Lack of ideas central to Liberal woes (Canada)

Michael Ignatieff recently said in an interview the Liberal Party needs to define the “centre” in Canadian politics.

He was very worried about the centre. He certainly didn’t want Stephen Harper defining the centre.

Since then I’ve seen all kinds of comments about the disappearance of the centre in Canadian politics and ideas on how we might get the centre back.

Perhaps we should put a picture of the centre on milk cartons so Canadians keep an eye out for it.

Apparently it went missing when the Conservatives and the NDP each vacuumed up centrist votes that used to go to the Liberals.

So now the Liberals are mostly gone, the victims of habitat destruction.

I’ve never had this unusual attachment to the centre for the same reason I don’t covet a circumference or admire an angle.

It’s true I often wander off on wild tangents, but I certainly wouldn’t advocate building a political movement around a tangent, though some readers would dispute that.

It’s odd that some people think the centre metaphor that was used to locate the party on a political spectrum should now become its reason for being.

But there are so many problems with this centre idea I hardly know where to begin, so I’ll begin in the centre.

For starters, what is the centre position on, say, anything? What is the centre’s position on federalism or unemployment?

If a centre worshipper is asked to tally one-plus-one, does he respond by saying that it depends on where Canadians stand on that issue? Does he say that it’s the average of the Conservative and NDP answers?

I’m not sure which approach is more ruinous; chasing the political centre around like a kitten chasing a flashlight beam, or hanging all your hopes on a messianic leader.

Some commentators have blamed Conservative ads using Ignatieff’s own words for knocking off the Liberals. Sure they worked, but only because the party’s only asset was their leader.

Conservative and NDP supporters wouldn’t have been so easily dissuaded because they like their parties for their policies and world view as much as for their leaders.

Partly they like their parties because they don’t exclusively and slavishly chase that curiosity called the centre. Ideally, over time, they hope to persuade the public to chase after their respective parties because of their ideas.

In other words, the Conservative ads were supposedly cynical attempts to unfairly characterize Ignatieff, but the ads succeeded because Ignatieff and the Liberals cynically tried to build a party without ideas, because proposing ideas is risky.

We were supposed to be awed by the intelligence of the leader and would vote for him because he wasn’t Stephen Harper. And, oh yes, he believed in the centre.

No, the Liberals didn’t lose because of Tory ads. They lost when they got caught trying to manipulate the public, hoping no one would notice they had nothing beyond a leader.

Liberal apologists should quit whining about ads, weeping over the “centre” and praying for a messiah.

They need to engage their membership and commit to rebuild, with ideas.