Mike vs. Steve
I don’t like Michael Ignatieff. He has this sort of used-car salesman vibe to him, like he’s going to cut me a fabulous deal on a car that I don’t even want. Oh, he’ll be eloquent and charming and make the car-buying experience very positive, but that doesn’t change the fact that next week I’ll take the thing into the shop and find out that I need a new transmission. The most oft-repeated slurs about Ignatieff are familiar - that he lived outside of Canada from 1978 through 2005; that the only thing he missed was Algonquin Park; that he was a die-hard Iraq War supporter. An anti-Ignatieff website (www.ignatieff.me) claims that he ‘follows Dion’s weak lead on Arctic sovereignty’ and that he ‘promises higher taxes’. He even wrote a book calling indefinite detention of suspects and coercive interrogations ‘lesser evils’. (And right he is - torture is fun, and who needs fair trials? You’d think this was a democracy or something.) Certainly, he has spent the last little while making noises about a fall election, which will be our fourth in five years and definitely what we should be spending our tax dollars on because we have such a massive budget surplus! (Oh wait...)
He speaks very well, I have to give him that. He explains his support of the Iraq War in a way that makes it almost palatable, and he delivers a stance on globalization, trade with China, and the mission in Afghanistan that is articulate enough. He’s been flip-flopping on climate change, but you could read that as a change of opinion based on an improved understanding of the situation, in which case he’s being unusually open-minded for a politician. Still, I don’t like him. To the point where if I had to choose between Ignatieff and Harper to come over to my house for lunch, I’d pick Harper. Harper. Harper, who could probably skin a cat with his eyes (I don’t have a cat, but I’m pretty sure the neighbours do and powers like Harpers aren’t hampered by walls). And I think that’s going to be the big issue in the event of a fall election - nobody’s heard anything about policies, we just keep getting bombarded with the two personalities who currently represent the government and its opposition. And unfortunately for democracy, when you can’t find much to like about either leading personality, you find yourself at the polls on election day trying to decide not who would be best suited to run the country, but who is the ‘lesser evil’.