Apolitical Staples

Murphy seems to have identified one aspect of Dion’s personna that fooled some people. Leaving aside the obvious “not Rae or Iggy” luckiness, there’s many others, much more glaring than in Murphy’s observation:

1. He’s an academic; one of the “on the one hand, on the other hand” types; decision-making is tough for them.
2. Lack of real management experience; if one thinks a company is tough to run, think about a party (mechanism), caucus, stakeholders (voters), and whatnot, not to mention Opposition and governing.
3. As a corollary, lack of business rigour; intellectual, yes, but the “do you know how hard it is to make priorities” was a dead giveaway, and should have sent his principals and supporters fleeing for the exits.
4. Parochial. He may (or may not) know Quebec; he doesn’t know one bit about ROC. Notawhit. Harper may not have had international exposure, but he knew Canada.
5. Slow learner. For all his “intelligence”, he seems thick as a post in take-up speed; I admit I didn’t know this beforehand, but did no one know?
6. Lousy English communicator. Did no one know this beforehand?
7. Loves Millstones. Around his head. Environment. See also “slow learner”.
8. Backstops. Who would be/is in the back office? Policy. Communications. Strategy. Chief of Staff. Did anyone look hard?
9. Track-Record. None. Full stop. In plain view.
10. Vision. Does he have any, that would work? I haven’t seen it yet. What did his supporters and principals see, other than a green scarf.

All of which is why I would have voted for Martha, if I had been a Liberal. Think about it in the context of the 10 points. But I’m not, and it’s someone else’s problem.

IMO, the bigger issue for Liberals and Democrats, which Chrétien and Clinton covered up, is that they have no policy that works. Dion is just the empty vessel messenger who can’t talk his way around it. I agree that Martha Hall Findlay would have been more Clintonesque.

Chrétien was street savvy and had the luxury of a conservative opposition in disarray. But Chrétien would have done no better than Martin against united conservatives led by Harper.

Clinton was one of the best orators on his feet, feeling everybody’s pain, ever to enter the White House in a TV era .. better on his feet than JFK. But unlike JFK, Clinton did not stand for anything nor did Carter, nor Gore, nor Kerry, nor will Hillary nor Obama. The Democrats are in big trouble as will become apparent in as we get closer to 2008. Because liberalism is in big trouble.

The shallowness of liberalism did not show up post Berlin Wall because we were basking in a 1990’s stock market bubble and we expected the peace dividend to last forever. But things have changed; even France is likely to vote conservative. Because it works. (oh and forget SSM, it’s off the table in Canada and Guiliani will take it off in the USA because it’s irrelevant in an era of terrorism)

Finally, the changing strategy on Quebec, if it works, will change politics in Canada for decades to come. Dion has no idea how to contend with that because he’s another Liberal, elitist, centralist.

Great post. Rex Murphy is the only good thing left at CBC.

I’ve watched other pundits discuss Dion, and language aside, he is unable to succintly deliver his message in a 10 second sound bite.

Not a good thing in a society of short attention spans.

A ten second sound bite?

I listened to the whole hour long interview with the citizen and I didn’t hear a message.

He is indeed an empty vessel.

Great outline, Erik. I’d add a few points.

1) He’s an academic, and not within the science, eg physics, chemistry, biology, or engineering, or architecture or medicine. These disciplines operate within a result-orientation, where IF you do this, THEN the building will explode, the bridge will fall down, the patient will die. Decisions have specific results.

He’s in the Arts, and in particular in sociology, the realm of the cloud-dwellers, the people who live and talk only in words, words, words. There are no results to their words for they remain safely cocooned within the heady debates in the classrooms, the faculty lounges, the pubs and the conference papers. Forgotten ten minutes later.

As an academic, you are the professor, the authority in the classroom - and no-one disputes your words.

Dion is not brilliant; the error of many is to consider that since he’s an academic then he’s a brain. Heh. Dion is not a leader in his or any discipline.

Dion treats his MPs as if they were his undergrad students, setting them up into ‘discussion groups’ (an undergrad tactic), insisting that they obey him, stunned if they have any views of their own.

2) As a cloud-dweller, as someone whose life has operated only within words and never within actions - he, as you say, has no understanding or capacity to manage an organization. He views managing as if in the classroom. He’s the professor and you are his students. Obey him.

3) Agree - as soon as they heard that, they should have run. But Dion won by backroom manipulation, not by decisions about his capacities. The debates were irrelevant to his backroom manipulations. And remember, that’s how he’ll operate now - not by what you see up front - but by backroom deals.

4)Agree - he knows zilch about the ROC. And he doesn’t understand or even know the history that has led Canada from its original decentralization, to centralism, to its current split into a linguistic divide of Quebec and the ROC - and the need now to move into a vigorous decentralization. He doesn’t have a ‘feel’ for history. He’s locked into the sociological mindset of utopianism.

5) Agreed - a dimwit. But that is also an aspect of his sociology, a discipline which considers it has the answers to the perfect society, a discipline that ignores history, that ignores ecology, that considers that all it takes is a set of rules, and society will be perfect.

But he’s a manipulator, a wheeler-dealer, someone who achieves his agenda by backroom deals. Watch out for them.

6) He’s incomprehensible in English. But people in Canada are afraid to say this, at least until now, because it would seem ‘biased’.

7) Millstones? He’s operating as a normal cloud-dweller, an academic, who has a set of ‘basic themes’ and you, the student, are supposed to accept them as the valid Way to The Future Perfection. As to how to operationalize them - that’s not his department. He’s an academic.

8) Backstops. Can he or will he accept advice? He considers Himself as The Professor. You don’t tell him what to do. He refuses that role.

9) No track record even as an academic.

10) No vision - apart from his ‘basic themes’ - of economic sustainability, the env’t and social justice - which are all so general, so universal - and found in all gov’ts all over the world. What’s so unique? And of course, he has no policies within these themes. He’s only into the themes - not transforming them into the real world.

I’ll add:

11) personality problems - of brittleness, thin-skinned, prone to juvenile name-calling, petulance and quick to anger.

12) Ignorance of history - including what’s going on now and over the years in Europe, the ME, Asia.

13) Manipulative. Watch out for this. He gets what he wants, not by an upfront appeal to you to vote for him, but by backroom manipulation.

Nice fill-in, since I know nada about the academic milleau. But does anyone know who are the stud-buzzards in the backroom these days? In particular, is Herle back in HQ?

Whenever Chester wants a compendium of Dion’s shortcomings,

Chester goes to the book of ET.

ET,

for all your Dion shortcoming needs.