Anonymous senior Liberals and the media who love them flock to Sudbury

With the Liberal Party holding its national caucus meetings in Sudbury this week, prepare for a flood of predictable media coverage in the coming days.

First, we’ll read columns where the pundits, after saying how it’s great Michael Ignatieff has finally come out of hiding (in plain sight) this summer, lament the lack of substantive policy debate and the unending focus on election speculation.

Then, rather than writing about policy the media will ask every Liberal they can find in the nickel city if there should be an election this fall. Ignatieff will say Canadians don’t want an election and we want to make this parliament work, but the Conservatives need to work with us here. This will result in “Ignatieff threatens election” headlines, and the pundits will attack him for being out of touch with Canadians who don’t want an election.

Next, spooked by the headlines, anonymous nervous nelly Liberals will kvetch to the media, and Ignatieff will re-iterate that Canadians don’t want an election and we want to make this parliament work, but the Conservatives need to work with us here. This will result in “Ignatieff backs off election threat” headlines, and pundits will attack him for reversing himself and for his weakness in not forcing an election.

Remember, you read it here first.

But kidding on the square aside, this is going to be a challenging week for the Liberals when it comes to plotting strategy for the fall session. It’s important that we come out of the week with a game-plan for the fall, a strategy for communicating it, and everyone on board singing from the same hymn book.

You can make good arguments for bringing down the government this fall (it’s my favoured option) and there are reasonable arguments to be made for waiting. But as important, in my view, as which way we decide to go is how we decide to get there. We need to get out of this cycle of brinkmanship, of perceived bluster followed by perceived back-down.

Our strategy over the past eight months hasn’t necessarily been wrong – we’ve avoided the election Canadians don’t want and made an effort at working with the government. We've also re-energized the party, filled the coffers, developed a platform, and done a lot of important organizational work.

But we’ve lost the perception battle. We’ve let our decision to do what Canadians wanted their politicians to do be shaped as weakness. In politics it’s not enough to do right, frankly – you need to be seen to do right.

So, as Liberals senior and junior, anonymous and otherwise, gather in Sudbury I hope they’ll give some thought to how we can break the cycle.

And stay away from Jane Taber while they’re at it.

Recommend this Post on Progressive Bloggers