Raring To Go!

The tired old tabby, set aside to regain its health has become a tiger again. Hear him roar! Up and ready, here we come!

It's the Liberal Party of Canada, presumptively prepared to resume its rightful place at the helm of the country. The inept, unreliable, shady Conservatives have had their chance, and enough is quite enough, thank you very much. What is it about that smile of Michael Ignatieff that is so bloody off-putting? A combination of the cat licking the cream, and strained ingenuousness.

Well, the cream has clotted and it's tantalizingly beckoning the happy heir of Liberal entitlement. Since ascending the throne un-opposed to lead the Liberals out of their miserable vale of tearful recriminations, he has travelled hither and yon, scribbled and published, mouthed rubber chicken and made his views and platform (wot?) known, and the public seems to have warmed to this stranger in a strange land.

New surveys indicate that 8 in ten Canadians can identify him!

What is the Liberal platform, come to think of it? Oops, it's the platform and the style that those nasty Conservatives pulled like a rug out from under the self-availing Liberals' wobbly legs. Which adequately explains how it is and why it is that the Liberals were constrained to vote for the Conservative budget, inclusive of a whopping stimulus-led deficit come to raging life.

No real differences in public policy? Um, not really, Liberals are liberals, after all, while Conservatives are, well just, kind of conservative; how can they be trusted? Besides which, Michael Ignatieff wants to prove himself in this arena of accomplishment having excelled at those others, a truly superior man of letters, academic, intellectual, just what the country needs, we just don't know it.

There was some homework to get done, and it got done: pay the bills; play down the scandals; pacify and re-align the membership; done, done, done. "The party has rallied pretty magnificently", crows Mr. Ignatieff in pleased self-congratulation. "Stephen Harper set in train a set of consequences he never envisaged, never expected,and I think he underestimated the party's capacity to come together in a moment of crisis."

Doubt it.

Think big, Canadian voters, think of true patriot love, and if and when you do, think of expatriate Canadians comfortable living and working abroad for let's see, 30 years, identifying deeply, as citizens of their adopted countries, finally deciding to return to their country of origin to put their personal stamp on the country, set things right.