Thursday, June 14, 2012

A good decision for Bob Rae and for the Liberal Party

I was out and about all day yesterday so I haven’t had a chance to weigh-in yet on Bob Rae’s announcement that he won’t seek the permanent leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada. There’s not too much to say that hasn’t been said already, and I largely agree with my blogging colleagues Far and Wide and Calgary Grit. I’ll just add a few brief thoughts of my own.


When I learned of the news on Twitter, I re-tweeted it and used the word courageous, which caused a number of people to question what is particularly courageous about either keeping a promise, or deciding not to do something. Well, in politics, and frankly in life, both of those things aren’t always easy.

Yesterday’s decision amounted to Rae putting an end to a life-long ambition, despite what had to be tremendous pressure from his supporters and others to put his hat in the ring. I think Rae made the best decision for the party, and I give him much credit for that. I recognize his many supporters will be deeply disappointed, and I sympathize with them and respect their view as well. Yesterday was a difficult day for many.

No one but Rae knows the true reasons for his decision not to run, which apparently was made only very recently. Speculation though, at this point, ispointless. I think we’re all ready to move forward. Now we’ll have a leadership race with a wide-open field (well, depending on Justin Trudeau’s final final decision) and a chance for generational change (more on that in my next post), and while that race is underway we can all rest assured that we’ll be in good hands in Parliament with Rae continuing to serve as interim leader.

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1 comment:

Vancouverois said...

I don't think Rae deserves credit for deciding not to run.

I think he deserves condemnation for considering it in the first place when he had clearly promised not to. Now he doesn't look principled; he looks like he wanted to break his promise, but figured he couldn't get away with it.