Stephen Harper Ain't No Donald Draper

The pundits rate the new Conservative attack ads. Think of it as the political junkies’ Golden Globes.

The Globe and Mail’s Lawrence Martin can think of three reasons why Harper might have avoided running new attack ads against Michael Ignatieff and Jack Layton: his need to dispel the popular image of him as a mean, ruthless politician; his new, supposedly kinder chief of staff Nigel Wright; and the increased disapproval of negative rhetoric in the wake of the Arizona shootings. None of these, apparently, were compelling for Harper.

The attack ads are fair game, says Sun Media’s Ezra Levant, because they alert Canadians to the very real possibility of a Liberal-NDP-Bloc coalition. Ok fair point, the Liberals’ willingness or unwillingness to form a coalition after the next election is something Ignatieff needs to address, but Levant glosses over how distorted the ad in question is. It ludicrously depicts the Bloc as the “driving force” of the aborted 2008 coalition, and neglects to mention that it was Ignatieff who decided to dissolve that agreement.

In the National Post, Gerry Nicholls rates each ad and finds the one about the coalition the most effective because it “manages to link the bland Ignatieff with the scary and radical agendas of the NDP and Bloc,” but he decries the one portraying Iggy as unpatriotic as “so crass it’s almost an attack ad parody.” The Newsroom couldn’t agree more. As anyone who reads the op-ed pages knows, Ignatieff has been the pundits’ whipping boy ever since he took the thankless job of opposition leader. Anyone who leaves a cushy job at Harvard to spend two years (and counting) on the receiving end of relentless attacks from every haughty columnist and Tory backbencher just for the shot at running the country must have some strong feelings for it.

The Halifax Chronicle-Herald’s Stephen Maher says the ads’ boastful economic figures are wrong, but also argues the Liberals need to fight back with their own, presumably as inaccurate, attack ads.

The National Post’s Keith Beardsley opines that the Conservatives probably won’t even have to pay to air the ads because the media will publicize them enough for free. (Guilty as charged.)