The Invention of Michael Ignatieff

I mean no disrespect to Michael Ignatieff, the person, in asserting that Michael Ignatieff, the political phenomenon, is an invention. He is a synthetic creation, a deus ex machina. With the demise of Paul Martin, and the decisions of Frank McKenna, Brian Tobin and others to take a pass on a leadership run, members of the Liberal Party establishment found themselves without a natural candidate. The Liberal Party was in danger of falling into the hands of those the establishment did not fully trust.

Attractive, articulate, only a little long in the tooth, and with a reputation the establishment could relate to---because it was garnered abroad--- Ignatieff, the outsider, was their solution. Best of all, he was reminiscent of Pierre Trudeau, at least on first glance. Soon the suave academic was being described in hushed tones as “the new Trudeau”, a phrase I have heard frequently during my summer travels to various parts of the country.

On closer examination, the conceit that the Liberal establishment has struck gold with a new Trudeau falls to pieces. Pierre Trudeau, like Michael Ignatieff, was recruited by the federal Liberal leadership at a time when the party had been wracked by scandals in Quebec. If the Liberals were to succeed in fighting off the new Quebec nationalism in the era of the Quiet Revolution, they needed new blood. Of the Three Wise Men imported to Ottawa by Lester Pearson, Pierre Trudeau quickly emerged as the star (the others were Jean Marchand and Gerard Pelletier). Not only did he outshine, Union Nationale Premier Daniel Johnson in a live encounter at a federal-provincial first ministers’ conference, he had written powerful, trenchant attacks on the doctrine of the new nationalists. Whatever one thinks about Trudeau’s articulate denunciation of the nationalists---I have my misgivings---the clarity of his thinking made him the ideal point man around whom to construct a defence of federalism at a critical time. In the encounter with Rene Levesque, Pierre Trudeau’s defence of federalism went far beyond a cost-benefit analysis to prove that Quebecers were better off in Canada. Trudeau articulated a vision of a great country that could encompass multiple identities without succumbing to the poison of the exclusive nationalism of any of them. The patriation of the constitution and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms encapsulate that vision.

Trudeau was a Quebecer who could take on the nationalists on their home turf and win the allegiance of a sizeable proportion of francophones in so doing. In the great battles with Levesque, he emerged the victor.

Michael Ignatieff, on the other hand, is a liberal intellectual whose chief claim to fame is that he was swept off his feet in support of George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq. He lent his reputation as a believer in human rights to a muscular crusade in the Muslim world in which the West would defeat the barbarians and save civilization. His pro-imperial musings in books, and in articles in prestigious publications such as the New York Times, won him fame as an oddity. What was a liberal like him doing in the ranks of neo-conservatives? He became notorious in the intellectual company of people like Christopher Hitchens, another liberal who was won over to the invasion of Iraq.

Once again the Liberal Party desperately needs to rebuild in Quebec, to establish legitimacy for itself in the aftermath of Jean Chretien’s reign, when baubles for insiders took the place of the brain power of the Trudeau era. If Michael Ignatieff is the new Trudeau, presumably he is the man to take on the job of reconstructing federalism and winning a new generation of Quebecers to the cause of Canada.

Ignatieff, though, is an Anglophone MP from Toronto. Not famous for his defence of a well reasoned federalism as Trudeau was, he is best known for espousing views that are highly offensive to many, if not most, Quebecers. For more than a century, Quebecers have developed a political culture which is overtly anti-militarist. Nothing appeals less to Quebecers than military crusades in the company of the great Anglo-Saxon powers on the far side of the world. Quebecers expressed their displeasure with such crusades during the South African War, the conscription crises of the first and second World Wars, and in their opposition to conscription during the Cold War. They played an outsize role in keeping Canada out of the wars in Vietnam and Iraq. The last kind of leader who will win a new hearing for federalism in Quebec is an English Canadian who wants to reinforce our ties with the crusaders in Washington and London.

If Ignatieff, when scrutinized, is not the man to renew the ties between Anglophone and Francophone Canada, how well suited would he be to the more mundane task of winning power for the Liberals in the next election?

Here, as well, he’s all wrong for the job. To win the votes to turn out Stephen Harper, the Liberals need to look left not right. They are not going to cut into Stephen Harper’s hold on the right-wing vote in Canada. The Conservative Party is the natural home of those who support the embattled empire of George W. Bush and his failing expeditions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Liberals need a leader who can appeal to social democrats, environmentalists and soft-nationalists in Quebec. The NDP, the Greens and the Bloc would take dead aim at the pro-imperial stance of a Liberal Party led by Ignatieff and they would be very effective.

As we enter the critical autumn months that lead to the Liberal convention in Montreal, the establishment is continuing its effort to convince Liberals that Ignatieff is the man for our time. Clearly, the people who run Maclean’s Magazine and the Globe and Mail would rather see the author of Empire Lite as leader of the Grits than one of the more progressive candidates like Gerard Kennedy, Bob Rae or Stephane Dion. The Maclean’s cover story and the seven page extravaganza in last weekend’s Globe speak for themselves. (I am a huge admirer of Michael Valpy, whose story on Ignatieff was far from being a puff piece. This is a case, however, where the medium was the message. The spread was so huge, and so unbalanced in terms of the prospect of any such similar treatment for the other candidates, that the point was made by the firepower of so many column inches. Who else but a very great man could merit so much?)

The little episode in which Michael Ignatieff told the Toronto Star that he might not run for parliament in the next election if he does not win the leadership did a lot to prick the balloon of the monster coverage in Maclean’s and the Globe. Revealed for us was the real man, not the invention. What we saw was a rather fastidious fellow who might be happier going back to Harvard if he can’t get the top job in our sub Arctic homeland.

To some extent, all political leaders are inventions, creations of their handlers. The Ignatieff case has taken this to the point of absurdity. One almost expects a George Bernard Shaw to conjure up a Professor Higgins who can transform the fussy academic into a man of the people, in a reverse Pygmalion.

It won’t work. The real question is whether the synthetic Ignatieff will be rejected by Liberal delegates, or by Canadians in a general election.