Lilley and Kirbie duke it out.  Kirbie 1, Lilley 0.

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Story here.

And anyone involved in politics in Ontario can tell you this story is the tip of the proverbial ice berg. There’s a lot more.

What’s it mean? It means this conservative joke will continue to elect progressives in and around the GTA indefinitely. He’s the best thing that has happened to his opponents in years. I mean, kicked out of a pro-military event: for conservative hacks, that’s tantamount to sending back your Diamond Jubilee medal to Stephen Harper, wrapped in a copy of the Liberal Red Book. It just isn’t done.

A few weeks ago, I posted the photo, below (but deliberately avoided commenting on what his accuser, also pictured, was saying about him). My point: does this guy in any way help his side?

Um, no.

 

UPDATE:  And let’s not forget this week’s other mess: his comments about an ongoing criminal trial.  If the accused’s lawyers don’t end up using Ford’s sub judice comments in an appeal, I’ll be pretty surprised.

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Turns out they sent the wrong one to jail.

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In case you missed them (and the chances are excellent that you did) we can advise that the Liberal party’s leadership debates are now over. Similarly, we can advise that, to all but a small number of partisans, they didn’t matter.

Political debates seldom do.

The media love them, naturally, because they get to assign “winner” and “loser” to the various participants. The participants, meanwhile, loathe debates because there is very little return on their investment of time and resources.

If debates really mattered, for example, Stephen Harper would not now be prime minister. In the debates for the 2011 election that saw Harper rewarded with a majority government, Harper was a somnambulist. He sleepwalked his way through the debates and left behind no “defining moment” for historians to ponder. But no one cared.

That is not to say the Liberal party’s leadership debates were a total waste of time. For committed Liberal partisans — the ones most likely to sign up to vote for the next Grit leader next month — the debates were probably a lot of fun. They were also an opportunity to see the candidates close up and perhaps evaluate how they would perform on the hustings.

But that is not the same thing as saying political debates affect the outcome. Mostly, they don’t. In the Liberal race, Justin Trudeau was favoured to win from the moment he announced his candidacy last October in Montreal. Months later, he’s still favoured to win.

U.S. studies of the effect of the political debates are noteworthy. In one, political scientist James Stimson looked at four decades of U.S. presidential debates, between 1960 and 2000. His conclusion: “There is no case where we can trace a substantial shift to the debates.” A “nudge” maybe, but that is all.

A bigger study, by political scientists Robert Erikson and Christopher Wlezien, looked at every available poll from presidential elections between 1952 and 2008. The pair found that “the best prediction from the debates is the initial verdict before the debates.” That is, the state of the race before the debates will usually be the state of the race after the debates.

And so, too, the Liberal debates. There were five in all, held from coast to coast. Last weekend’s, held in Montreal and covered gavel-to-gavel by Sun News Network, was attended by hundreds. Were any of their minds changed by what they observed?

Perhaps, in a few cases, but not many. Voluminous studies show us voters tune in to political debates — and political advertising — to have their biases and suspicions confirmed. Not to have their minds changed.

Departed political genius Tony Schwartz, who I interviewed for my book Fight The Right, likened all of this to a psychologist’s Rorschach patterns. He said, “(They) do not tell the viewer anything. They surface his feelings, and provide a context for him to express his feelings.”

What, then, do Liberals feel about Trudeau, their leader-to-be? That he is what they feel they need. That he could win.

What Canadians will ultimately think, however, remains elusive. As always, their decision about Trudeau’s fitness will come down to a synthesis of quick clips, gut reactions and shared impressions.

But not debates.

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Two things that drive me nuts about Toronto:

1. The manic focus on transit issues, 24/7, to the total exclusion of all other issues, like poverty, health, crime, environment, etc.
2. The fact that, despite the continual yammering about transit, nothing ever friggin’ gets done about transit.

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…today’s the day to do it.

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Watching Barack Obama’s first trip to Israel was revealing – but probably more for what it said about his hosts than it said about him.
 
The U.S. president’s two-day journey to the Holy Land looked forced.  Obama was finally spending a couple days with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who he detests.  Netanyahu, meanwhile, was obliged to appear chummy with Obama – after he had made unprecedented interventions in the U.S. election campaign, and all but openly endorsed the Republican’s Mitt Romney.
 
The state visit had the feel of a strained family get-together, one that neither side particularly wanted, but which both sides felt compelled to do.
 
Being all about symbolism, then, Obama’s trek was rich in optics.  There were the obligatory dark mutterings about Iran’s nuclear program, and the requisite visits to Yad Vashem and Bethlehem.  There were also treks to the grave of Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism, and a look at the Dead Sea Scrolls.  But little else.
 
Even when standing beside Israeli President Shimon Peres at an event on Wednesday in Jerusalem – a legendary practitioner of statecraft, whose progressive roots should have put Obama at ease – the U.S. president looked like he was waiting for a bus that was late.  On that occasion, and throughout Obama’s Israeli jaunt, he appeared decidedly wary.  His smiles, affected.
 
Kremlinology is an inexact science, and nowhere more so than in the Middle East.  But there can be no doubt that progressives like Obama feel frustrated by leaders like Netanyahu, or the leaders of the North American Jewish Diaspora.  Jewish leadership, which has traditionally (and shrewdly) cultivated support on all sides of the ideological spectrum, has lately pursued a self-defeating political strategy.
 
They have rashly thrown their lot in with conservative causes, evangelical Christians, and far-right conservative nutbars.  Alienating, in the process, the likes of Obama – and progressives in both Canada and the United States.
 
Historically, Canada’s Jewish community’s lobby efforts were always smart.  The Canadian Jewish Congress on the centre-left, the B’nai Brith on the centre-right, and the Canada Israel Committee (CIC) handling “international” issues.  Then, in 2011, these organizations were effectively destroyed to create something called the Council for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA).  CIJA then promptly transformed itself into a propaganda arm of the Conservative Party of Canada.
 
Full disclosure: I was proudly on the board of the CIC for a while, but became incensed when I learned that far-right Muslim-haters were being feted in Israel, and travelling there with CIC leadership.  My experience was not unique.  Many progressives have watched, in despair, as Jewish leaders have moved ever farther to the right.
 
There are myriad reasons why they should not do so.  The Christian right seeks to create Christian nations, and see the conversion of Jews as a scriptural pre-condition for the Messiah’s return.  Jews have always been at the forefront of trade unionism, as well as the women’s and civil rights movements.
 
Finally, as American Jewish sociographer Milton Himmelfarb once memorably said, “Jews earn like Episcopalians and vote like Puerto Ricans.” That is as true in the United States as it is in Canada (except Episcopalians are called Anglicans up here). In the US, three out of every four Jews vote Democratic.

In Canada, it has been even more. The combined Jewish left-wing vote – that is, Jewish votes going Liberal or NDP – has been at about 85 per cent in past years.  Why would Jewish leaders turn their backs on a political formula that has been a winner?
 
Warily surveying his hosts this past week, Barack Obama should be forgiven for wondering the same thing.  In an era where most North Americans align themselves with Obama’s progressive politics, Jewish leaders have been running, full-bore, in the opposite direction.
 
Like we say: Obama’s visit to Israel was revealing.  And, for those of us who love Israel, what it revealed was anything but comforting.
 

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Daughter has now been accepted to King’s College, Trent, Brock and Lakehead. With potentially more to come.

Mixed in with the paternal pride, of course, is the realization that your kid is way smarter than you.

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From a little vid we did in 2009. And it stands up, still.

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