Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff smiles after a year-end interview at Stornoway on Thursday, Dec. 17, 2009.
Reading the year-end punditry from the Silver-Powers foreign office here in beautiful Malta, it is hard to miss the pile-on against Michael Ignatieff.
Loser. Screw-up. Step aside. Merge with the NDP to save the Liberal furniture. Plan your succession. See if Starbucks still offers stock options to baristas. All of this, and worse, forms the analysis of what faces the Liberal Leader heading into 2010.
And yet.
I make my living in the energy business. One of my theories on energy is if you had spent the last 40 years betting against the "conventional wisdom" of where natural gas prices were heading - "cheap gas is done" or "there is a mass oversupply of gas and prices are staying low for the next decade" - if you always bet against that conventional wisdom and the experts, you probably would have done pretty well over the last four decades.
Conventional wisdom is wrong more than it's right when it comes to gas pricing, or at least that's my theory and historical data does a decent job backing me up.
I believe Paul Wells said something similar once about Canadian politics. Without the direct citation, I believe his maxim went "if everyone in Ottawa believes something to be true, bet the opposite."
So as we enter 2010, Michael Ignatieff is a dead man walking. He has no chance. He should step aside. Actually, he may be stepping aside any minute now.
Right.
I haven't read a single non-partisan pundit who has predicted anything for Ignatieff that differs from the "he's done" prediction for 2010 (and if there have been any, I apologize and blame the poor clip-service here in Malta).
It's all harsh stuff.
So if everyone believes it to be true, isn't that, if I'm being consistent, in and of itself a reason to explore the alternative?
Let me start the ball rolling; being underestimated in politics is the greatest gift your opponent can give you.
The fact that Michael Ignatieff enters 2010 as a political fait accompli according to his opponents and pundits, isn't that a gift? Proof one: Jean Chrétien. Proof two: Stephen Harper.
Falling into even deeper partisan reasoning, Michael Ignatieff has no ideas? What happens when he starts rolling out some smart thoughts that speak to a broad coalition of Canadians? I guess the game could change.
He's just visiting? What about when he shows up in Thunder Bay in mid-February? And then the 'Peg at minus 40. And then the Gaspé. And then. No visitor would ever do this. Ever.
In other words, what happens if six months from now all the pundits are writing that the same Michael Ignatieff is connecting with a broad coalition of Canadians based on a specific set of well-thought-through ideas while working harder than any other politician in Canada? Might that put an end to Ignatieff's future making cappuccinos?
My point is not to minimize the Liberal Party's challenges entering 2010. They're big and real.
I just think the certainty with which certain pundits are painting the way the new year will unfold for Ignatieff may bite some of our national experts in their collective butts.
The alternative is 2010 will unfold exactly as we all think it will sitting here at the start of January.
Want to bet on that?
(Photo: The Liberal Leader smiles after a year-end interview at Stornoway last month. Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press)