A Leader Emerges

Looking good, Jack. Far more like a leader should. Whatever grooming exercise you've undergone, has been good for your image. You sound better, look better, seem more on track with your message to the Canadian electorate.

Finally, it appears, on the surface, in any event - and that's what we get during an election campaign; surface - that you've matured from the garrulous, self-reverential, smirking, camera-ready candidate for high office, to a credible representation of a leader-in-waiting.

Nice public relations, good planning, respectable showing. Craftily designed too, the new agenda that seems to echo that of the current governing party, albeit canted a trifle more to the left of the political spectrum.

No more shrill ideological promises - that served only to alarm the electorate - and hysterical denunciations of the other parties' designs on re-structuring the country even further to partner American values. That's a refreshing change.

Calm and quietly confident. How unlike your former antic and jocularly charismatic self, Jack. Convincing, too, in a delivery that imparts to the onlooker a demeanor and a platform less rigidly nonsensical than of yore.

Of course, there's those wake-up items like withdrawal from NORAD and NAFTA and the WTO. Kind of nice if we could go it alone and make it on the strength of our own virtuous capabilities. But this is a very interconnected world, as we all know.

And our capacity is as good in all those areas as the strength of our alliance with those whose values and aspirations match ours. Geography too; that certainly claims a large part of our allegiance. Sometimes these alliances work in our favour, you know. It's always good to have friend and colleagues in this great wide world.

It's also refreshing no end to see that Stephane Dion and his Liberal party have finally outdone the New Democrats in their spending promises. The NDP's multi-billion-dollar promises look positively measured set beside the $55-billion-and-growing of the Liberals.

And what a precious little tidbit, to hear Bob Rae conspiring to kidnap NDP votes.
Borrowing back from the NDP those long-time Liberal supporters who parked their vote as a protest with the NDP - at the invitation of your party - in disgust over former Prime Minister Chretien's Sponsorship Scandal that led Canada to have its government corruption-rating fall from its accustomed high rating among the G-8.

Strategic voting aside, however, the NDP lucked in, given that Liberal party popularity still hasn't recovered.

To the extent that the peoples' choice polls place you second in line for popular appeal as potential prime minister, and Stephane Dion languishing deep down in the doldrums of voter rejection. Good enough reason to change tactics, offering the New Democrats as governing material, not merely a stand-up representation of the country's conscience.

Watch out, Jack; some of those with whom you're prancing about the dance floor in condemnation of cut-backs to the arts might just come back and take a big bite when the occasion demands. But keep up the good work. Even if you don't make it to 24 Sussex Drive.

You'll look good, sound good, and possibly do good as the official Leader of the Opposition. It's been done before, though you're no Ed Broadbent.