The Summer of Iggy

Columnists look back on Michael Ignatieff’s recent campaigning, and what it will mean come election time

Michael Ignatieff will go into Labour Day weekend reflecting on a successful summer. He’s brought the Liberals into a dead heat with the Conservatives and it’s looking like the next election is going to be competitive after all.

His successful summer bus tour and a spike in the polls are all well and good, says the Calgary Sun’s Michael Den Tandt, but, to borrow a phrase, where’s the beef? “He can shake hands. He can kiss babies. And he can be warm,” he writes. “But is that leadership?” After all, looking warm next to Harper isn’t hard, given that he’s “dullest prime minister of Canada since the unfortunately named Sir Mackenzie Bowell.” Ignatieff has been big on personality this summer but “where are the ideas, the backbone of principle?”

In the Globe and Mail Lawrence Martin says Iggy could show some fortitude by running on a platform of reform aimed at “reducing the powers of the PM to something a tad less than Mussolini’s.” The Liberals have always been hesitant to talk about government reform because of their poor track record (sponsorship scandal, anyone?) but “being relatively new to the party, Mr. Ignatieff was not around for past transgressions” and “needn’t worry about being labelled a hypocrite.”

Chantal Hébert in the Toronto Star says the NDP’s quandary on the gun registry has been another “lucky break” for Ignatieff because “standing of the registry is nowhere higher than in Quebec and … the NDP has been eating away at Liberal support in the province.” She also ponders an interesting coincidence in an upcoming by-election in Quebec that would normally be a good test of Igantieff’s leadership. The Liberal candidate there Nancy Charest has the unfortunate luck of sharing a surname and party affiliation with the unpopular premier Jean Charest, who’s currently facing an ethics inquiry.

And from the Gaffe Department: Iggy reportedly handed his rivals some ammo when he began talking strategy with his aides on a plane from Ottawa to Toronto recently, not realizing that the man behind him was Conservative campaign director Doug Findley. Oops.