Canadian Polemic

And the Ignatieff-as-Liberal-candidate saga continues, today with the reputed scholar and author slamming attempts to discredit him as 'transparent' and describing quotes used from his works to paint him as anti-Ukrainian as out-of-context. This is after earlier Chretien-style attempts to block other candidates from running in the riding and the resignation of the riding's MP, Jean Augustine.

I've mentioned before how much I'd like to see Michael Ignatieff as an elected Liberal MP and Cabinet Minister, and that confidence remains unshaken. He's used to dealing in the currency of ideas, which will be a nice change - it will be interesting to see how he expresses his ideas and viewpoints in Canada in the future. I'm not entirely comfortable with all of them, but we'll have to see.

I think that the Paul Martin team has somewhat fumbled this one, though. Granted, I know they don't want to facilitate the rise of a potential challenge to their authority, but they haven't really accomplished anything here other than show an authoritarian central party leadership stifling, in a word, democracy. It would have been so much better for a variety of purposes to let those other two candidates run in the race properly, without hassle. Ignatieff doesn't get by easily, but he's likely to win - the LPC gets a star candidate and democracy is 100% observed. I like the idea of an Ignatieff candidacy, but I don't like the process to date of how that notion has been approached. Hopefully it'll turn out better than it's started.