Much will depend on Ignatieff himself. Whatever he has experienced in his life to date, he has perhaps never been so publicly challenged. The way he responds will ultimately be the focus. “Will he play to type?” Powers asks. “That’s the effectiveness of any communications campaign. You’re creating a narrative, and the success of the narrative is based on the behaviour and performance of its central character.”
An early preview of a formal campaign—though Ignatieff and Fairbrother disavow any official authorization or even knowledge of the originating source—might be found in a series of suspiciously professional-looking clips posted to YouTube by an anonymous entity calling itself GritGirl. With the exception of one clip that mocks the Prime Minister’s alleged visit to the bathroom at the G20 meeting last month, the ads mostly aim at Conservative management of the economy, often offsetting the public statements of Harper and Finance Minister Jim Flaherty with news of job losses and contradictory expert analysis. Conservatives claimed those clips as the reason for their new ads. But, in March, a mysterious auteur named ToryBoy had already proceeded to upload his own series of suspiciously professional-looking clips. One of those videos—a montage of great moments in Canadiana from the last 30 years, with a kicker that reminds viewers Ignatieff wasn’t here to see them—foreshadowed the initial thrust of the official Conservative campaign. Others go specifically to the question of economic leadership. The Conservatives, like the Liberals, claim ToryBoy’s work is neither connected to, nor sanctioned by, the party.
One Conservative, speaking on background, uses the phrase “tip of the iceberg” to place the first round of official ads in context. Ignatieff has left behind the longest of paper trails from which, it is said, any number of quotes can apparently be plucked for partisan purpose. Then, of course, there are the words he’s offered more recently.
The Conservatives have taken particular interest in a response Ignatieff offered, at a forum weeks ago, to a question about what might be done to get the country out of deficit. And in addition to those SO31s, the government has, of late, taken to periodically using some of the questions it is allotted in QP each day to stage short morality plays, where a backbencher is sent up to ask a fellow Conservative for the government’s opinion of Ignatieff’s various failings. “It has been 28 days since the Liberal leader said, ‘We will have to raise taxes,’ ” Conservative Greg Rickford reported to the House last week, referencing a quote Ignatieff insists was spoken hypothetically. “Could the government please tell Canadians if it believes the Liberal leader has a secret plan to raise taxes?” To respond, the government sent up Pierre Poilievre, the Prime Minister’s parliamentary secretary. “Mr. Speaker, during his 34 years in the United States and the United Kingdom, the Liberal leader became a very distinguished wordsmith. I commend him for his words and I quote them: ‘We will have to raise taxes’ or ‘I’m not going to take a GST hike off the table’ or ‘I am a tax-and-spend, Pearsonian, Trudeau Liberal.’ His faculty with words permits him and his sense of honour compels him to explain which taxes he will raise, by how much and who will have to pay.”
Though at first visibly frustrated by such displays, Ignatieff has settled on laughing at the feigned indignation. At the risk of seeming arrogant, he may need such confidence. Because just as the latest ads are hardly the start of the campaign against him, they surely don’t represent the end.
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