It was such a terrible shock, yesterday afternoon. A Liberal friend was running in the marathon – and, the night before we had been out with her brother and Jean Chretien in Ottawa, talking about her fierce determination and drive. She crossed the finish line four minutes before the bombs went off.
Here is the face of one of yesterday’s victims – a little boy. God bless him and his family.
OTTAWA — Observations and glimpses from the Liberal Party of Canada’s leadership announcement:
No one, on this day, disagrees.
The best part?
I was at the back, and I looked around, and there were all these young people, and I’d never seen any of them before. And they were so excited about what was happening. It was just so, so great.
Also great: having a beer, afterwards, with the winningest Prime Minister in Canadian history.
He says we’re going to win again, and he would know.
…where, I learn, Ralph Goodale has undergone gender reassignment, and is looking damn good, too. An I always the last person to hear about these things?
OTTAWA — In a convention hall on Sunday, Justin Trudeau will be named leader of the Liberal Party of Canada. He’s been after the job formally for months, and now he’s got it.
What, one might reasonably ask, was he thinking?
It’s not like the post is a coveted prize, after all. Trudeau has inherited a party that is a shadow of its former self. From the Natural Governing Party — at one time, the most successful political machine in western democracy — to what it is now: A rump, in third place, in a distant corner of the House of Commons.
In every election since Jean Chretien left a decade ago, the Liberal party has lost ground. From a majority to minority government in 2004. From minority government to opposition in 2006. From that to the party’s worst showing in 2008. And then, in 2011, the depths, to third place — far behind the NDP and even further from the ruling Conservatives.
Since Chretien left the helm in December 2003, when the party was reigning near 60% approval in the polls, the Liberal party has struggled with everything. Fundraising. Policy. Membership. Caucus. Communications. Election readiness.
On virtually every front, the Liberals can be forgiven for feeling that they are cursed.
The diminution of the Liberal party has taken a decade. It has been the direct result of Stephen Harper’s obsessive desire to destroy the party. It has been the result of bad decisions about strategy, and bad decisions about leadership.
It has been the result of lingering tribal wars between blue Liberals on one side (Messrs. Turner and Martin) and red Liberals on the other (Messrs. Chretien and Trudeau Sr.).
It has been the result of arrogance and complacence, and believing that taxpayers’ money was its own.
All of these factors, and more, have contributed to the Liberal party’s decline over the past decade. It will therefore take a decade to climb back from the edge of the abyss.
No one knows this better than Justin Trudeau, who has said — publicly and privately — that one of his assets is his age. He knows the job that lies ahead will take many years to successfully complete.
The Trudeaumania II media coverage that has swirled around him will start to subside. Trudeau must now turn his attention to the mundane stuff of politics: Getting money, getting new members, getting new ideas and new blood. If he doesn’t, his tenure will end in failure — and, possibly, the death of the Liberal party itself.
It’s not fair to hang all of that on Justin Trudeau, of course.
He is human, and he will make mistakes. But — his faults and foibles notwithstanding — there is clearly something about the man that appeals to Canadians.
An extraordinary Nanos poll published Friday, for instance, found 30% of Canadians found Trudeau “the most inspiring leader,” a figure that was more than Stephen Harper and Thomas Mulcair’s scores put together. And he wasn’t even leader yet.
The Conservative Party’s infantile attacks on minutiae — like Trudeau’s substitution of “decibel” for “decimal” in a Global TV interview — reveal the extent of their concern.
When the only ammunition the Conservatives have is a verbal slip-up — and when your own party’s leader referred to Trudeau as “minister” twice in the House of Commons! — your party needs to go back to the drawing board.
The Conservatives will, of course, and they will unleash a negative barrage against Trudeau that will exceed whatever Paul Martin, Stephane Dion and Michael Ignatieff were forced to endure.
So will the New Democrats, who see Trudeau as an even greater threat.
Trudeau, meanwhile, will soldier on because he must.
He wanted the job, and now he’s got it.
Good luck to him.
Photo posted by Jane Taber:
(And I just wanted to say something: my friend Gerald Butts has been running Justin Trudeau’s campaign. Usually, people involved in campaigns go out of their way not to offend the news media.
In the past few days, however, Gerald – who is a dad, and a proud Nova Scotian – has been as upset about the Parsons case as I have been. He’s taken to social media to righteously criticize prominent media commentators – like Chris Selley – for dismissing what happened to Rehtaeh as a case of “bullying,” and not what it is. Which is rape.
I don’t have anything profound to say about that. Other than the fact that, Gerald is the type of person we need more of in our politics, not less.)
Anonymous dissects the National Post “moron” who is indifferent to what happened to Rehtaeh:
This gets worse: he says we should ignore the photo being spread around the school because it probably happens all time. We can’t expect the legal system to punish everyone that’s passing around photos of women being raped, now can we? It’s ‘fairly routine adolescent behaviour.’
Chris Selley’s article epitomizes the rape culture. Selley is equating a traumatic rape with a picture of a girl’s breast she took in a mirror and sent to her boyfriend.”
Quote:
Harper, here, gets it. It is disgusting that Chris Selley, Parker Donham, Dan Gardner and their ilk have seemingly dismissed Rehtaeh’s case as one of just “bullying” – when, in fact, it’s a case of rape. Their implied indifference to her fate – and their preoccupation with defending a provincial “justice” system that utterly failed her and her family – sickens.
The response of the Dexter regime, the RCMP, the school board, the school, and the Crown, has also been sickening. Their response, until late Tuesday, had been a collective shrug. They should all be fired; ultimately, I suspect they all will be over this case.
I wrote what I did because, in the Steubenville outrage, social media played a key role in forcing the authorities to bring those young rapists to justice. If the authorities in Nova Scotia don’t care what happened to the victim of a gang rape, as in Steubenville, then we need to use people power to change their minds.
Online activism is effective because it harnesses the power of the people, and helps to address injustice. What happened to Rehteah was a terrible injustice. And it’s incumbent on all of us – every single one of us – to raise our voices in protest, and work to bring wrongdoers to justice. If Anonymous (like Crimestoppers and the like) can help achieve that, so be it.
Mewling about ‘vigilantism’ is what the powerful frequently do when they are caught making a decision that is unjust. To them, I continue to say: too bad. People wouldn’t be upset if the Nova Scotia legal authorities had made the right decisions from the start.
It’s the Internet age. People aren’t content to just let things lie anymore. If a terrible wrong is done – and a terrible wrong has been done to Rehtaeh Parsons and her family – the people will use the Internet to speak up.
That isn’t vigilantism – that’s democracy.
UPDATE: Now read this. Oh, and look: the authorities made arrests.
UPDATED AGAIN: Anonymous issues another report, here. If you thought they sound more sensible and restrained than their puny band of detractors, you’d be right.
