The Liberals' woes

What's wrong with the Liberals? Two columns today are attempting to back-date the Liberals'  current problems -- stuck in the polls, apparently going nowhere. Lawrence Martin suggests that the electoral/regional forces unleashed in 1993 actually caused lasting damage to the Liberals, while Warren Kinsella suggests that the party just hasn't got its act together since it lost power five years ago. Those two views aren't mutually exclusive, but I thought I'd throw in my two cents too, since I've been covering the party since the late 1980s. Here, in no particular order, are what I believe are some deep, systemic ailments within the Liberal party, circa 2010. 

• I've written before about the decline of the "one big thing" in Canadian political/journalistic culture over the past decade. Whether it's in politics or in the media, big, broad institutions are out of fashion. (The military may be an interesting exception.) The Liberals are persisting -- naively, anachronistically, optimistically, some would argue -- in trying to cast themselves as one big thing. They call it the "big red tent," as you may recall. Martin's column usefully reminds us that Chretien's election victories papered over the fissures in this concept, but didn't really fix them. 
• Air wars vs. ground wars: If there is one, uniting idea for the Liberals, it's that everyone is a communications strategist.  I'm not really joking. Get two or more Liberals in a room and they start discussing what's wrong with the Liberal communications strategy. Everyone's a "senior anonymous Liberal" -- especially and even people who haven't held a party membership card for years or donated to the party.  Ignatieff's bus tour this summer was an attempt to persuade Liberals that they had to stop concentrating on the airwaves and get better at their ground game -- raising money, pulling out the vote. The fact that the senior, anonymous Liberals are still on the loose suggests that Ignatieff had limited success. 
• Leadership: This is related to the previous two points. Just as Liberals still believe in the one-big-thing idea, they also believe that leaders solve everything. And funnily enough, it's never the leader they currently have. It's the guy they didn't choose the last time.  "Buyer regret" should be the official motto of the Liberal party.  Though I've written a book about this tendency of the Liberals, I'm quite bored with it now. When I got to Ottawa in 1988, the Liberals wanted to trade in John Turner for Chretien. Then when they got him, Paul Martin seemed like the better choice. And so on. Only the names have changed; the tactics haven't. zzzzzzz. 
• Pragmatism: For decades now, Liberals have seen pragmatism as the operating principle of the moderate middle. Harper, however, is turning out to be a better pragmatist; or at least more skilful in  avoiding consequences for changing his mind or putting water in his wine. If the next election is about who's better at shifting views to meet circumstances (that would be lame, wouldn't it?) then why wouldn't Canadians choose the one who's already doing it?  
• Canadians as spectators: I think a large reason that any party is failing to excite Canadians is because no one's asking them to do anything. All politics seem to revolve around the idea of voters as passive consumers: just sit there, don't do anything, please don't change your mind, and we'll sell you stuff. (I'm working on this whole thing as a larger project, btw.) The old Liberal struggles of the past asked Canadians to make an effort, whether it was bilingualism or the deficit fight of the 1990s.  Nobody is asking Canadians to do anything whatsoever right now, and they're obliging with the requested apathy.  That problem isn't limited to Liberals, incidentally. 

 

That's probably more than two cents. But that's my contribution to the discussion. 

 

 

Comments

[Anne Peterson]

I wonder what's keeping the conservatives from ever getting higher in the polls? Everyone concentrates on why the liberals aren't doing better. No one seems to notice that Harper has been in government for years and able to squander all those resources to get votes, and is still in deep minority territory.

Maybe Canadians will never have a majority government again because they won't ever have a majority government again. Maybe they just want something more democratic. Canadians are spectators because they have very little choice about it now. I wouldn't call the lucky people of BC with their recall legislation apathetic.

[Nadine Lumley]

If HarperCon spent millions of tax payer's dollars attacking you; you'd be low in the polls as well.

HarperLand: Cut off the head and the body will die.

That's all HarperCon can think about night and day, day and night. He SICKENS me. Has Harper EVER done ANYTHING for HUMANITY like EVER?????

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[Inge Jordan]

Both opinion pieces leave out Harper's flawed (to put it mildly) personality and the hatred that is permeating the political scene thanks to him and his cohorts. Read Lawrence Martin's book "Harperland" and count how often "hate" and "hatred" of all things and people Liberal are mentioned, listen to what Dr. Keith Martin, retiring MP, has to say about the climate in the HOC, and weep. Why not run in the next election campaign on the difference between a vicious mudslinger bent on destruction of his enemies (aka. the opposition in a supposedly democratci country) and someone who represents the opposite characteristics, such as cooperation for the common good and cohesion, whoever that may be...

[Diane]

I wonder if Michael Ignatief is thinking he should have come back to Canada and ran as a Conservative, he would have had a better chance of being PM and Conservative party is well in line with his ideology!