Chaos at the OLO? It's Iffy.

Posted by Devin Johnston on October 28th, 2009

Things aren't going as planned for Michael Ignatieff. With his party sinking to sub-"Dionian" levels in the polls, the embattled Liberal leader is desperately trying to shake things up to break out of his funk. Ian Davey, former Chief of Staff of the OLO, has been fired. His replacement, Peter Donolo, will become Ignatieff's third Chief of Staff in ten months. It appears that Ignatieff blindsided even his inner-most circle, as word of Davey's replacement was leaked to the public even before Davey or the party's communications director were informed. Today, the Liberals embarrassed themselves by releasing a boilerplate lorem ipsum press release to the Parliament Hill press corps.

So, what's really going on here? The once well-oiled Liberal campaign machine is in disrepair, and the public is starting to take notice. But at the end of the day, I can't really conclude that the Liberals' woes are due to the team Ignatieff has put in place. It's the leader that's the problem.

I think the Wheatsheaf put the point quite succinctly in stating that "Dion left the party long on policy and short on organization and financing. Ignatieff has attemted the reverse -the Liberals are short on policy, but focusing on fundraising and courting 'high quality' people." Indeed, while Dion positioned himself as a principled progressive, there are few people who would accuse him of being a good politician. Even with the NDP playing softball in the last election (they had gone hard after Martin in the 2005-2006 election, but focused on Stephen Harper in 2008), Dion struggled to communicate his message in a way that the average voter could understand. I don't buy the message that Canadians rejected Dion because of his policies; seventy-two percent believed the carbon tax was a positive step, yet only 30% voted for Dion's Liberals. The 2008 Liberal campaign was a failure of politics, not a failure of policy. (Incidentally, even I supported a hybrid carbon tax + cap and trade model at the time.)

Ignatieff doesn't understand why the 2008 campaign faltered and neither do the people who advise him. They firmly believe that the Liberals' problems were caused by (a) being to progressive, and (b) laying down their cards too early, allowing the Conservatives ample time to attack the platform. As a result, Ignatieff has made it a point not only to move his party toward the political right, but also to be evasive of the media and the public on policy issues. What little we know about the Liberal Party's current policy positions is that they support expansion of the tar sands, they won't raise taxes (no word on where funds for new programs will come from), and they won't work with other political parties if a coalition is a pre-condition to co-operation. On top of that, they've recently voted against $1-billion in benefits for 200,000 unemployed long-term workers as well as a motion to set hard targets for greenhouse gas emissions. This strategy isn't working, and I think there are at least three reasons for that.

First, Ignatieff fundamentally doesn't get that Dion's failure to win the 2008 election had little to do with policy and much to do with his awkwardness as a politician. In this sense, Ignatieff is desperately trying to repair a problem that isn't there (or, from a social democratic perspective, he's exacerbating the problem of the Liberals' right-wing policies).

Second, Ignatieff is leaving Canadians very confused about where he stands. Not only is he rejecting policies that the most voters thought were synonymous with the Liberal brand, he's refusing to fill the policy vacuum with new policies. This gives the impression that the Liberals really are a Sienfeld party. Unless the Liberal leader starts to make his positions known, he risks entrenching the nick-name "Iffy" in the national discourse, much as Paul Martin stumbled his way into history as "Mr. Dithers".

Third, Ignatieff has failed to repair the Liberals' communication problems. Even as he surrounds himself with veterans of the Chrétien years, Iggy's political inexperience shows in his staffing choices. Once again, the Wheatsheaf makes some insightful obersvations about the Ignatieff's new Chief of Staff:

One of the problems that was publicized last month, was that Ignatieff is too reliant on his Toronto-centred circle. They did not understand Quebec. If they cannot understand the province four hours away, then I can guarantee that they do not understand the West either. So how does Iggy respond? The Toronto guy is replaced by the Toronto guy.

Paul Wells attributes much of Ignatieff's slump down to inexperience and lack of institutional memory. I think there is something to that criticism, but I think it's only half the story. Ignatieff has made a point to bring in a number of Chrétien-era advisors as a way to get the Liberals back to their peak of popularity. Despite his efforts to surround himself with the best and brightest, the Liberals are still fundamentally unable to convey a coherent narrative to the public. One day they want Parliament to work. The next day, Harper's time is up. The next day, they are back to supporting the government, this time without conditioning that support on anything in particular. It doesn't make any sense to the public, I suspect, because it doesn't even make sense to the Liberals. There is a complete lack of discipline and message control. There are leaks throughout the ship. And the in-fighting that Ignatieff swore was behind them continues to plague the Liberal Party.

The consistent theme throughout all of these problems is that there is a lack of political leadership at the helm. That Michael Ignatieff has been in politics for just three years is showing through in everything he does (and doesn't do).

So how do the Liberals turn this around? The best thing they have going for them right now is the fact that the Conservatives are reluctant to trigger yet another early election (they can manufacture their own defeat on a wedge issue, of course, but right now there is no indication that they will do so in the near future.) By taking his finger off the election trigger (at least for now), Ignatieff is buying himself a little time to get it together. With a little more seasoning, maybe he will be able to transform the Liberal Party into an effective and disciplined campaign machine once again. On the other hand, maybe he won't. I know that this is a difficult pill for Liberals to swallow after everything they've been through since Chrétien, but if Ignatieff can't turn things around by this time next year, it will be time to start looking for a new leader.

Spread the word and fan the winds of change: