race is over I'll go back to being uniformly snarky on non-partisan. But for the time being, having someone of Dion's calibre at the head of Canada's Natural Governing Party (TM) is an opportunity that ought not to be passed up.
Some highlights from the above links:
On the environment
"So we had these laid out on a matrix about six items down here and we had them from worst, to not so bad, to acceptable but weak, to really strong. And when we started the negotiations on November 28th, and we met as a group we didn't have a single country as supporting the global climate groups' positions, down the line on "very strong." Not one. And by the time the conference adjourned, we had every single decision in the best contemplated possible result strongest decision category. Every single one. And that was thanks to Stephane Dion." - Elizabeth May, Leader of the Green Party of Canada
"One of the questions at the Surrey debate was about soaring gasoline prices. It was, in effect, an invitation to pander to Liberals on a consumer issue. Dion refused to play. "I have bad news," he announced cheerfully. "It will only get worse." With China putting millions of new cars on the road every month, he said, Canada had better use less fuel if Canadians want lower fuel bills." - Paul Wells, Maclean's
"Dion is the only candidate who has made climate change a central priority. His 53-page plan for cutting Canada's output of greenhouse gases includes international carbon trading, burial of carbon dioxide and more public transit. He said yesterday he would rule out federal funding of infrastructure that spawned sprawl." - Henry Aubin, Montreal Gazette
National Unity
"Dion is in a class by himself. His effectiveness in the past dwarfs Rae's. The trenchant logic of his written ripostes to sovereignist leaders in the late 1990s elevated the national-unity debate and left opponents sputtering for words. The Clarity Act, of which he was the guiding spirit, gave Canada an overdue self-defence mechanism. In debates, he is quick on his feet and uses facts rather than hyperbole or personal attack. He might lack charisma, but he radiates intellectual integrity. It's hard, then, to think of anyone in Canada who inspires more confidence on the national-unity file." - Henry Aubin, Montreal Gazette
"Plucked out of academia by Jean Chretien shortly after the referendum, he got elected in St.-Laurent-Cartierville riding, jumping over the boards into the game. There he started throwing body checks at the sovereignists, deploying his limpid logic and academic rigour until separatists grew red in the face. His Clarity Act and his open letters deflated unreasonable Yes-side assertions and assumptions. If another referendum must be fought, Dion would be the man to fight it; no matter who is in power federally, the referendum No committee should co-opt Dion for a major role." - Montreal Gazette
Social Programs
"He shows signs of being an old-fashioned tax-and-spend Liberal; alarmingly, he suggested to our editorial board that "more social programs" are the only way to social justice." - Montreal Gazette
Intellect
"Dion offers only confidence, encyclopedic interests, and a decade at the centre of the nation's most gruelling debates, a trial by fire that he endured, we can say now in hindsight, with extraordinary good grace." - Paul Wells, Maclean's
"In recent debates, he earned kudos for being able to answer questions on just about any theme. "In the debates, I felt I was not surfing as the other candidates were," he told The Gazette's editorial board this week. "I enjoyed it."" - Philip Authier, Montreal Gazette
"When Paul Martin became Liberal leader, he told Dion it was time for new faces with new ideas. "Then I'll send you new ideas," Dion said. Within two days a discussion paper with new policies for the economy, environment and the mechanics of federalism was on Martin's desk. He shuffled Dion to the backbenches anyway. Dion became such a star at weekly caucus meetings -- and then, during the 2004 election, such a key player in the Liberals' late-inning recovery from complete collapse in Quebec -- that he was back in cabinet immediately after the election." - Paul Wells, Maclean's
Political Skills
"Today, after a campaign that allowed him to pump out policy ideas on almost every subject that matters, Dion is sitting pretty, either with a shot at the Liberal crown or in the starting gate of a future cabinet job." - Philip Authier
"Some say Dion is too dry and academic to win an election, a criticism we do not share. People said that about Stephen Harper, too, but he's PM today. Having both major parties led by individuals of undeniable intelligence is not such a bad fate for a country, after all." - Montreal Gazette
"Suddenly Russia wouldn't agree to the language on Article 3.9, which was our key protocol section about negotiating post-2012. At 6 o'clock we broke for dinner, we were supposed to resume at 8pm - didn't happen, midnight - didn't happen. 2:16 AM. Now they're all off in meeting rooms, and we're all working the corridors. At 2:16 AM Dion gaveled us back in and the word was out, he's going to try to bluff the Russians. He knows they won't agree, he's going to smoke ‘em out and make them do it in a room in public and see if we can get them to just let it go through. Dion put forward the good language, and all you have to do in a UN meeting, any one country can block. You just put your flag up. This is like a little nameplate. The Russians flipped their flag up, and they objected. And it was quite an extraordinary moment, the head of Russian delegation said "We never saw this language before, it is new to us, it's not….we are object on behalf of the Russian Federation to this language and we are more than prepared to explain our reasons." And Stephane Dion said, "as you are now blocking important progress for the fate of the world, I suggest you explain your reasons to the world." At 2:16 AM that's pretty good." - Elizabeth May, Leader of the Green Party of Canada
"Metcalfe was meeting every potential candidate, asking them what they would want their legacy to be if they survived a decade as prime minister. Almost none had a persuasive answer. (Belinda Stronach said, "Let me get back to you.") But Dion was ready to describe a legacy. His reply was short and, to Metcalfe's ears, sweet: "A united Canada that offers a better standard of living and uses fewer resources." Metcalfe, too, signed on to the Dion campaign." - Paul Wells, Maclean's
P.S.
Gerard Kennedy
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
This post has nothing to do with Gerard Kennedy
It's early to judge, but from where I'm sitting Stephen Harper looks like the best Prime Minister since Pierre Trudeau.
I'll just let that observation sink in for a few minutes, breaking my silence only to assure you - repeatedly, if necessary - that you read that first sentence right.
I base my assessment on the following criteria:
1. sense of purpose
2. intellectual integrity
3. political courage
4. progressive measures
5. respect for democracy
6. administrative competence.
Stephen Harper's government has shown great sense of purpose, a quality which Canadians have been unable to witness in their federal governments since the days of Brian Mulroney (except for, arguably, a brief period at the end of Jean Chrétien's career). Since taking office mere months ago, it has advanced a number of its constituency's traditional priorities: taxes have been lowered, spending has been cut, and packages have been introduced to improve government accountability and to begin the processes of electoral and Senate reform. Measures to stiffen criminal penalties are apparently on the way during this Parliamentary session. Meanwhile, the government has taken a strong and unequivacal position on Canada's presence in the world, especially on the mission in Afghanistan. If you were to compress the entire agenda of the Chrétien-Martin years into six months, you'd be hard-pressed to find as much purpose there besides the elimination of the deficit.
Brian Mulroney's government showed a comparable sense of purpose, but it was marred by a lack of intellectual integrity. Flip-flops were rampant, and it was very difficult to infer a coherent intellectual foundation from the administration's actions. This is not true of Stephen Harper's government. All of the above-named actions look like those of a fiscally conservative government, interventionist in foreign affairs, and concerned with the state of Canadian democracy. I deduct points for the GST cut, which is viewed by nearly every economist as being a worse way of achieving the Conservatives' stated aim of increased economic growth than the income tax cuts it replaced, but to an extent this is splitting hairs: a tax cut's a tax cut.
You want political courage? Stephen Harper's taken a page out of Joe Clark's book when it comes to governing as if you have a majority. The things is, Harper's doing it right, daring the Bloc to vote against a budget that addressed issues core to its existence (he also benefits from the fact that the 2006 Liberals are hardly going to bring back Paul Martin to lead them into a snap election as the 1980 Liberals did with Pierre Trudeau). Besides that, this government implemented a major spending cut in a minority government. Besides that, it did so with a surplus, and with the apparent support of none of the opposition parties. The traditional rule of minority governments is that you throw money around like a drunken sailor (especially if the money's there, which it now is) and let the next majority worry about the consequences. Instead, this government, which purports to believe in smaller government, is making government smaller.
And the measures are, for the most part, progressive (in the sense of "moving the country forward", rather in the sense of "leftist"). It's paying down the debt (again, instead of engaging in pre-election tax cuts and spending) which obviously puts public finances on a stabler footing. It's addressing the so-called democratic deficit with a vigour that Paul Martin could never even talk about, and which Jean Chrétien and Brian Mulroney never even cared to pay lip service to. I have a hard time taking serious issue with any of the recent spending cuts, with the likely exception of the court access program. Kyoto? I'll take a government that outright refuses to meet the targets over one that pays lip service to pretending to any day. I deduct points for its regressive attitudes on crime (which are very similar to the New Democrats'), but even looking at this from my ideologically-slanted perspective, I am convinced that Canada will be better off after two (or whatever) years of Stephen Harper than it would have been under another two years of Paul Martin, or Jean Chrétien.
This government gives every indication that it respects democracy, though, as a minority, it sort of has to. Its proposal for fixed election dates empowers the people in the face of government. More importantly, the agenda it's delivered bears a great resemblance to the agenda it promised to deliver during the election campaign, which has the effect of making elections somewhat more meaningful. I deduct points for Harper's feud with the Parliamentary Press Gallery (which is, I'm certain, guilty of every charge he's pressed upon it, though such guilt does not excuse his actions), but not for the David Emerson defection or the Michael Fortier Senate appointment, neither of which, in my opinion, damages democracy in the country.
The last criterion, administrative competence, cannot be accurate judged at this point. But I have trouble believing that Harper's record on this will be worse than Chrétien's or Mulroney's (or, let's be honest, Trudeau's).
I'm still disinclined to vote Conservative, especially as long as they keep running the utterly useless Rahim Jaffer in my riding. But I was more disinclined still to vote for any other government I've witnessed since I achieved political maturity.
If voters in democracies really get the government they deserve, this one says nicer things about Canadians than have been said in a long time.
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It's early to judge, but from where I'm sitting Stephen Harper looks like the best Prime Minister since Pierre Trudeau.
I'll just let that observation sink in for a few minutes, breaking my silence only to assure you - repeatedly, if necessary - that you read that first sentence right.
I base my assessment on the following criteria:
1. sense of purpose
2. intellectual integrity
3. political courage
4. progressive measures
5. respect for democracy
6. administrative competence.
Stephen Harper's government has shown great sense of purpose, a quality which Canadians have been unable to witness in their federal governments since the days of Brian Mulroney (except for, arguably, a brief period at the end of Jean Chrétien's career). Since taking office mere months ago, it has advanced a number of its constituency's traditional priorities: taxes have been lowered, spending has been cut, and packages have been introduced to improve government accountability and to begin the processes of electoral and Senate reform. Measures to stiffen criminal penalties are apparently on the way during this Parliamentary session. Meanwhile, the government has taken a strong and unequivacal position on Canada's presence in the world, especially on the mission in Afghanistan. If you were to compress the entire agenda of the Chrétien-Martin years into six months, you'd be hard-pressed to find as much purpose there besides the elimination of the deficit.
Brian Mulroney's government showed a comparable sense of purpose, but it was marred by a lack of intellectual integrity. Flip-flops were rampant, and it was very difficult to infer a coherent intellectual foundation from the administration's actions. This is not true of Stephen Harper's government. All of the above-named actions look like those of a fiscally conservative government, interventionist in foreign affairs, and concerned with the state of Canadian democracy. I deduct points for the GST cut, which is viewed by nearly every economist as being a worse way of achieving the Conservatives' stated aim of increased economic growth than the income tax cuts it replaced, but to an extent this is splitting hairs: a tax cut's a tax cut.
You want political courage? Stephen Harper's taken a page out of Joe Clark's book when it comes to governing as if you have a majority. The things is, Harper's doing it right, daring the Bloc to vote against a budget that addressed issues core to its existence (he also benefits from the fact that the 2006 Liberals are hardly going to bring back Paul Martin to lead them into a snap election as the 1980 Liberals did with Pierre Trudeau). Besides that, this government implemented a major spending cut in a minority government. Besides that, it did so with a surplus, and with the apparent support of none of the opposition parties. The traditional rule of minority governments is that you throw money around like a drunken sailor (especially if the money's there, which it now is) and let the next majority worry about the consequences. Instead, this government, which purports to believe in smaller government, is making government smaller.
And the measures are, for the most part, progressive (in the sense of "moving the country forward", rather in the sense of "leftist"). It's paying down the debt (again, instead of engaging in pre-election tax cuts and spending) which obviously puts public finances on a stabler footing. It's addressing the so-called democratic deficit with a vigour that Paul Martin could never even talk about, and which Jean Chrétien and Brian Mulroney never even cared to pay lip service to. I have a hard time taking serious issue with any of the recent spending cuts, with the likely exception of the court access program. Kyoto? I'll take a government that outright refuses to meet the targets over one that pays lip service to pretending to any day. I deduct points for its regressive attitudes on crime (which are very similar to the New Democrats'), but even looking at this from my ideologically-slanted perspective, I am convinced that Canada will be better off after two (or whatever) years of Stephen Harper than it would have been under another two years of Paul Martin, or Jean Chrétien.
This government gives every indication that it respects democracy, though, as a minority, it sort of has to. Its proposal for fixed election dates empowers the people in the face of government. More importantly, the agenda it's delivered bears a great resemblance to the agenda it promised to deliver during the election campaign, which has the effect of making elections somewhat more meaningful. I deduct points for Harper's feud with the Parliamentary Press Gallery (which is, I'm certain, guilty of every charge he's pressed upon it, though such guilt does not excuse his actions), but not for the David Emerson defection or the Michael Fortier Senate appointment, neither of which, in my opinion, damages democracy in the country.
The last criterion, administrative competence, cannot be accurate judged at this point. But I have trouble believing that Harper's record on this will be worse than Chrétien's or Mulroney's (or, let's be honest, Trudeau's).
I'm still disinclined to vote Conservative, especially as long as they keep running the utterly useless Rahim Jaffer in my riding. But I was more disinclined still to vote for any other government I've witnessed since I achieved political maturity.
If voters in democracies really get the government they deserve, this one says nicer things about Canadians than have been said in a long time.
Friday, September 22, 2006
Continuing to rag on Kennedy supporters for no particular reason
Except, of course, that it's so much damned fun. Anyway, whenever I post a blog entry that includes the name Gerard Kennedy I immediately get about twelve hits from various blog-search sites from people who are apparently constantly scanning the blogosphere to make sure nobody's saying anything negative about him. Frankly, it sort of reminds me of the attitude of every Young Liberal I knew to Paul Martin, before 2002 or so.
I'll be in Calgary playing board games this weekend, so no blogging. I'll make a return of some kind Monday and, barring further blog-worthy developments, it won't have anything to do with the Liberal race.
P.S. Gerard Kennedy.
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Except, of course, that it's so much damned fun. Anyway, whenever I post a blog entry that includes the name Gerard Kennedy I immediately get about twelve hits from various blog-search sites from people who are apparently constantly scanning the blogosphere to make sure nobody's saying anything negative about him. Frankly, it sort of reminds me of the attitude of every Young Liberal I knew to Paul Martin, before 2002 or so.
I'll be in Calgary playing board games this weekend, so no blogging. I'll make a return of some kind Monday and, barring further blog-worthy developments, it won't have anything to do with the Liberal race.
P.S. Gerard Kennedy.
Thursday, September 21, 2006
The bad news is that Stéphane Dion definitely isn't going to win the Liberal leadership
The worse news is that Bob Rae probably will (for anybody who's actually tracking it, this marks a shift in my prediction from Ignatieff to Rae).
The good news, to the extent that it exists, is that this new poll by Strategic Counsel makes for some very interesting reading.
The short version - that Ignatieff is the top choice of Liberals, but has far less growth potential than Rae, their second choice - has already been gurgitated by media outlets more timely than, if not as fascinatingly brilliant as, myself. But by performing some elementary statistical analysis on the full numbers, some other trends emerge.
Before I get there, though, I'd like to follow up on my observation from a couple posts back that Dion isn't a pariah in Québec, just in the Rest of Canada. According to this poll, Dion's actually leading among Liberals in the prairies and B.C., faring better even than he is in Québec, where he's running a close first ballot second to Bob Rae. Where's he down? Ontario, where, at seven percent, he's sitting in fifth place. I think I got me some Western Alienation.
But enough of that - on to the statistical analysis I promised. Let me first acknowledge that the stuff I do here is pretty elementary and, all things considered, a pretty blunt tool. It doesn't come anywhere near the sophistication of the kind of analysis that people perform in more important fields. In short, I'm marking this analysis "for entertainment purposes only". Don't use it as actual safety equipment.
The primary usefulness of the poll, besides the fact that it surveys Liberal members instead of Liberal supporters (remember that distinction?) is that, in addition to asking how Liberals intend to vote, it asks them which candidate they favour in a number of categories. Those categories are: has run the best race, has introduced the most innovative and exciting ideas, is most intelligent, comes closest to representing the respondent's own views, is most honest and ethical, has best personality, is most likely to lead the Liberals to victory, would be most effective at taking on the Harper government, is best communicator, is best-liked by the media, would make the best Prime Minister.
From this, one of the things that we can do is measure each candidate's success in each category against his/her overall support from the Liberals, and then determine what the candidate's assets and liabilities are. For this purpose, I removed undecided respondents from the race in all categories and calculated responses among decided Liberals only. From there, I compared each candidate's support to his/her positive rating in each category and determined whether he/she was punching above or below his/her weight class for each one. For example, thirty-seven percent of decided Liberals consider Michael Ignatieff to be the most intelligent candidate in the race, but only twenty-six percent of decided Liberals intend to support him - in this regard, he is punching well below his intellect, because there are a lot of people who aren't supporting him even though they think he's the smartest guy in the race. On the other hand, only nineteen percent consider him the most honest and ethical, so he's punching well above his weight there.
The final breakdown is as follows, with the candidates ranked in order of their over- or under-performance (the first candidate named is the one who is punching most above his/her weight in the category):
Who has run the best race so far?
Punching over
Brison
Dryden
Volpe
Kennedy
Dion
Punching under
Ignatieff
Rae
Hall-Findlay
Who has brought the best ideas to the race?
Punching over
Dryden
Volpe
Kennedy
Rae
Punching under
Ignatieff
Dion
Hall-Findlay
Brison
Who is the most intelligent?
Punching over
Brison
Kennedy
Volpe
Rae
Punching under
Dion
Hall-Findlay
Ignatieff
Who has the best personality?
Punching over
Ignatieff
Dion
Brison
Dryden
Punching under
Volpe
Kennedy
Rae
Hall-Findlay
Who is best-liked by the media?
Punching over
Dion
Brison
Kennedy
Volpe
Dryden
Punching under
Rae
Hall-Findlay
Ignatieff
Who would be most effective at taking on Stephen Harper's government?
Punching over
Hall-Findlay
Brison
Dryden
Kennedy
Dion
Punching under
Ignatieff
Volpe
Rae
Who is the most honest and has the most integrity?
Punching over
Brison
Volpe
Ignatieff
Rae
Punching under
Kennedy
Dryden
Dion
Hall-Findlay
Who would make the best Prime Minister?
Punching over
Hall-Findlay
Volpe
Brison
Dryden
Kennedy
Punching under
Ignatieff
Rae
Dion
Whose views most closely match your own?
Punching over
Ignatieff
Rae
Dryden
Punching under
Kennedy
Volpe
Hall-Findlay
Brison
Dion
Who is most likely to lead the Liberals to government in the next election?
Punching over
Brison
Volpe
Dryden
Kennedy
Dion
Punching under
Rae
Hall-Findlay
Ignatieff
Who is the best communicator?
Punching over
Volpe
Dryden
Dion
Kennedy
Ignatieff
Punching under
Hall-Findlay
Brison
Rae
Hedy Fry, alas, was excluded from the analysis because her support was listed only as "<1%".
A few points that we can take from all this:
In compiling the above analyses, I began to wonder exactly what qualities Liberals are looking for in a leader. To answer that, I correlated each of the positive responses to support. Unsurprisingly, there were reasonably strong positive correlations in each case (though the direction of the causality is not clear, since it's possible that a Liberal who supported Ignatieff primarily for his intellect might also credit him for being, for example, the most honest, simply because he was his/her candidate of choice - this is, in my opinion, especially a danger in the area of electability, since people are likely to perceive individuals they personally support as being more electable, because they assume that others will think the same way as they do). They are ranked in descending order below:
1. Best Prime Minister (.989)
2. Effective in Opposing the Harper Government (.985)
3. Closeness of Fit of Candidate's Views (.975)
4. Electability (.972)
5. Quality of Leadership Campaign (.960)
6. Quality of Ideas (.959)
7. Intelligence (.938)
8. Honesty/Integrity (.934)
9. Best Communicator (.908)
10. Personality (.897)
11. Liked by Media (.860)
It appears that Liberals want a leader who'd be effective both as Prime Minister and as Leader of the Opposition, would be likely to successfully move from the latter position to the former, and who have good ideas with which Liberals agree. Ideally, such a leader would also be intelligent and honest, but those qualities aren't as important as raw political skills. Interestingly, the qualities most associated with electability - communication skills, personality, and media savy - are the lowest-ranked.
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The worse news is that Bob Rae probably will (for anybody who's actually tracking it, this marks a shift in my prediction from Ignatieff to Rae).
The good news, to the extent that it exists, is that this new poll by Strategic Counsel makes for some very interesting reading.
The short version - that Ignatieff is the top choice of Liberals, but has far less growth potential than Rae, their second choice - has already been gurgitated by media outlets more timely than, if not as fascinatingly brilliant as, myself. But by performing some elementary statistical analysis on the full numbers, some other trends emerge.
Before I get there, though, I'd like to follow up on my observation from a couple posts back that Dion isn't a pariah in Québec, just in the Rest of Canada. According to this poll, Dion's actually leading among Liberals in the prairies and B.C., faring better even than he is in Québec, where he's running a close first ballot second to Bob Rae. Where's he down? Ontario, where, at seven percent, he's sitting in fifth place. I think I got me some Western Alienation.
But enough of that - on to the statistical analysis I promised. Let me first acknowledge that the stuff I do here is pretty elementary and, all things considered, a pretty blunt tool. It doesn't come anywhere near the sophistication of the kind of analysis that people perform in more important fields. In short, I'm marking this analysis "for entertainment purposes only". Don't use it as actual safety equipment.
The primary usefulness of the poll, besides the fact that it surveys Liberal members instead of Liberal supporters (remember that distinction?) is that, in addition to asking how Liberals intend to vote, it asks them which candidate they favour in a number of categories. Those categories are: has run the best race, has introduced the most innovative and exciting ideas, is most intelligent, comes closest to representing the respondent's own views, is most honest and ethical, has best personality, is most likely to lead the Liberals to victory, would be most effective at taking on the Harper government, is best communicator, is best-liked by the media, would make the best Prime Minister.
From this, one of the things that we can do is measure each candidate's success in each category against his/her overall support from the Liberals, and then determine what the candidate's assets and liabilities are. For this purpose, I removed undecided respondents from the race in all categories and calculated responses among decided Liberals only. From there, I compared each candidate's support to his/her positive rating in each category and determined whether he/she was punching above or below his/her weight class for each one. For example, thirty-seven percent of decided Liberals consider Michael Ignatieff to be the most intelligent candidate in the race, but only twenty-six percent of decided Liberals intend to support him - in this regard, he is punching well below his intellect, because there are a lot of people who aren't supporting him even though they think he's the smartest guy in the race. On the other hand, only nineteen percent consider him the most honest and ethical, so he's punching well above his weight there.
The final breakdown is as follows, with the candidates ranked in order of their over- or under-performance (the first candidate named is the one who is punching most above his/her weight in the category):
Who has run the best race so far?
Punching over
Brison
Dryden
Volpe
Kennedy
Dion
Punching under
Ignatieff
Rae
Hall-Findlay
Who has brought the best ideas to the race?
Punching over
Dryden
Volpe
Kennedy
Rae
Punching under
Ignatieff
Dion
Hall-Findlay
Brison
Who is the most intelligent?
Punching over
Brison
Kennedy
Volpe
Rae
Punching under
Dion
Hall-Findlay
Ignatieff
Who has the best personality?
Punching over
Ignatieff
Dion
Brison
Dryden
Punching under
Volpe
Kennedy
Rae
Hall-Findlay
Who is best-liked by the media?
Punching over
Dion
Brison
Kennedy
Volpe
Dryden
Punching under
Rae
Hall-Findlay
Ignatieff
Who would be most effective at taking on Stephen Harper's government?
Punching over
Hall-Findlay
Brison
Dryden
Kennedy
Dion
Punching under
Ignatieff
Volpe
Rae
Who is the most honest and has the most integrity?
Punching over
Brison
Volpe
Ignatieff
Rae
Punching under
Kennedy
Dryden
Dion
Hall-Findlay
Who would make the best Prime Minister?
Punching over
Hall-Findlay
Volpe
Brison
Dryden
Kennedy
Punching under
Ignatieff
Rae
Dion
Whose views most closely match your own?
Punching over
Ignatieff
Rae
Dryden
Punching under
Kennedy
Volpe
Hall-Findlay
Brison
Dion
Who is most likely to lead the Liberals to government in the next election?
Punching over
Brison
Volpe
Dryden
Kennedy
Dion
Punching under
Rae
Hall-Findlay
Ignatieff
Who is the best communicator?
Punching over
Volpe
Dryden
Dion
Kennedy
Ignatieff
Punching under
Hall-Findlay
Brison
Rae
Hedy Fry, alas, was excluded from the analysis because her support was listed only as "<1%".
A few points that we can take from all this:
1. Liberals are in love with Martha Hall Findlay, as she punches under in almost every category. In other words, Liberals are much more likely to gush over intelligence, communication skills, ideas, personality, communication skills, etc. than they are to actually vote for her. Tellingly, the only to categories in which she's punching over are her abilities in taking on Harper's government and in being Prime Minister. It appears that Liberals just don't yet think she's ready for the top job, her great qualities notwithstanding.
2. At the other end of things is Ken Dryden: Liberals don't seem to think much of the guy to judge by how rarely they rank him tops in any category at all, but they're still planning on voting for him in reasonably large measure. The single category in which he's punching over is "honesty and integrity", which seems to suggest that they think he's a good (if boring) guy, but ultimately a loser.
3. Then there's Joe Volpe. They think he's got a great personality and would make an effective opposition leader, but find him deficient in almost every other regard. Scott Brison's also perceived as all-around deficient (which means that I perhaps don't give Liberals enough credit) but is admired for the quality of his ideas.
4. I'm no closer, after reading these data, to understanding the mysterious appeal of Gerard Kennedy, who punches over in a majority of categories (most alarmingly in intelligence, where his overperformance is exceeded only by Brison's). They like his personality, think he's honest, and agree with his views, but perceive him as otherwise deficient - even, surprisingly, in the field of the quality of his ideas, which is generally touted as his strong point.
5. In relative terms, Liberals don't trust Bob Rae, don't agree with his views, and don't think he's either very bright or has brought many good ideas to the race. They're still likely to vote for him, though, because they think he'll be effective at all elements of the job if he becomes leader.
6. Dion's the polar opposite of Rae. Liberals think he's smart, admire his ideas, trust him completely, and agree with his views. But they think he's dull, a bad campaigner, not media-friendly, and would be a lousy opposition leader (though they think he'd be a great PM if he ever managed to get the job). I can't truthfully disagree with any portion of this assessment.
7. Michael Ignatieff, surprisingly, isn't viewed as either having a good personality or being a good communicator, but is still perceived as a winner politically (and is also lauded for his intellect and ideas, even though Liberals aren't apt to agree with his views).
In compiling the above analyses, I began to wonder exactly what qualities Liberals are looking for in a leader. To answer that, I correlated each of the positive responses to support. Unsurprisingly, there were reasonably strong positive correlations in each case (though the direction of the causality is not clear, since it's possible that a Liberal who supported Ignatieff primarily for his intellect might also credit him for being, for example, the most honest, simply because he was his/her candidate of choice - this is, in my opinion, especially a danger in the area of electability, since people are likely to perceive individuals they personally support as being more electable, because they assume that others will think the same way as they do). They are ranked in descending order below:
1. Best Prime Minister (.989)
2. Effective in Opposing the Harper Government (.985)
3. Closeness of Fit of Candidate's Views (.975)
4. Electability (.972)
5. Quality of Leadership Campaign (.960)
6. Quality of Ideas (.959)
7. Intelligence (.938)
8. Honesty/Integrity (.934)
9. Best Communicator (.908)
10. Personality (.897)
11. Liked by Media (.860)
It appears that Liberals want a leader who'd be effective both as Prime Minister and as Leader of the Opposition, would be likely to successfully move from the latter position to the former, and who have good ideas with which Liberals agree. Ideally, such a leader would also be intelligent and honest, but those qualities aren't as important as raw political skills. Interestingly, the qualities most associated with electability - communication skills, personality, and media savy - are the lowest-ranked.
Friday, September 15, 2006
Everything You Need to Know About the Bob Rae Campaign
1. Two candidates have withdrawn from the Liberal leadership race. Both have switched their support to Rae.
2. Bob Rae is backed by more Senators (ten) than any of his opponents.
3. Among Liberal bloggers, Bob Rae is running at 5.8% support, tied with Scott Brison for a distant fourth after Michael Ignatieff (31.4%), Gerard Kennedy (26.4%), and Stéphane Dion (24.8%).
(As for Bennett, she was an intelligent, articulate candidate who deserved better. But since when were leadership races, or elections of any kind, meritocracies?)
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1. Two candidates have withdrawn from the Liberal leadership race. Both have switched their support to Rae.
2. Bob Rae is backed by more Senators (ten) than any of his opponents.
3. Among Liberal bloggers, Bob Rae is running at 5.8% support, tied with Scott Brison for a distant fourth after Michael Ignatieff (31.4%), Gerard Kennedy (26.4%), and Stéphane Dion (24.8%).
(As for Bennett, she was an intelligent, articulate candidate who deserved better. But since when were leadership races, or elections of any kind, meritocracies?)
Thursday, September 14, 2006
Steve Continues to Harp on Things about which Very Few People Care
Huh.
A few things that leap out of me:
1. Three of the four so-called frontrunners (I still think Dryden's got the same chance as Kennedy of winning this thing; i.e. not much) - Ignatieff, Rae, and Kennedy - poll relatively much better among people who already support the Liberals than among the general public. Meaning, of course, that they're quite good as appealing to the people who are already planning on voting Liberal, but aren't quite so beloved among voters who aren't (such voters being otherwise known as "voters to whom the Liberals need to appeal in order to form government"). Gee, who's the fourth so-called frontrunner, again?
2. I don't want to be too glib about this: Stéphane Dion's polling numbers are disappointingly low and, even once the discrepancy between Liberal-supporters and non-Liberal-supporters is taken into account, he looks much less electable than either Ignatieff or Rae. However, it is interesting (and, to me, not at all surprising) that his electability both in Québec and among francophones nation-wide is by far the highest - and this from a man who's supposedly a pariah in his home province. Instead, the millstone around his neck is the fact that the rest of Canada doesn't seem to want another Prime Minister from Québec, a phenomenon that increases as you move west until you get past Alberta.
3. This has nothing to do with the polling data, but I find it interesting just how perverted many English Canadians' expectations of bilingualism are. Stéphane Dion is approximately as bilingual as either Bob Rae or Michael Ignatieff - that is to say, his English is about as good as their French. He's substantially more bilingual than Stephen Harper (who's French is, in my opinion, entirely satisfactory for a Canadian Prime Minister). However, Dion's English is repeatedly cited as a concern among English Canadians who believe it's important for a Prime Minister to be bilingual. These are some of the same English Canadians who a few years back were touting the likes of Rahim Jaffer and Stockwell Day as being satisfactorily bilingual (I trust we all remember Day's performance on the national French-language debates. As far as Jaffer goes, I once witnessed him at a supposedly French language election forum at the Faculté Saint-Jean: he'd switched to English by the end.) Stephen Harper's the least bilingual Prime Minister since Lester Pearson, but English Canadians seem very much willing to thrust a Prime Minister on French Canada whose French is much weaker than the minimum English they would accept from a francophone Prime Minister.
Enough of that. Back to the polling.
4. I called Gerard Kennedy overrated a few posts ago, and some pro-Kennedy-blogger who had some piece of technology set up to notify him anytime a blogger mentioned Kennedy took me to task in the comments section. These data show part of what I meant. I remain convinced that most Kennedy supporters are in that camp because they want a clean break from anybody previously-involved with the federal Liberals and find Ignatieff either too right-wing or too bandwagon-y for their tastes (Rae, of course, has at least as much baggage as any Liberal MP in the race with the possible exception of Hedy Fry). At least, I assume that's the reason Kennedy's so popular in certain circles - I can't think of an alternate explanation.
5. Lest this whole post turn into an exercise in I-told-you-so-or-at-least-I-would-have-if-I'd-gotten-around-to-it, I was flabbergasted by the Dryden numbers, but not displeased. I like Ken Dryden, and he's my likely second choice. But these numbers ought to convince a lot of Liberals who are concerned chiefly with electoral success (a breed otherwise known as "all Liberals") to take a second look at the guy, especially as a second choice. The trouble is that the likely combined first-ballot support of everybody who will finish behind him may not be enough to push him into the top three.
6. Back to the English/French thing - apparently, at least 23% of Canadians, including at least 26% of Liberals, would be prepared to accept a unilingual anglophone Prime Minister, but not a unilingual francophone Prime Minister. The sheer number of people prepared to subscribe to this double-standard is shocking, all the more so since it's actually *higher* among supporters of the party that brought in official bilingualism.
7. Back to my fixation on Dion: does anybody else find it surprising that he was, along with Scott Brison, relatively the most popular among voters who placed a high priority on managing the economy? It almost gives the impression that people are buying into his whole "three pillars" thing, which even I think is painfully meaningless.
8. Supporters of Ignatieff and Kennedy are likely to explain their candidates' unexpectedly poor showings by the fact that they're relative newcomers, and therefore lack the name recognition of people who have spent years in the federal cabinet or are Hall of Fame goaltenders. On the face of it, this appears reasonable, especially since both do much better among Liberal supporters, who are presumably more likely to have heard of them. However, Ignatieff has been receiving a blitz of media coverage, and I have trouble believing that the Canadian public remains less familiar with him than with a relatively low-key former cabinet minister like Dion. For Kennedy's part, Ontario, where he ought to be reasonably well-known, is something of a wasteland for him: his combined "definite/likely" Liberal votes in the province put him tied for third, ahead of only Dion among the front-runners and behind supposed also-ran Dryden.
9. The reader is cautioned not to confuse "Liberal voters", who are segmented out in this poll but who have, as a group, no priveleged position in the selection of the next Liberal leader, with "Liberal members", who are not segemented out in this poll but who will be indirectly choosing the next leader.
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Huh.
A few things that leap out of me:
1. Three of the four so-called frontrunners (I still think Dryden's got the same chance as Kennedy of winning this thing; i.e. not much) - Ignatieff, Rae, and Kennedy - poll relatively much better among people who already support the Liberals than among the general public. Meaning, of course, that they're quite good as appealing to the people who are already planning on voting Liberal, but aren't quite so beloved among voters who aren't (such voters being otherwise known as "voters to whom the Liberals need to appeal in order to form government"). Gee, who's the fourth so-called frontrunner, again?
2. I don't want to be too glib about this: Stéphane Dion's polling numbers are disappointingly low and, even once the discrepancy between Liberal-supporters and non-Liberal-supporters is taken into account, he looks much less electable than either Ignatieff or Rae. However, it is interesting (and, to me, not at all surprising) that his electability both in Québec and among francophones nation-wide is by far the highest - and this from a man who's supposedly a pariah in his home province. Instead, the millstone around his neck is the fact that the rest of Canada doesn't seem to want another Prime Minister from Québec, a phenomenon that increases as you move west until you get past Alberta.
3. This has nothing to do with the polling data, but I find it interesting just how perverted many English Canadians' expectations of bilingualism are. Stéphane Dion is approximately as bilingual as either Bob Rae or Michael Ignatieff - that is to say, his English is about as good as their French. He's substantially more bilingual than Stephen Harper (who's French is, in my opinion, entirely satisfactory for a Canadian Prime Minister). However, Dion's English is repeatedly cited as a concern among English Canadians who believe it's important for a Prime Minister to be bilingual. These are some of the same English Canadians who a few years back were touting the likes of Rahim Jaffer and Stockwell Day as being satisfactorily bilingual (I trust we all remember Day's performance on the national French-language debates. As far as Jaffer goes, I once witnessed him at a supposedly French language election forum at the Faculté Saint-Jean: he'd switched to English by the end.) Stephen Harper's the least bilingual Prime Minister since Lester Pearson, but English Canadians seem very much willing to thrust a Prime Minister on French Canada whose French is much weaker than the minimum English they would accept from a francophone Prime Minister.
Enough of that. Back to the polling.
4. I called Gerard Kennedy overrated a few posts ago, and some pro-Kennedy-blogger who had some piece of technology set up to notify him anytime a blogger mentioned Kennedy took me to task in the comments section. These data show part of what I meant. I remain convinced that most Kennedy supporters are in that camp because they want a clean break from anybody previously-involved with the federal Liberals and find Ignatieff either too right-wing or too bandwagon-y for their tastes (Rae, of course, has at least as much baggage as any Liberal MP in the race with the possible exception of Hedy Fry). At least, I assume that's the reason Kennedy's so popular in certain circles - I can't think of an alternate explanation.
5. Lest this whole post turn into an exercise in I-told-you-so-or-at-least-I-would-have-if-I'd-gotten-around-to-it, I was flabbergasted by the Dryden numbers, but not displeased. I like Ken Dryden, and he's my likely second choice. But these numbers ought to convince a lot of Liberals who are concerned chiefly with electoral success (a breed otherwise known as "all Liberals") to take a second look at the guy, especially as a second choice. The trouble is that the likely combined first-ballot support of everybody who will finish behind him may not be enough to push him into the top three.
6. Back to the English/French thing - apparently, at least 23% of Canadians, including at least 26% of Liberals, would be prepared to accept a unilingual anglophone Prime Minister, but not a unilingual francophone Prime Minister. The sheer number of people prepared to subscribe to this double-standard is shocking, all the more so since it's actually *higher* among supporters of the party that brought in official bilingualism.
7. Back to my fixation on Dion: does anybody else find it surprising that he was, along with Scott Brison, relatively the most popular among voters who placed a high priority on managing the economy? It almost gives the impression that people are buying into his whole "three pillars" thing, which even I think is painfully meaningless.
8. Supporters of Ignatieff and Kennedy are likely to explain their candidates' unexpectedly poor showings by the fact that they're relative newcomers, and therefore lack the name recognition of people who have spent years in the federal cabinet or are Hall of Fame goaltenders. On the face of it, this appears reasonable, especially since both do much better among Liberal supporters, who are presumably more likely to have heard of them. However, Ignatieff has been receiving a blitz of media coverage, and I have trouble believing that the Canadian public remains less familiar with him than with a relatively low-key former cabinet minister like Dion. For Kennedy's part, Ontario, where he ought to be reasonably well-known, is something of a wasteland for him: his combined "definite/likely" Liberal votes in the province put him tied for third, ahead of only Dion among the front-runners and behind supposed also-ran Dryden.
9. The reader is cautioned not to confuse "Liberal voters", who are segmented out in this poll but who have, as a group, no priveleged position in the selection of the next Liberal leader, with "Liberal members", who are not segemented out in this poll but who will be indirectly choosing the next leader.
Monday, September 11, 2006
Obligatory Fifth Anniversary Post
There's colours on the street
Red white and blue
People shuffling their feet
People sleeping in their shoes
But there's a warning sign on the road ahead
There's a lot of people saying we'd be better off dead
Don't feel like Satan, but I am to them
So I try to forget it any way I can
- Neil Young, "Rocking in the Free World"
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There's colours on the street
Red white and blue
People shuffling their feet
People sleeping in their shoes
But there's a warning sign on the road ahead
There's a lot of people saying we'd be better off dead
Don't feel like Satan, but I am to them
So I try to forget it any way I can
- Neil Young, "Rocking in the Free World"
WitPotS: covering the stories that the corporate media doesn't want you to know about
Crikey.
(Thanks to Chris Chan for passing on the link via Catrin.)
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Crikey.
(Thanks to Chris Chan for passing on the link via Catrin.)
Thursday, September 07, 2006
It's not often that I become inspired to write a letter to the editor (ahem)...
But Roy MacGregor's contemptible fluff piece on Scott Brison was too much for me to take. The text of my letter follows.
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But Roy MacGregor's contemptible fluff piece on Scott Brison was too much for me to take. The text of my letter follows.
The problem with Scott Brison is not that he crossed the floor - plenty of politicians have done that, and sometimes for excellent, principled reasons. The problem is that, in the final convention of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada, he voted in favour of merging the party with the Canadian Alliance. Then, four days after doing so, he cited this merger as the reason that he had to leave the new party.
He hasn't even been consistent on his reason. Initially, he said that as a gay MP in a conservative party, he would be typecast as a flag bearer for the socially progressive wing when his interests were primarily economic. Now, he seems to be saying that it's because the new Conservative Party was to be hostile to the idea of gay marriage.
(In MacGregor's article, Brison is alleged to have made his decision to cross the floor after meeting with "leader Stephen Harper" - in fact, Harper was not elected leader until several months after Brison left the party.)
How peculiar, especially when we consider that, during the 2003 Progressive Conservative leadership race, Brison joined fellow candidates Peter McKay and David Orchard in opposition to gay marriage (only Jim Prentice supported it).
MacGregor's article was titled "Scott Brison: A different kind of Liberal", but readers who view the defining trait of the Liberal Party as being a lack of commitment to any principle but electoral success would be hard-pressed to spot this difference.
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
Sidebar!
Sidebar's been updated. Missing and Presumed Dead Blogs are now in italics, though I confess that the effect's not as striking as I'd hoped. If any of my readers want to tell me how to change the colour of some of my hyperlinks (read: those to blogs that are missing and presumed dead), it'd be appreciated.
I also added a few new blogs, chief among them The Turner Report, the blog of Garth Turner, Conservative MP for Nalton. Readers who stuck with me through my Spring/Summer drought will recall my praise for Mr. Turner on the occasion of his complaints about the appointment of David Emerson and Michael Fortier to cabinet, complaints that by some accounts almost got him thrown out of caucus.
His blog is, to the best of my knowledge, far and away the best of any Canadian MP (a lot of people liked Monte Solberg's blog. I didn't really, because while Solberg wrote with wit, he also consistently toed the party line on pretty much everything). And while Turner's values and mine don't overlap especially (to take but one example, if I were ever an MP my site probably wouldn't be subheaded "Serving Canada's Middle Class Voter Agenda"), I like him because he's independent-minded, willing to do considerably more than mouth platitudes, doesn't buckle to public opinion easily, and yet reaches out to his constituents in a more meaningful fashion than does any other MP of whom I'm aware. He also updates his blog pretty much daily.
Here are some nuggets:
On the environment:
On D'arcy Keene, who was being pushed by televangelist and anti-gay marriage crusader Charles McVety to win the Conservative nomination over Turner:
On alleged efforts by some Arab Canadian groups to unseat him in the next election for his dispariging comments about "Canadian citizens of convenience" in the Lebanon affair:
On winning friends and influencing people:
On his relationship with McVety:
Yeah. If you have any interest in Canadian politics - and if you don't, what the hell are you doing here? - read Garth.
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Sidebar's been updated. Missing and Presumed Dead Blogs are now in italics, though I confess that the effect's not as striking as I'd hoped. If any of my readers want to tell me how to change the colour of some of my hyperlinks (read: those to blogs that are missing and presumed dead), it'd be appreciated.
I also added a few new blogs, chief among them The Turner Report, the blog of Garth Turner, Conservative MP for Nalton. Readers who stuck with me through my Spring/Summer drought will recall my praise for Mr. Turner on the occasion of his complaints about the appointment of David Emerson and Michael Fortier to cabinet, complaints that by some accounts almost got him thrown out of caucus.
His blog is, to the best of my knowledge, far and away the best of any Canadian MP (a lot of people liked Monte Solberg's blog. I didn't really, because while Solberg wrote with wit, he also consistently toed the party line on pretty much everything). And while Turner's values and mine don't overlap especially (to take but one example, if I were ever an MP my site probably wouldn't be subheaded "Serving Canada's Middle Class Voter Agenda"), I like him because he's independent-minded, willing to do considerably more than mouth platitudes, doesn't buckle to public opinion easily, and yet reaches out to his constituents in a more meaningful fashion than does any other MP of whom I'm aware. He also updates his blog pretty much daily.
Here are some nuggets:
On the environment:
The climate is obviously screwed up, and people notice. Forty degree summers, more freak weather, more prairie drought, punctuated by flooding. The Arctic ice cap is melting and polar bears are drowning. Suddenly the power system is balky and Ontario is building new nukes. We are wallowing in garbage and actually exporting trash to the States. Kyoto is toast, and that worries people who have no idea what Kyoto was. Overall, it seems like there is no cohesive plan – and I haven’t even mentioned Al Gore.
- August 28
On D'arcy Keene, who was being pushed by televangelist and anti-gay marriage crusader Charles McVety to win the Conservative nomination over Turner:
The puppet candidate of a televangelist carpetbagging walking definition of intolerance.
- August 21
On alleged efforts by some Arab Canadian groups to unseat him in the next election for his dispariging comments about "Canadian citizens of convenience" in the Lebanon affair:
And I said, basically, they can go to hell. That applies to any group which threatens to vote against me in the hope that I will say something different in order to win their support. I mean, what are they thinking? Do I value being an MP more than I value doing what’s right? Am I afraid of having my ass tossed out of my lovely green chair in the House of Commons because one community or another ganged up and tipped the vote?
- July 31
On winning friends and influencing people:
So, go ahead and make me a target. Just save a little of the bull’s eye for the last guy to say he’d do the same. Does anyone find it ironic that Israel’s biggest ally, the Righteous Right, and its biggest foe, the Arab community, both have it in for me?
It’s quite amazing how much trouble I get into.
- July 31
On his relationship with McVety:
Reverend McVety and I had a long chat tonight. He says he doesn’t mind me calling him a sanctimonious blowhard, but he definitely does not think kindly of my references to the Taliban.
- May 31
Yeah. If you have any interest in Canadian politics - and if you don't, what the hell are you doing here? - read Garth.
Hoo Boy
This isn't going to help anyone's credibility, especially among people who can't tell the difference between a motion that is moved and a motion that is carried, of whom there are a great many.
(And for what it's worth, though my misgivings about the Afghanistan mission have been growing in tandem with many other Canadians', I'm quite comfortable in saying that Canadian troops are not using the creation of terror among Afghani civilians as a tool to achieve their political objectives, which is in my view the mark of a terrorist. Sir Arthur Harris, yes. The Canadian military? Nobody's yet presented any evidence to me.)
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This isn't going to help anyone's credibility, especially among people who can't tell the difference between a motion that is moved and a motion that is carried, of whom there are a great many.
(And for what it's worth, though my misgivings about the Afghanistan mission have been growing in tandem with many other Canadians', I'm quite comfortable in saying that Canadian troops are not using the creation of terror among Afghani civilians as a tool to achieve their political objectives, which is in my view the mark of a terrorist. Sir Arthur Harris, yes. The Canadian military? Nobody's yet presented any evidence to me.)
Saturday, September 02, 2006
The Stupidest Thing Yet Written About Michael Ignatieff
"The thing is, Ignatieff has never been confined to the cloistered world that politicians inhabit. He’s always lived in the spotlight as a public intellectual, an author, a journalist, and a public-affairs broadcaster." (Source)
(The hell of it is that the article, on balance, increased my opinion of Ignatieff slightly. But the above line - the writer's, not the candidate's - is quite palpably ludicrous.)
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"The thing is, Ignatieff has never been confined to the cloistered world that politicians inhabit. He’s always lived in the spotlight as a public intellectual, an author, a journalist, and a public-affairs broadcaster." (Source)
(The hell of it is that the article, on balance, increased my opinion of Ignatieff slightly. But the above line - the writer's, not the candidate's - is quite palpably ludicrous.)
Friday, September 01, 2006
Speechless
Wow.
I could poke some holes in a few of the points he makes - about Winston Churchill, about Osama bin Laden, about Donald Rumsfeld - but this is powerful, powerful journalis.
(Thanks to Lonnie at the always excellent Crushed by Inertia for bringing this to my attention.)
EDIT: I'd never actually heard of Keith Olbermann before tonight, and some research (via YouTube) reveals that I have some criticisms: he consistently overstates his case, he chooses only the easiest targets, and he is, like so much of the Left (especially the part that posts on this blog), immensely self-satisfied. But that clip is still amazing.
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Wow.
I could poke some holes in a few of the points he makes - about Winston Churchill, about Osama bin Laden, about Donald Rumsfeld - but this is powerful, powerful journalis.
(Thanks to Lonnie at the always excellent Crushed by Inertia for bringing this to my attention.)
EDIT: I'd never actually heard of Keith Olbermann before tonight, and some research (via YouTube) reveals that I have some criticisms: he consistently overstates his case, he chooses only the easiest targets, and he is, like so much of the Left (especially the part that posts on this blog), immensely self-satisfied. But that clip is still amazing.
