Clearly, one of the main reasons the Liberals recruited Michael Ignatieff was for nostalgic and pragmatic purposes. They wanted another Pierre Trudeau. With polls suggesting the Liberals under Ignatieff are hemorrhaging support and the Conservatives are gaining support, this bold initiative seems to have withered into a false start.

Those bright, bookish types sometimes have it hard. When they are rising in the polls, their articulate communication and serious demeanor are used for favourable comparisons with charismatic leaders like Obama, Trudeau, and John F.Kennedy. When they sink in the polls, those same traits are used for disparaging comparisons to diffident, “egghead” leaders like Adlai Stevenson and Stephane Dion.

It does appear to be true that intellectuals generally do not do well in politics. According to psychologist Martin Seligman, their tendency to ruminate and their lack of optimism turns the electorate off. Canadian Political Scientist Stephen Clarkson agrees and cites Trudeau as an exception to the rule. But is he really an exception? I believe that Trudeau deserved his intellectual reputation, but he often did not behave like most intellectuals. A lot of his writing for example was polemical and argumentative in style, which does not mean he was a lightweight, but is a very different approach from most academics. Furthermore, during election campaigns, his gunslinger pose and his visionary and optimistic speeches were not anything like the staid, quiet lectures of an Oxford don. On those occasions when he did appear professorial (most notably his Philosopher King campaign of 1972), the results were near disastrous.
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With the Conservatives already planning their attack ads against Michael Ignatieff in preparation for the next election, one has to wonder just how swayed they can expect the public to be against their second straight Liberal opponent in under a year. Ignatieff has laughed off the threat, sarcastically quipping that he’s “shaking” at the thought. Defiant words, considering the negative impact the relentless bombardment of attack ads directed at Stéphane Dion had. Now it’s the same party with a different personality at the helm, but perhaps that projection of confidence, the cocky/defiant confidence which the more appeasing Dion lacked, is exactly what might bolster the new leader with voters and put the Grits back into office. It’s possible, for what makes a party worthy of governance, and what makes their leader resonate with voters doesn’t seem to be the same thing necessarily, and the Grits numbers have improved since Ignatieff became leader of the party. But is it enough? Will his personality triumph over the inevitable onslaught of smears? Or does anyone really care? Ignatieff, while seemingly more popular than Dion, still doesn’t inspire the same kind of political zeal in Canada that Barack Obama has in the US (or in Canada for that matter). In fact, just about the only safe bet in Canadian poltics these days would be if Barack Obama ran for, well… anything. You see, Canadians are Obama crazy. In fact, some polls during Obama’s presidential campaign run suggested a staggering 80% of Canadians would have voted for Obama given the chance. 80% in any democracy is beyond a landslide. It’s actually getting into ‘was that rigged?’ territory. When Obama visited Ottawa for a few hours a couple weeks ago, Canadians scrambled from all over to get to Ottawa, just to get a chance not to see him. So it’s fair to say that Canadians have Obama mania. It’s all somewhat understandable; by all accounts he is a bright, principled man, but what’s more than that, he’s clearly an exceptional orator, inspiring the basic fibers of inspiration wherever and whenever he speaks, so much so that he unfortunately seems to trigger a reflexive Canadian self-loathing anxiety. For as much as Canadians love Obama, they can’t seem to talk about him without lamenting about the state of their own politics; carrying on about how they ‘wish we could have an Obama’, ‘our politics are boring,’ etc. It’s envy as much as it is mania, and it’s an attitude that’s replete in Canada. Where and how Canadians get this attitude is somewhat of a mystery, because Canadian politics, like the politics of any country, can be very interesting, and there are plenty of good politicians in the fold. So why the self hate?
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