Michael Ignatieff: not a liberal

George Jonas: I’m a liberal. Ignatieff is not
Posted: September 30, 2009, 10:30 AM by Chris Selley
George Jonas, Canadian politics

Last week Rick Salutin used the word “Narcissieff ” to describe Canada’s Liberal leader, Michael Ignatieff, in a column. Warranted or not, it struck me as scraping the bottom of the barrel. Are politicians narcissistic? I don’t know. Are zebras striped?

Never mind politicians. Have you seen anyone bucking for the top spot in business, arts, sports, whatever, without a healthy dose of narcissism– or an unhealthy dose, for that matter? If so, you’ve seen a unicorn. When it comes to the self-absorption of high achievers, the question isn’t “whether” but “how bad?” Does he need to take pills or can it be controlled by diet?

For Mr. Ignatieff, the probable answer is borderline narcissism: elevated for a dentist, but normal for a Member of Parliament. Diet should control it, but if he plans to travel, he might be wise to carry a prescription.

If a journalist wants to raise self-absorption to an election issue, I suppose “Is So-and-so pathologically narcissistic?” may take him or her to the threshold on a slow news day. Personally, I’d lose no sleep over it. So the folk who would lead us are narcissists. Noted.

Let’s move on. Do they have anything else going for (or against) them?

Some say what Ignatieff has going for him is his head, inside as well as outside. The Liberal leader photographs well, relative to his rivals. He looks perhaps better in repose than in animation, but good enough in both to lead the pack. Indeed, compared to his competitors, he’s positively photogenic. As for what’s inside his head, it’s clearly more than enough for the office he seeks in terms of education and IQ, partly because he has plenty of both, and partly because the job, though tricky, is not rocket science.

Ignatieff would probably beat the world’s sitting prime ministers on a TV quiz show called How To Be a Prime Minister? — all except Stephen Harper. As luck would have it, Harper is the one for him to beat. Still, if Ignatieff were running for a contestant’s spot on Quiz-TV, the smart money might be on him. But Ignatieff is running for Harper’s actual job, the job for which qualities in which he’s perceived to be deficient matter more to voters than qualities he’s perceived to possess in abundance.

Ignatieff may have his head going for him, but going against him are a collection of other body parts, notably his spine, guts and heart. He doesn’t impress many Canadians as the guy they’d want next to them in the trenches. Add to this a further perception of Ignatieff as an inexperienced, narcissistic carpetbagger, and it’s no wonder the smart money goes the other way.

My own reservations about Ignatieff have nothing to do with narcissism, IQ, education, spine or guts. For the record, I don’t think he has less of these qualities than his rivals for high office–certainly not of self-esteem, in which he matches all those he doesn’t exceed. If intestinal fortitude isn’t his strong suit — well, his competitors don’t have gobs of it, either. Hell, these lads want to be prime ministers, not Formula One drivers. Carrying around an excess of guts would only get in the way.

My trouble with the Liberal leader and his party is ideological. You might even call it semantic. They infringe my trademark.

Liberals call themselves liberal, as I do — except I am and they aren’t. For nearly two generations, Canada’s Liberals have been insufficiently liberal with liberal concepts and overly liberal with illiberal ones. Consequently, my trouble with Mr. Ignatieff is that he’s a Liberal. Or, to put it another way, that he’s a Liberal and I’m a liberal. Or, to put it another way yet, that I’m a liberal and he’s not.

Or, to put it in the plainest possible way, I’m a liberal and he’s a statist. He isn’t a loony statist, a totalitarian statist, only a decent, moderate, middle-of-the-road statist, probably not even as far left (or as narcissistic) as Barack Obama.

“Doesn’t his naked ambition bother you?” a reader asks. No, sir, it doesn’t. I can’t conceive of a political candidate without ambition, and although naked ambition is less attractive — and less effective — than ambition carefully cloaked in the robes of public service, it’s no worse for being less sanctimonious. I even confess to a slight preference for the naked ambition of the nouveau-etatiste over the hypocritically camouflaged ambition of the mandarin class. Hell, let it all hang out. Pretending that it’s all an altruistic offering on the altar of the public good would nauseate me even more.

The irony is that in Canada a liberal must vote Conservative. If an election came today, I’d vote for Harper because he has the decency not to call himself a liberal or a Liberal even though he’s more of a liberal than Ignatieff.

Harper calls himself a Conservative. He’s not very conservative, either, but neither am I, so I don’t give a damn. That’s for conservatives to worry about.

National Post

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