Entitled to their entitlements
We can do better. Fine. But how?
Michael Ignatieff doesn't seem to want to talk about ideas, The Globe and Mail's editorialists observe. He just wants to win. Which is fine, politically speaking. But to a lot of Canadians — those who aren't “Toronto sophisticate[s] with ... well-stamped passport[s] and a sense of superiority,” for example — Iggy smacks of the consummate arriviste. Thus, the Globe doesn't think those “we can do better” ads are “the smartest move.” There are tons of things we could do better, of course, but without knowing what Ignatieff thinks they are, they think the ads succeed most in reinforcing the Liberals' already robust sense of entitlement to power.
The Globe's Jeffrey Simpson catches Ignatieff in a lie about the Liberal deficit-slaying of the 1990s — he said they didn't raise taxes, but alas, they did. This is about the only payoff in an otherwise pedestrian rumination on Ignatieff's transformation from a public intellectual into a ploddingly conventional politician. Simpson seems to believe this was inevitable, incidentally, but we don't agree at all. It was well within Ignatieff's power to change the game of politics, but instead he enthusiastically became a student of its worst aspects. Most unfortunate.
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