Bob Rae won’t say whether he wants to be prime minister. But he does want that, with every fibre of his being.
And here’s the curious magic that charisma, gravitas and a dash of hubris can effect: Listening to Rae speak, it’s hard not to believe, at least for a while, that he might pull it off. Certainly he thinks he can. The pat responses about heeding party rules calling for him to stand aside in 2013? Let’s quietly set those aside. Rae is crafting a come-from-behind run for the country’s top job. And he’s going about it in clever, methodical fashion.
On the face of it, Rae’s situation could not be more grim. Last May 2 the once-mighty Liberal Party of Canada, led by Michael Ignatieff, was reduced to a pitiful 34 seats. It was a humiliation on par with John Turner’s drubbing at the hands of Brian Mulroney in 1984. Rae has the unenviable task of sorting through the ruins looking for salvageable beams.
As he himself acknowledges: “If you look at the results of the last election, we pretty well lost everywhere. It would be hard to say we we’ve . . . succeeded in defending any particular bastion in the last little while. We’ve been receding. That can’t continue.”
In the past nine months, Rae told an online audience Sunday, Conservatives have raised $18 million to the Liberals’ $8 million. With both corporate and government “sugar daddies” out of the frame, Liberals must rely on themselves, Rae says: “We need thousands of shoulders to the wheel.”
It’s a nice image. But what can it yield, if Grit supporters are an increasingly grizzled group of primarily urban, retired, degreed professionals and civil servants – while the Conservatives and New Democrats carve up Main Street between them? Polls suggest this is precisely what has happened, and continues to happen.
One knock against Rae has been that, though he loves to speak and is very good at it, he’s not a natural listener. The same might be said of his party. After May 2, just as they’d done to former leader Stephane Dion after his loss in 2008, senior Liberals dragged Ignatieff out behind the barn and put him down. It was quick and relatively painless.
The implication? If the leader had only been more effective, dodged the dastardly Harper attack ads or returned fire more effectively, they could’ve been contenders.
A possibility many Liberals still fail to acknowledge, is that large numbers of Canadians simply don’t agree with them any more, on some core issues. The long-gun registry is one, certainly in rural and small-town Canada. Borrowing billions to fund new federal programs, as Ignatieff promised to do in the last campaign, is another.
For years, Grit politicians have bemoaned the loss of Canada’s international reputation. Oddly, that message doesn’t seem to have caught on internationally, where Canada is, in fact, widely respected – particularly by our closest allies the United States and Britain, whose troops fought alongside Canadians in Afghanistan. The world likes our banking system too, apparently. Canadians have the Internet, and can read the foreign news.
Liberals have tried hard for half a decade to turn the plight of Omar Khadr into a rallying cry for human rights. They have a point: Khadr was just 15, a child by UN convention, at the time of his arrest. But do ordinary Canadians empathize enough with an enemy combatant, whatever his age, to make this anything but a loser, politically? The answer is no.
Rae appears to understand the branding problem, which Ignatieff did not. He also knows the prize is the solid centre – with a leftward tilt on social issues, and a rightward one on economics and geopolitics. On Iran he’s a hawk. On marijuana he’s a dove. On taxes he muses about lowering, not raising. “It’s productivity that speaks to our prosperity – we have to look at everything.”
If it holds, it could be the germination of a Liberal shift back to the moderate centre-right, where the party had its success in the ’90s. Pragmatic Liberals would cheer. Rae’s biggest problem, should he manage to stick around until 2015, will be Ontarians’ memories of the recession of the early ’90s. That’s a big problem. For now though, it doesn’t appear to be spoiling his fun. “I enjoy it,” he says of his role as scrapper and underdog. “I wouldn’t be doing it if I didn’t enjoy it.”
Fair enough. Aside from all that, however, would Bob Rae like to be PM? Honestly? Don’t ask. He won’t say.
mdentandt@postmedia.com
Yes Michael, Bob Rae has been, in my opinion the reason for the unravelling of Ontario’s economy for slightly less than twenty years. I’m sure each and every Ontarian has his and her opinion about the devastation Bob Rae caused in the early 90’s, depending upon where that person was in his or her financial growth at the time, and when the person affected was born. Perhaps the prospective constituent wasn’t born yet; it has been 18 years (over 12 since he left).
Bob Rae carried himself with an ‘I don’t care’ attitude for his final NDP years. I say ‘final’ because I believe the ‘cut and run’ actions of Rae are still wreaking havoc in the lives of some and caused the final days of Rae. He’s gone because he was no longer welcome. Our provincial government is still trying to recover from his narcissistic decisions. Are Canadians really stupid enough to let Rae anywhere near the helm of our democratic system? We have blamed every Premier of Ontario for most socio-economic since he ran the province. The fact of the matter is every Premier of Ontario since has been trying to right Rae’s wrongs; a ‘domino effect.’ What, perhaps he has changed? Nope, he changed labels and franchises, but believe me, RAE IS RAE and he hasn’t changed.
Finally, I’m fine with Rae being the leader of the Liberal Party, only if they continue to receive no more than a distant Bronze Medal in our national political arena. If the Liberal Party receives any higher than a distant third place, we’ve all had it. The only thing that could be worse than a leader of his calibre is a leader of Michael Ignatieff’s calibre. How much loyalty do we as Canadians have? We have a responsibility to all people who live within our borders to make sure that what Rae directly, subsequently and indirectly did to Ontario for the last two decades doesn’t happen on a national scale. He caused devastation, and enjoyed the power of being able to do so. The Liberal Party has many, much more capable incumbents than Rae that would be quite capable of superior leadership than he. That’s how it is…