Run, Warren, run!

Warren Kinsella, looking over the smoking ruins of his Liberal Party, recommitted himself to the Grit cause and that party's noble traditions yesterday. In fact, he vowed to seek a Commons seat under the Liberal colours. I believe we call such people all-weather friends.

I for one will hold Mr. Kinsella to his promise. We need him in Parliament.

 
Kinsella (left) with "Agenda" host Steve Paikin. (TVO)

Too many of us, myself obviously included, love politics, live the incomparable fun and importance of it every day, but cannot summon the courage to tough out a campaign and then serve in a cause far more arduous than it looks. And do the work of an elected official in full public view, with those in the cheap seats all convinced they could do a better job than you. "It's like learning to play the violin in public" is one of the most apt analogies. I have talented friends who refuse to serve in thankless, high-ranking management roles in the private sector, much less endure the constant, casual indignities visited on the holders of public office.

Warren asked for support, and he has mine. But it's conditional. He will have to keep blogging, obviously. (Someday there will be a couple of Commons seats exclusively representing the blogosphere.) And he will have to not bite his tongue. Kinsella's passion and candour as an MP is the whole point.

Warren has run before, of course, 14 years ago in a Grit-hostile small-c conservative riding far from his Montreal roots, in North Vancouver. So he knows the routine personally, not just as a national war room commander.

I chose this headline because it's the one that centre-right pundit David Brooks used in 2007 in urging a centre-left pol named Barack Obama to seek the U.S. presidency. Brooks was right that Obama's style and substance was needed in the arena, at a time when the same-as Hillary Clinton was the "prohibitive favourite" to win the Dem nomination.

Now the Grits and the country need Kinsella's courage and candour.

Bon chance, Warren.

 

Comments

[bocanut]

Won't running for elected orifice cut into his time as lead singer for geezer wanna-be punk band "Shit for Brains"?

[dolive]

Yes, and I should have added that to my conditional support - that WK keep at that, too, while assuming the burdens of office. Hey, Woody Allen still keeps his Monday gigs at Michael's Pub while continuing to be among the most prolific filmmakers of his time, so WK wouldn't be let off that hook. -Cheers, DO

[Wascally Wabbit]

Here we differ David. There was a time when Warren was the prototypical squeaky wheel, especially when raging against the Earnscliffians who took over the party back rooms riding Paul Martin's coat tails. Like many of us, he was on the outside - looking in - which for him was traumatic - because he was well acquainted with being the ultimate insider.
Trouble is - he got tired of being on the outside - tried to re-enter the circle - and found his voice to carry less weight than formerly - and flounced off once more - to float rumours of coalitions and mergings of the party with the NDP - more to frighten the right leaning folks in influence than for any serious movement to occur (at least - that's my reading of the situation).
Unlike your colleague Susan Delacourt, I am of the belief that the rebuilding of the Liberal party will not begin until after this election - and no drifting back of fence sitting Liberals will occur with this leadership prior to the election - and will probably be preceded by some form of co-governance with the NDP - which will cause some of the right wing of the party - who are really Red Tories anyway - to break away (the real reason why Iggy has been adamant about no coalition - fear of losing them before an election) and for the party to become more democratic and respectful of grassroots than it has become over the last 20 years or so

[John Daly]

It's astounding to me that you would recommend such an obviously unstable and pathologically self-involved individual as Warren Kinsella for elected office. Do we not have enough narcissists collecting our hard-earned taxes as it is. Warren's talent, in my opinion, is that he is able, quite consistently, to make the story Warren more often than not. Warren Kinsella represents Warren Kinsella. Period.

[John Daly]

As a follow up to yesterday's comment, which will strike some as overly personal and/or harsh; read Kinsella's blog post for today. He writes himself into a maudlin little story, with his mother as the guest star. They talk, quietly, about the coming disaster for the Liberal party. Mind, the election hasn't happened yet, but Kinsella would rather indulge himself than keep his eye on any larger goal. This is exactly the pathology I am referring to. It doesn't matter that his defeatism and childish I-told-you-so chiding (re the notion of a left-of-centre coalition) may be contributing to the predicted poor showing for the party to which he claims loyalty. No, more important that he draw attention to himself and his so-called "outsider" status. The guy makes me ill. Always has and always will.

[dolive]

HI John: You know your man better than I. It might have been Paul Wells who wrote years ago that Warren's role in the party's then-success was exaggerated. (You can find that story in the References section of Kinsella's Wikipedia entry.) I don't for a moment dispute how Warren often is the centre his stories. But that is, or was, the a requirement of blogging in the first many years after its inception - to write personally, with conviction, and transparently, unlike the MSM - and Kinsella's been blogging since 2000. That makes him a pioneer, along with Glenn Reynolds (1999), Andrew Sullivan (2000) and Andrew Coyne (c. 2002-03) - although Coyne has blogged intermittently, not without cease as the others I mention have. (Most of the 200 million blogs have a lifespan of two months, as you know.) I find that transparency of Warren's refreshing, in the sense that I learn a bit about the internecine wars and tactics behind the scenes that might possible help explain the miscalculations in public.
WW: Your take on the unfolding of events with Warren jibes with my understanding. There's been bitterness, resentment, sometimes unavoidable and sometimes serious mischief better avoided. The thing about elected office - Peter Kormos possibly excepted - is that it does discipline you. What's missing in so many of our 308 parliamentarians is that they didn't arrive in Ottawa with passion, and so their rough edges were rounded off quickly and easily and they became rather inconsequential save for their important duties run out of their constituency offices.
On your scenario of how the Grits reinvent themselves, your trajectory makes sense to me. But - and I wish Grits would face up to this - there's nothing says the Grits will or need to survive in any form. There was a time when it was unthinkable that Britain's Liberal party would disappear. The Whigs are gone, and the Know-Nothings, and the Copperheads, and Reform and the Ontario and Alberta Farmers' parties, and the Confederation of Regions Party (that would make a good Jeopardy! question), and one could go on. That's why I draw the parallel with GM. If someone were proposing to create GM today, they wouldn't get a dime in financing, because there is no longer a need for a GM. For some time now, it's apparent there's no need for a federal Liberal party. If only Martin and Roy McLaren were Red Tories; they were Bay Street Tories, as John Turner was. (Martin Sr., a young radical in the King cabinet, would be so dismayed at how convention his son was as PM.)
The NDP is the future on the left, but Canadians never will vote in substantial number for an avowedly socialist party. And Jack - to his credit as integrity goes - adamantly refuses to shed that label and the communalism it stands for. We are, of course, a communal society. (So are the States, though they're even more loath than us to admit it.) So Layton hasn't seen for that quite honest reformulation or repackaging, an honest endeavour given that the NDP - in practice running the governments of five provinces now - has decidedly not been socialistic. (Ask the disappointed Hargrove!)
So I think the future is as you describe it, has to be - a merger. Jack does want that, ardently and for years. But to thoroughly purge the Bay Street elements in the Grits - and I don't dislike "Bay Street," what's needed is an overtly populist, grassroots connection with the Canadian majority - the merger has to happen in the context of a further Grit humbling on May 2. Then Jack can dictate terms. He can say the obvious: Your Grit coziness with the status quo and with the elites has been circling the drain for decades; it's only gotten steadily worse since Trudeau lost the West, and the Bloc displaced the Red Tories and then the Grits in Quebec; while my party, overtly progressive, is the only party in the country with momentum.
And it could turn out that way May 3. Sifting through the entrails, we'll see the Tories basically tread water, the Grits and Bloc lost seats, the Greens continued to be a non-factor. The NDP alone gained seats and popular vote. (Which, with P.R., would translate into 60 or 70 seats rather than then 35-45 I expect they'll get.

[Darwin O'Connor]

"Canadians never will vote in substantial number for an avowedly socialist party."

If you take all Canadian who have voted NDP provincially or federally even once (including the upcoming election) it would be enough to form a federal government with a comfortable majority.

"And Jack adamantly refuses to shed that label and the communalism it stands for."

He doesn't have the authority. In fact he could be expelled for suggesting it. Being a member of the NDP requires you to agree to the principles of the party and the first line to the preamble of the constitution of the federal NDP is "The New Democratic Party believes that the social, economic and political progress of Canada can be assured only by the application of democratic socialist principles to government and the administration of public affairs"

A merger would require support of a super-majority of NDP members. You'd be hard pressed a single member who supports it. If the Liberals want to survive, they should join with the NDP in supporting PR.