Working up policy around an electoral cycle is fine - for a while. Leave it too long, however, as the Liberals plainly have, and it creates an impression of a party that really doesn't have any meaningful ideas. What was the last big Liberal idea? Oh yeah, it was the Green Shift, a first rate idea botched by third-rate handling by the then leader, Stephane Dion.
Good policy is defensible. If you've got an idea that you cannot defend against your opponent, then it's not a very good idea. If you can't find glaring weaknesses in your opponent's ideas, then you had better come up with some other compelling reason why voters should support you.
It's time the Liberals and the Latter Day Liberals (NDP) got up on their hind legs and stood for something that's meaningful to the Canadian public. Stand for Canada and the Canadian public, not the state and its incestuous corporatism. Stop treating the Canadian public like chumps, like prey, like Harper does.
Yeah, the election may not come until 2015 but you've laid low long enough. Justin, your father knew how to connect with the public. Try, oh please try, to channel a bit of that. Tommy, try to stop acting like an angry, highschool chemistry teacher.
Speak to us about the environment and about our democratic deficit. Speak to our worries about inequality and the future Canada can offer our children and grandkids.
12 comments:
I applaud the sentiments expressed here, Mound, but I can't escape the dispiriting notion that Justin's silence on policy is not strategic, but rather the result, at least in part, of an incapacity for deep and serious thought.
Concomitantly, what does it say about our fellow citizens that despite this lack of policy direction, the Liberals are leading in the polls?
What I'm thinking, Lorne, is that they dislike JT less than Mulcair or Harper. After the highly successful mauling Harper inflicted on Dion and Ignatieff, Trudeau should understand that, if he stooges around, he's in for the same treatment.
If the Libs want a majority government, they'll have to earn it. Waiting long enough for the public to sour on the current guy is pathetic politics.
The libs and the dippers should form a co-alition, or they'll stay in the wilderness like the PC's a Reform/CRAP dildos did until Flybaby MacKay stabbed Orchard and the other actualsar Tories in the back.
Oh I forgot, Steven has declared co-alitions a form of treason or something and convinced the low information Canadian public that a co-alition is more treasonous than Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden put together.
Hi Dana. I received your comment by e-mail. You're right, unfortunately. I am encouraging JT to hang an "even bigger target on his ass." That's probably from my recollection of his father who was always ready to raise ideas to inspire and even more ready (and able) to defend them. This scurvy bunch we have today are not of that order.
Damn. In a moment of frustration I vented and then tried to undo it.
There will be lots of time for ideas - in the meantime don't interfere with Harper's willingness to self-destruct. Do nothing that would distract him from his self inflicted Waterloo. Almost anything done or said by JT or by Mulcair would be seized on by Harper's carrion hyenas and the howling wouldn't end for weeks.
Let them implode. They're doing a fine job of it.
Also. Pierre had opponents with basic respect for the system, the traditions, Parliament.
JT's opponents have no respect for anything or anyone. They will try to smear him (or Mulcair) with shit out of their own asses and call it responsible. And there are still too many journos willing to uncritically transcribe whatever the PMO spits up onto it's bib.
It's not the world of 1968 anymore. Not even the world of 1978 or 1988 either.
Seriously, Dana, PET would have sliced and diced his way through Harper and wouldn't have left so much as a blood trail. You don't run from Harper. You run straight at him - again and again and again. Eventually you'll run over him.
I don't doubt that for a second but Pierre is dead and gone and his son is not him and should not have to bear the burden of not being him. I'm 66. I remember Pierre very clearly.
Are you your father? Do you wish to be? Do you seek the approval of people who compare you to your father and find you wanting?
I'm not mine and no power on earth or anywhere else can make me into him.
Justin is Justin.
Pierre isn't returning.
That has to be OK.
Since you asked, Dana, I'd be happy to be half the man my father was but I can't come up with that kind of courage consistently. That said, I do try just about every day. And, no, I don't seek others' approval. Never have. Too old to start now.
I'm not the same man my father is. But then, I'm not saying I should be in my father's job, either.
I think Alexandre Trudeau is pretty cool. I'm not going to criticize him for not being Pierre (although I'd actually consider him somewhat closer than Justin) because he's not trying to take his dad's mantle, he's doing things of his own.
I have no desire to be my father. Nor do any of his other sons. Nor would he want us to be him or to emulate him or compete with him.
He was an extraordinary man. The only real christian I have ever known. And by the time he shuffled off this mortal coil he understood why I wouldn't capitalize that word.
Alexandre is a blank slate. We know almost nothing about him. He is also an adviser to JT.
The only really safe Trudeau is Michel.
Isn't he?
Post a Comment