Clear Dion's Agenda

I don't care where he supposed to be or what he's supposed to be doing, Stephane Dion needs to get back to Ottawa by five o'clock this afternoon for a in-studio interview Mike Duffy, just to show those expletive deleteds how gracious he can be. Kill them with kindness, I say.

(For some reason the phrase "into the lion's den" comes to mind.)

Do You Take Cognitive Dissonance In Your Morning Coffee?

I came across these two delightfully contradictory passages while perusing National Newswatch this morning:

- Stéphane Dion doesn't have "a plan." He is "making it up in response to the latest news, or the latest change in the stock market." (So says Stephen Harper.)

- Finance Minister Jim Flaherty is recognizing that Canadian families are suffering “dramatic losses” because of the global financial crisis, and is promising to take measures that will ensure borrowers have good access to credit.

What is Jim Flaherty doing if not making it up in response to the latest news (global finacial crisis) and the latest changes in the stock market (Canadian families are suffering dramatic losses).

Once your neuropathways have returned to optimal functioning, I'd appreciate it if someone could square this circle for me.

Dear Liberal Ad Gurus, Thank You

The other day, I was harshly critical of the "Let's get started" tagline from the Liberal Party's advertising (Turn The Page, Liberal Leadership). Well, I'm very pleased to see that you've changed the slogan to "Canada's Liberals: Always there for you" which is much better, since it answers two key questions voters ask themselves when deciding who to support: Who's more trustworthy? And, who cares more about people like me?

Now, with regard to the third question -- who's the stronger leader? I notice you're still going with the Liberal brand instead of Stephane Dion. Note: You do not combat a weakness by running away from it. At some point you're going to have to challenge the conventional wisdom that Dion is drag on the party's popularity head on. He needs to be present in these ads eventually, perhaps surrounded by the Liberal team, but he must be in some future ads. If not, you are tacitly conceding the argument that Harper is making -- Stephane Dion is not a leader.

I don't care what your polls and focus groups are telling you, Dion's continuing absence from all but one of the ads is starting to convey a negative message of its own about the leader, thereby undermining any good the existing ads are doing.

Hapernomics and Bush

It's The Story Stupid

In his Wednesday column for the Montreal Gazette, L. Ian MacDonald outlines the undisciplined and often contradictory messaging that has become the Liberal campaign.

Not surprisingly, he lays much of blame at the feet of Stephane Dion. On the Green Shift, for example, MacDonald points out that "when he (Dion) was asked by CTV's Bob Fife the other day why he wasn't talking about the central plank in his platform, Dion replied that he never said it was, the media did. [...] But then on Monday, when the Liberals released their platform, the online version of it referred to the Green Shift as "the cornerstone" of their campaign."

There's no doubt that inexplicable inconsistencies such as this are troublesome for those of us who support the Liberal Party. But I would take MacDonald's contention that the Liberal message is muddied and go one step further: There is no message. Or more to the point, there is no story.

The theme of the Conservative's story, on the other hand, is obvious. As the title of a September 7 CPC press release clearly states: "Oct. 14 election a choice between certainty and risk." Every aspect of the Conservative campaign -- policy, Harper's speeches, their ads -- are designed to create a network of associations in the minds of voters wherein Harper is the safe choice and Dion is the risky one.

Let's take those much derided sweater ads as an example. The content, the images and the tone of these ads connote safety, predictability and therefore certainty. While the CPC's attack ads state quite explicitly that the Dion Liberals are a gamble, a risk.

(When Liberals mock the sweater ads, I have to laugh. Many of them, I presume, are probably too young to remember the 1974 election when Kieth Davey had Margaret Trudeau at her husband's side throughout the campaign in order to make Pierre seem all warm and fuzzy. Why? Because, like Harper, Pierre Trudeau was perceived by many voters as cold, mean spirited and arrogant. The makeover worked for Trudeau in 1974 and it's working for Harper now.)

The Liberals have no comparable one-two ad punch because they have no theme, nothing to build a message around and as result no story to tell Canadian voters.

Now why is this the case? There are a couple reasons.

First, Liberal acquiescence which began last Fall and only culminated this Spring. A year ago, Liberals, particularly in the form of Bryon Wilfert, made the media rounds and told Canadians that the official Opposition would not bring down the Harper Government on the Throne Speech because their was no defining issue on which to have a campaign (here and here). This effectively took the environment off the table as the central issue in any future election. If the environment was not a defining issue in September of 2007, why would it be one in September of 2008? How can you go to Canadians and say "we have to enact this complex tax shift to save the planet," when a year earlier you were saying their was no big issue on which to run a campaign? Answer: You can't.

Although few people noticed at the time, the wind went out of the sails of the environment file a year ago. From that point forward it was going to be extremely difficult to build a campaign message in which Dion could credibly run as a champion of the environment. The complexity of the Green Shift, and it's vulnerability to attack, only added to that difficulty.

The second reason why Liberals are unable to communicate a coherent story to voters is that the party seems to be bereft of high quality strategists and advisers.

Lately, it's become fashionable for Liberals to point a disapproving finger at the news media and there is some validity to their protestations. But here's a news flash folks: It's the job of strategists to understand how the media works and use it to their advantage. The Conservatives do it, why can't we?

The truth is, this will be the third consecutive dreadful campaign run by the Liberals. Even the campaigns of the front runners for the Liberal leadership were fatally flawed thanks to their respective advisers. (I am referring here, of coarse, to Michael "let's re-open the Constitution" Ignatieff and Bob "I have no ideas" Rae.)

There are three questions that dominate the thinking of undecided and switch voters (as opposed to party loyalists) when deciding who they should support. 1) Who's the stronger candidate? 2) Who's more trustworthy? And 3) Who cares more about people like me? A winning campaign will create a story that prods voters to answer these questions in favour of their candidate.

Harper and Layton are leading campaigns based on these questions, is Dion? Not if what I've seen thus far is any indication.

Just take a look at the taglines from the ads of the three major parties and you'll see what I'm talking about.

CPC: We're better off with Harper -- Two messages in one: First, Harper's the better leader. And second, Canadians are literally financially "better off with Harper" as prime minister.

NDP: A new kind of strong -- Layton is a strong leader who cares about average Canadians.

Lib: Let's get started -- ... implementing a complicated taxation plan Canadians don't fully understand.

Does the Liberal slogan attempt in any way to answer one of the three questions above? No, it doesn't. It conveys almost nothing to the average voter.

Conspicuous by his absence from this brief analysis (slash rant) is Stephane Dion. This is because I believe the reasons for the failure of this campaign go much deeper than the leader himself.

Based on the last two general elections alone, should we really be surprised by the absence of a coherent story this time around? After all, in politics, as in life, barring a major wake-up call and a concerted effort to change, the best indicator of future behaviour is past behaviour.

If I may be permitted to turn a phrase from a truly excellent story: The fault, fellow Liberals, is not in our media but in ourselves, that we are losing.

PDO May 26, 2006: "Harper Set To Fix Election To A Date Of His Choosing"

The money quote from PDO:

"Harper can manufacture an impasse at a time of his choosing, say he can't govern, call an election and blame it on the opposition."

The not so money quote from the CBC, May 2, 2007:

"Once the bill (C-16) becomes law, Prime Minister Stephen Harper will not be able to call an election on his own."

MSM columnist finally gets around to explaining it, August 18 2008.

Deconstructing Fairy Tales: Barack Obama And The Iraq Resolution

Throughout his bid for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination, Barack Obama has touted his early opposition to war with Iraq as evidence of his superior judgement in comparison to Hillary Clinton's, who voted for the resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq in 2002.

During last Thursday's Democratic presidential debate, Obama put it this way:

[T]he legislation, the authorization had the title, an authorization to use U.S. military force, U.S. military force, in Iraq. I think everybody, the day after that vote was taken, understood this was a vote potentially to go to war.

I think were very clear about that. That's the -- if you look at the headlines.

The reason that this is important, again, is that Senator Clinton, I think, fairly, has claimed that she's got the experience on day one. And part of the argument that I'm making in this campaign is that, it is important to be right on day one.

And that the judgment that I've presented on this issue, and some other issues is relevant to how we're going to make decisions in the future. You know, it's not a function just of looking backwards, it's a function of looking forwards and how are we going to be making a series of decisions in a very dangerous world.

As evidence of his claim that he was "right on day one" about Iraq, Obama frequently points to a speech he delivered on October 26, 2002 in which he said:

I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a US occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al-Qaeda.

I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars.

But there's another portion of the speech that has received little attention from the news media and his opponents for the Democratic nomination, and yet a simple question based on that statement may reveal more about Obama's judgement than his outright opposition to war with Iraq.

After declaring his opposition to "dumb wars" Obama says this:

You want a fight, President Bush? Let’s fight to make sure that the UN inspectors can do their work ...

Fight! Fight how?

How would Barack Obama have created an international consensus and compelled Sadam Hussien to acquiesce, in order to put inspectors back into Iraq without a threat of the use force?

It's important to remember that the United Nations Security Council had been deadlocked throughout the Summer and Fall of that year regarding the return of weapons inspectors to Iraq, and it was not until the Iraq resolution was passed by Congress (October 10, 2002) that the diplomatic logjam was broken and the Security Council passed Resolution 1441 which imposed tough new arms inspections on Iraq (November 8, 2002). Would China, France and Russia have been as willing to compromise had the congressional resolution failed?

And even if the holdouts on the Security Council did magically change their positions without passage of the resolution, would Saddam have allowed the inspectors back into Iraq without the threat of military action hanging over him? To believe that Saddam would have capitulated under such circumstances, as Obama seems to, is the real fairy tale that should be at issue here.

If Obama stands by his statement that he wanted to put weapons inspectors back into Iraq, it seems to me that it's incumbent upon him to explain specifically how he would have accomplished this goal without threatening the use of force.

Colin Powell Echoes Hillary Clinton On The Role Of Presidential Leadership In Achieving Civil Rights For African Americans

Appearing on the Martin Luther King Day edition of ABC's The View, former Secretary State Colin Powell seemed to go out of his way to heap praise on President Lyndon Johnson for his role in promoting and protecting the civil rights of African Americans.

Responding to a question from Joy Behar about the possibility of an African American and a woman being on the same presidential ticket this November, Powell said:

That Civil Rights Act of 1964 signed by President Johnson in July, it was right after I got back from Vietnam and after I'd been tossed out of hamburger stands in Columbus Georgia, and when he signed that I went back to that hamburger stand and I could get my hamburger. So it took a Dr. Martin Luther King to really lead a second civil war for America because the first civil war didn't do it. And then it took legislators like the Congress that we had then. And it took leadership, such as President Johnson, to make it happen. That's how our country works. (Video here.)

Powell's remarks are similar to those that became a source of controversy surrounding Senator Hillary Clinton.

While campaigning in New Hampshire two weeks ago Sen. Clinton said:

Dr. King's dream began to be realized when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, when he was able to get through Congress something that President Kennedy was hopeful to do, the president before had not even tried, but it took a president to get it done. That dream became a reality. The power of that dream became real in people's lives because we had a president who said, "We are going to do it," and actually got it accomplished. (Video here.)

Criticism of Clinton for her comment that "it took a president to get it done" was immediate and widespread throughout the traditional media and the blogosphere. The editorial board of The New York Times opined that "it was hard to escape the distasteful implication that a black man needed the help of a white man to effect change."

The question now is: Will the same pundits, professional or otherwise, attack Powell for his "distasteful implication" that it took the leadership of President Johnson "to make it happen", and if not, why not?

Perhaps it's because Sec. Powell is a media darling who can do no wrong, while Sen. Clinton is a lightning rod for media hyped controversy even where none exists.