Realistically though, who are they going to pick? Mélanie Joly? Bill Blair? Chrystia Freeland? François-Philippe Champagne? It’s hard to imagine any of the usual suspects being all that popular. To the extent that any of them are known to the public I think it’s mostly not for good things. After this many years of the PM working to consolidate his power just like Harper did before him nobody else in the party has made much of a name for themselves. Of course the opposition has the same problem which is why they ended up with the current idiot for leader. He may be likely to win, but it’s no thanks to his own strength as a candidate. The NDP increasingly seems to be going the same way, even going so far as to adopt a communications style of relentlessly shallow and insipid pandering just like their big rivals, as if that’s the path to electoral success.
Ah well, Trudeau does still have the advantage in charisma at least. We’ll see if that’s enough to overcome the disadvantage of having been in power for a while. It’s not as if it’s likely that substantive well-informed debate is going to suddenly come back into fashion and be politically relevant.
Very well said. All the parties, federally and in Alberta, have failed to build capacity within their party. They all want to focus on the leader because they all want a superstar who can lead them to victory. Otherwise, political campaigns are slow, hard work. But with only one leader, there’s no succession.
Not that it’s the biggest or most urgent problem that we have in politics these days.
Realistically though, who are they going to pick? Mélanie Joly? Bill Blair? Chrystia Freeland? François-Philippe Champagne? It’s hard to imagine any of the usual suspects being all that popular. To the extent that any of them are known to the public I think it’s mostly not for good things. After this many years of the PM working to consolidate his power just like Harper did before him nobody else in the party has made much of a name for themselves. Of course the opposition has the same problem which is why they ended up with the current idiot for leader. He may be likely to win, but it’s no thanks to his own strength as a candidate. The NDP increasingly seems to be going the same way, even going so far as to adopt a communications style of relentlessly shallow and insipid pandering just like their big rivals, as if that’s the path to electoral success.
Ah well, Trudeau does still have the advantage in charisma at least. We’ll see if that’s enough to overcome the disadvantage of having been in power for a while. It’s not as if it’s likely that substantive well-informed debate is going to suddenly come back into fashion and be politically relevant.
Very well said. All the parties, federally and in Alberta, have failed to build capacity within their party. They all want to focus on the leader because they all want a superstar who can lead them to victory. Otherwise, political campaigns are slow, hard work. But with only one leader, there’s no succession.
Not that it’s the biggest or most urgent problem that we have in politics these days.