POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY DENIS SMITH IN TORONTo'S GLOBE AND MAIL
'“Can I trust this guy?” And he hasn't given us the answer.'
I disagree with that point in your otherwise excellent article, Denis Smith: he very much has given us the answer.
The truth is Ignatieff has always been a politician, and a rather shallow one. Anyone who listened to him carefully years ago knows that.
Most importantly, Ignatieff’s stuff on human rights has always seemed more of a cocktail-party view than a bred-in-the-bone characteristic: it is precisely the kind of stage persona shallow politicians assume.
He reminds me of a rich blue-haired Boston matron attending a dazzling gala to benefit some cause somewhere out there in the third world. She doesn’t much care in about the nitty-gritty of the cause, and perhaps even knows little about it, but she is concerned with her reputation among a certain social set.
Ignatieff has always given us words with little or no substance, and different words to different audiences, nicely calculated to appeal to each with half truths.
I believe there is no center, no “there,” to Michael Ignatieff, and that has always been the case. His writing and lectures betray that. They are characterized by mannered ambiguity and not particularly insightful or exhibiting the thirst for justice.
The Liberal Party has made a terrible choice in Ignatieff, and it was not even a democratic choice.
The fact that he accepted the leadership in this fashion speaks volumes.
God, we desperately need a genuine leader, a person of eloquence and driving concern for justice. It is regrettable to have to say that Gilles Duceppe displays these characteristics immensely more than Harper or Ignatieff.
That great thumping political cretin, Harper, is shaming our country in a dozen ways, from handing out orders in Foreign Affairs to have the term “child soldier” not used to condemning the UN for deaths of observers in Lebanon murdered while bravely doing their jobs.
