Andrew Coyne: pick a position Iggy, any position

Writing in Macleans, Andrew Coyne proposes that Michael Ignatieff make some proposals of his own, and stop avoiding taking a stance on any issue of substance:

Time for Ignatieff to take a chance:

It is true in politics, no less than in physics, that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Michael Ignatieff, as is well known, has seen his popularity nosedive in recent weeks, when it seemed he could not put a foot right. Very well: if he is smart, he can turn that to his advantage, using the very speed of his decline to propel his rebound. Reculer pour mieux sauter and all that. There is a script for this. If listening to his advisers, playing it safe, taking no stands, guarding every word has brought him to this humiliating low, then the way is open for one of those Hollywood moments, where the candidate rips up the speech that has been prepared for him and speaks from the heart—when he sheds the ingratiating poses of “politics as usual” in favour of his authentic self. Of course, it helps if that is, in fact, what the candidate is up to.

It is tempting to believe that the public does not want this—that we would sooner our politicians lie to us, dope us with half truths, preferring the comforting haze of denial to the harsh light of reality. But in fact the voters show every sign of craving the opposite, if only it were offered to them. Whenever and wherever they catch the slightest whiff of authenticity in a candidate, they practically rush the barriers, at least until the inevitable disappointment, either because the candidate proves not so authentic as it appeared, or because authenticity, all too often, comes bundled with incompetence.

So, assuming the Liberal leader has any interest in this strategy, he will have both to break the mould of politics-as-usual in fact, and to persuade the public of this reality. He will have to stake out a bold position on an issue of importance other politicians would prefer to avoid, in a way that inspires confidence that he will stick to it under fire.

There is an issue that presents itself, as others have noted, as an opportunity for Ignatieff to show some backbone, and that is the deficit. Certainly it’s an important issue: the greatest proximate threat to our standard of living, particularly in light of the approaching “geezer boom,” with the explosion of social costs, notably for health care, it will bring. And it is one on which current political discourse remains frozen in denial. We are sliding back into the habits of mind that produced the long string of deficits of the 1980s and 1990s, where budgets always balance in the future but never today, and any unpleasant gaps are made to disappear with endless, endless growth.

Read the rest here.