That Dion interview, in full

Clarity Act

Ensures recognition of a sovereignty vote is an Act of Parliament, not the discretion of Privy.

That’s a small detail a certain dictator left out of his poor attempt.

It was almost embarrassing to watch Dion falter like that. But it IS news as petty as it seems because it reveals a serious flaw in Dion(…which I think has zilch to do with language barriers or hearing problems) which is not becoming of one who wants to lead this country.

Harper has shown himself to be the statesman he is during his lambasting at the debate despite some low-blows (“under the sweater” comments, etc.) — he certainly didn’t play any ‘pity’ card. So, if Dion can’t stand the heat, he should get out of the kitchen along with his sous-chefs Ignatieff and Rae.

And, speaking of kitchens, that’s where Jello is made — getting any substantial answer from Dion and Layton is like trying to nail it to the wall.

Roberta – he didn’t play the pity card. Dion said that Harper’s reaction shows he has no class.

The question was really confusing to a second-language speaker; “If you were PM today, what would you have done…? To change tenses in that way in the middle of a sentence is not a sign of a good interviewer. It made the time-period unclear. For Harper to jump on it showed absolutely no class

I like the job interview analogy made above. That’s what an election is, a month long job interview.

You flub a question, you don’t get the job. Dion flubbed the question.

(what a great word..flub.)

“You flub a question, you don’t get the job. Dion flubbed the question.”

You show a picture of a bird sh*tting on your competition, you don’t get the job. You make absurd suggestions like average folks ought to be buying stocks in the midst of a global economic meltdown, you don’t get the job. When you have a history of publically claiming your rivals are in favour or child pornography, or Taliban supporters, you don’t get the job. When you joke about deadly meat that has killed several people, you don’t get the job. When you question of the words of a dead soldier’s father as likely rooted in political aims, you don’t get the job.

Actually, I don’t judge Harper and his team on the odd gaffe or misstep. Nor do I Dion.

Without taking away from my point that this is an absurd non-story that the Tories may come to regret having flogged, the defence that the question was confusing, on account of its allegedly defective grammar, to a non-English speaker — so much so as to render him incapable of answer — doesn’t stand up.

In the first place, it wasn’t all that confusing, or even ungrammatical. “If you were Prime Minister today, what would you have done…” clearly means what would you have done before today — until now, up to this point. That might include everything in the two and a half years since the last election, or just in the last few days since the crisis came to a boil, or both. You choose.

Which is the real point. You don’t have to be a perfectly fluent grammarian to get the gist of a question. Let’s take the French equivalent, as drafted by Paul Wells: “Si vous étiez prémier ministre aujourd’hui, qu’est-ce que vous auriez fait à propos de l’économie que M. Harper n’a pas fait?” My knowledge of the subjunctive is shaky enough in English, let alone French. But even if I knew no more French than to pick up “si vous… premier ministre aujourd’hui… qu’est-ce que vous… fait à propos de l’economie… Harper n’a pas fait” — I wouldn’t need to fill in the blanks with the precise tense. I wouldn’t get hung up on did you mean today or last year. I’d just tell him what I’d do about it. Or what I would have done about it already. Whatever.

For some reason, he got stuck on a small point: pedantry, stalling for time, exhaustion, I don’t know. But the least plausible explanation is language. He understood the thrust of the question. But he was obsessed with nailing down the exact time frame.

I’m all for getting hung up on small points if they’re critical, if an issue turns on them. The question did not.

“Dion still didn’t have a good answer the next morning – “I’m sure there’s lots of stuff”.”

Ha, ha, ha :-)

On this notion of “off the record”, I recall that Mr. Harper had asked that his tape recorded interview about the alleged Conservative bribe to Chuck Cadman not be published either (“I don’t know the details, I know that, um, there were discussions, um, but this is not for publication?”). And then it was published in a book, and we can all remember how highly embarrassing that was for him too.
But maybe the difference is this: Mr. Dion has not attempted to deny the answer he gave on Mr. Duffy’s show, only to explain why he misunderstood the question.
By contrast, Mr. Harper not only insisted the Cadman tape had been altered and edited, he launched a lawsuit for defamation. But today, Mr. Harper’s court-appointed expert gave sworn evidence to the court to the effect that the tape was unedited after all, thus bringing Mr. Harper’s integrity into question.
So how do we reconcile this one? Have we not, in the hundreds of posts that have circulated since Mr. Dion’s interview, confused delivery with substance? Is it so important for us to have someone who can answer a question in an articulate fashion that we no longer care what they say? What has happened to this country?

Hot Air (which gets millions of hits)…

From fascist mouthbreathers.

That site’s a pig sty.

The question was really confusing to a second-language speaker…

Oh good Khrist. The question was on the exact same subject that Dion has been railing away about for the past two weeks. How can the question possibly be confusing when he’s asking about Dion’s main campaign theme? Besides, Dion’s own handlers are blaming it on his hearing problem. Yet you feel the need to make up an entirely different excuse?