Leaders - Can't Live With 'Em...

Let's face it, both of Canada's two dominant parties have enormous leadership problems at the moment.

The Conservative leader is a magalomaniac who hoardes all power to his own inner circle. His cabinet appointments are based on obedience and optics, and so we get incompetence that kills Canadians (listeriosis) and puts us all at risk (nuclear safety, pandemic preparation, and a host of other files). He introduces large new policies (such as everything in last week's economic update) without consulting with his caucus or anyone else in the party. His extremist ideology prevents him from taking action on the economic crisis. He is an enormous bully who can't seem to bring himself to cooperate with anyone, within his party or without. If there is anyone left who doesn't realize that he has a secret agenda, they're nuts. He is a terrible prime minister. But as long as he keeps winning, it seems impossible for his party to unseat him.

Then there's the Liberal leader, another man who won't consult with people outside his inner circle, but instead of being a consistent winner, he's a consistent loser. Noone questions his integrity or values, but he can't do anything right. Simple tasks evade him, like standing up in parliament this week and looking calm while uttering a few canned sentences (instead, he threw an enormous hissy fit, was completely incoherent, and looked like a buffoon). He wants to single-handedly negoatiate the coalition, and he makes some pretty big mistakes ("Canada and Quebec"?!) and then as soon as the going gets tough, he backs off, leaving the party hanging out over the cliff. Worse, his shoddy performance is the single thing keeping Canadians from accepting the coalition. Harper's behavior last week was so egregious that there was widespread agreement he had to be taken down, but now the dialog has changed to Harper needing to save Canada from Dion. We forced him to quit, but he won't go away fast enough and is dragging down the whole party.

Both parties are in a real pickle. Based on the effectiveness of PR campaigns, Canadian opinion might sway one way or another, but the objective reality is that neither man should be in charge of anything.

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