Political Thoughts

Out of all the candidates for Liberal leader going into last weekend, I thought (like many others) that it was between Michael Ignatieff and Bob Rae, neither which I liked very much. I considered Ignatief to be too divorced from Canada and politics by his years at Harvard, and well, I lived through the Bob Rae NDP Ontario government.

So I was more than pleasantly surprised when Stephane Dion won the weekend, slipping from third or fourth to build the momentum and consensus of delagates. Out of all the choices, he was the one I liked the best: strong federalists, concerned about the environment, untouched (AFAIK) by scandal, and he simply seems like a man more interested in good governing than winning an election. Time will tell if this holds true, but I admit the rise of Dion has given me some new hope for our political scene in Ottawa. That he did it as an underdog only endears him to me more.

But the neatest thing of all is how the two current main party leaders illustrate the dual nature of this country: Stephen versus Stephane. That cracks me up.