Jack Layton took the high road and expressed disappointment at the Liberal-Green arrangement not to duke it out in the party leaders’ playgrounds, but one sensed in his protest simple exasperation at being left out in the cold. Meanwhile, Duceppe appears denuded, stripped of any genuine federal foil and forced to accept Quebec’s sovereignty – association by increment, for which he will get little or no credit.

And the commons, the public square? There, the citizens are backing away, tired of faux battles. The people are not interested in a horse race any more than they are attracted to horse trading; they are interested in a genuine fighting stance. On two fronts – the environment and Afghanistan, at home and far away – Dion has a chance to carve out some territory of his own. A green agenda rooted in using the lever­aging power of the federal surplus to support a post – fossil fuel economy, combined with environmental taxes (as disincentives for carrying on with business as usual), would represent a Great Society program. This is Dion’s call from above, and he cannot be shy about it. He must say: “I don’t care if I get arrested for chaining myself to a tree or for creating a roadblock at the gateway to Alberta’s tar sands. I don’t care what you think, there is a clear and present danger and I’m going to save the environment from the bad guys.”

Harper’s fighting stance is offshore – against the Chinese (sort of) and against the Taliban in Afghanistan. But if more body bags come home from that torrid battlefield, expect Defence Minister Gordon O’Connor to be sacrificed (see former Environment Minister Rona Ambrose), and for there to be a sudden change of heart and dir­ection. For the time being, Harper will “support our troops,” but if he has a call from above it is nowhere in evidence. Vis-à-vis Afghanistan, Dion needs a preemptive strike, and it could come with the clear statement: “Actually, fighting terrorism in Kandahar and Helmand provinces is not in our national interest, a diplomatic offensive is.” Fighting stance and call from above? We shall see.

Lessening the chance that either will emerge is the fact that our political leaders come neither from humble beginnings nor high social station. They are middle class, profoundly so, and middle-of-the-road sensibilities tend to stay rooted there. Rags to riches stor­ies resonate, and Bill Clinton, Jean Chrétien, and Brian Mulroney used their working-class narratives to build dreams in the body politic. Just as over­coming obstacles can make leaders populist, so can descending from high station into the muck of public service. Giving up lofty cocktail parties for the grind of stump speeches on the Prairies, the tedium of constitu­ency barbecues, the rank odour of bingo halls, is a sacrifice – the soul of public service. When Mulroney ap­peared too cocksure in Gucci loafers and began to strut, he forgot that people appreciate humility, not vanity. Can­adians skewered him (Kim Campbell bearing the brunt of it). A strutter leaves us with nothing to do but watch and become annoyed.

Related to rising above lowly status or descending from high privilege are traits suggestive of an innovative lifestyle, something different from the prosaic toil of shuttling the little ones to hockey, lacrosse, or ballet. Harper shaking hands with his son was a public relations nightmare, but he’s a quick study and today he can be as friendly with his direct issue as he is with Rick Mercer. Dion’s dog Kyoto is cute; now the Liberal leader needs a televised recording of himself accepting policy advice from the old mutt. (The image of the relationship between Mackenzie King and his dog Pat was an endearing and enduring one.) One can imagine Elizabeth May promoting the composting toilet, and that’s fine, but in downtown Vancouver and Halifax people might also like to see her enjoying a fine bottle of claret. Layton’s got good, solid, athletic legs, and bicycle trips allow him to show them off much better than attempts to replicate iconic canoeing pictures. Duceppe is Duceppe, plus ça change.

A touch of foreignness is thought to be a boon, but given the furor over Dion holding onto his French citizenship – so much for globalization and multiculturalism – one cannot be sure. Collectively, our leaders seem, well, less than foreign, unless you count Duceppe, which would be giving in to his separa­tist cant.

One thing is certain: a clear deficiency, even a physical imperfection, is of paramount importance for charismatic leaders, as it is for celebrities. The problem with David Beckham is that he’s a perfect specimen, skilled and beautiful. On the charisma radar, he registers zero, great to look at but vapid. The former pope had charisma, and became more endearing, if odder, with age. The Queen (or at least Helen Mirren) has it in her way, and Chrétien had it without question.

In the political arena, it is not just that people want to be led. They crave a role, a way in, and an imperfection allows them to complete their political representatives. Everyone rallied around the hurt Chrétien when the Conser­vative Party released ads during the 1993 election campaign that attempted to caricature him by poking fun at his facial paralysis. (?That little support fell to Dion after the Conservatives’ “This is unfair” attack ad aired this past winter is due to the clever strategy of using Michael Ignatieff as the antagonist.) Lucien Bouchard garnered enormous sympathy when his leg was amputated. Tru­deau’s marital difficulties reached into homes across the nation. And Clinton’s clumsy adult­erous liaisons made him profoundly human, lost and in need of help.

One of the great difficulties with our current crop of leaders is that they do not appear deficient in any particular way. They are not battle-scarred heroes rising above a certain disadvantage or beating a stigma to the ground. Dion struggles with English, but there is no one with Churchill’s lisp or Moshe Dayan’s eye patch – clear markers of disadvantage. Our leaders strike us as healthy, well-adjusted, and of average height, safe, and strangely immunized to the horrors and accidents that afflict the rest of us. They appear, in short, professional (and without particular flaw) in an arena that ought not be governed by professionals.

The big question for Canadians is, do we want charismatic leaders? Maybe we don’t. Maybe we think that char­isma, like intellectualism, is suspicious. Maybe we want our political represent­atives to be predictable – good stewards of the economy and not much else. Maybe the Ralph Klein/Pierre Trudeau/ Sir John A. Macdonald model is just too wacky. But if it’s stewardship over leadership that is desired, how are Can­adians going to solve the riddles of planetary heat and aboriginal exclusion, our northern vision gap, staying mum about American exceptionalism? These are not normal times, the challenges are exceptional, and solutions must come with a punch, must elevate the masses, must shake us from the torpor of average life. Come on brothers and sisters. Bring it on!