“I stand between you and your dinner,” Michael Ignatieff told a crowd gathered for lunch, which is sort of like dinner, at the Toronto Hilton. “And you’re going to be a little hungrier by the time I get through.”
Ah. This was the Liberal leader explaining the effect of his own presence. It’s the same Michael Ignatieff who likes to punctuate his remarks with asides like, “You know, I’m a pragmatic fellow.” He is an illuminated manuscript come to life, or at least partway. He began with this warning about the still-distant meal, whichever one it might be, because he planned to give us a “more substantive” speech than the audience might be used to.
The Liberal leader is having a substantive autumn. Several days before this he delivered a speech his factotums advertised as being about “Canada in the world: where we’ve been, where we are and where we’re going.” Today his theme was the economy: “What Canada’s been through, the challenges we’re facing, and where we should be going.” You know, he’s a weighty fellow.
The challenge for Ignatieff since he moved to Toronto from Massachussetts in 2004 has been how to position himself. Is he regular folks? When I interviewed him in 2006 he was busy droppin’ his g’s from every gerund and ever-lovin’ participle. He has since decided that won’t work. Small mercies. Now he takes the long view, thinks the big thought, interposes himself between lunch crowds and their dinner with only the weight of his cogitation to hold back the tide.
Somewhere in the office of the leader of the Opposition, I feel sure, there is a DVD of season three of The West Wing. Toby Ziegler’s chess match with president Bartlett has received repeated viewings. Ziegler tells his boss how to win against a populist challenger. “You’re not ‘just folks,’ ” he says. “You’re not plain-spoken. Do not, do not, do not act like it.”
Bartlett protests: “I don’t wanna be killed.”
Ziegler: “Then make this election about smart, and not. Make it about engaged, and not. Qualified, and not. Make it about heavyweight. You’re a heavyweight. And you’ve been holding me up for too many rounds.” And Ziegler knocks down his own beleaguered king, because this guy Bartlett, he cannot be beaten at chess.
God, I love that scene.
Anyway, here was Ignatieff on the economy. He was here to be substantive. But only up to a point: those Conservatives have been fudging the numbers. When he gets elected Ignatieff will “open the books” and figure out what the budget balance really is. Only then will he come up with a financial plan. “We won’t make decisions without numbers we can trust.”
The decisions he makes, after we elect him, will form “a balanced plan,” winding down stimulus spending neither too quickly nor too slowly. “We will balance the books without making the most vulnerable pay the price,” he said. But even then, “expenditure control alone can’t dig us out of the mess Mr. Harper has left us with.”
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