Can Ignatieff Ever Be Prime Minister?

Of this country, that is.

Michael Ignatieff must be wondering what he has to do to make some friends around here. Despite visiting every hamlet from Bonavista to Vancouver Island this summer, a recent survey found that only 24 per cent of Canadians think he’d make a good prime minister, ranking him third behind Stephen Harper (43 per cent) and Jack Layton (33 per cent).

This isn’t necessarily a disaster for Iggy because Jean Chretien had similar numbers before he got elected, but as the Globe and Mail’s Brian Topp points out, Chretien had a solid decision-making record as a cabinet minister, was charismatic, and had an extremely unpopular opponent in Brian Mulroney. “In contrast, the only important decision Mr. Ignatieff has ever made in his life is his decision to keep Stephen Harper in office,” writes Topp. Zing!

Sun Media’s Monte Solberg offers this colourful assessment: the Liberals “have launched their own reverse tea party, though in this sad case it is more of a Chai Tea Party. In their Tea Party, the Liberals have carelessly dropped their own tea into the harbour. They have quite casually and accidentally torched their own house.” Er, move it along there, Monte. The point of his article seems to be that Ignatieff hasn’t produced any exciting ideas that could mobilize ordinary Canadians, as the Tea Party supposedly has in the U.S. Solberg also writes “I’m sorry to offer such a bleak analysis,” which is funny, because he’s an ex-Tory MP, and he isn’t sorry.

If there was one area where you’d think Ignatieff would excel, it’s foreign policy, observes the Ottawa Citizen. He’s an international human rights expert after all, and, “In case after case, this government has demonstrated a lack of commitment to human rights,” writes the Citizen, citing Ottawa's failure to abide by treaties on climate change and child soldiers, and obfuscation over the treatment of Afghan detainees. But instead of coming up with his own foreign policy, Ignatieff has "chosen to step into the fuzzy shadow left by Jean Chretien … by suggesting everything was wonderful until the Conservatives took office.”