The Stranger Within

Let us step away for a moment from the ear-splitting racket of the political racetrack, the huffing and puffing, the gyrating polls, the editorial pontifications and advertising positive or negative. Let us concede victory to Michael Ignatieff in the next election or let him concede defeat to Stephen Harper — it’s of little matter to our purpose.

Let us acknowledge that Ignatieff is a writer of international renown, a chum of the high and mighty, a man of many virtues and talents, fluently bilingual, decent, fair minded, polite to old ladies, and respectful of war vets, a model of the person we should hope to see in our public life and as our representative on the world stage.

Let us grant that Michael Ignatieff is more intelligent than we, better educated, better read, better travelled, better connected, better looking, an altogether superior fellow. Let us posit that he entered this very tough game in his advanced years out of an old-fashioned sense of duty to his nation. Let us suppose, for the sake of argument, that he would make a better prime minister than Stephen Harper, a low bar indeed.

Okay, so now that we’ve got all that out of the way, let’s find a quiet corner where we might sit and ask ourselves why we haven’t been bowled over, swept away, or even had our socks knocked off. To paraphrase Kurt Weill, is it him or is it us?

The backstory begins with a creation myth, an original sin, an immaculate misconception. In January 2005, three kingmakers traversed afar, following yonder star from Toronto to Boston in search of a messiah, he who would lead them out of the political wilderness and into the Prime Minister’s Office.

They were bright, charming, engaged Liberals, and their flattering words showed them to be, in Ignatieff’s eyes at least, discerning judges of character. Like him, they were impressive on paper, not party elders but not Young Turks either.

Alf Apps: senior partner at the law firm of Fasken Martineau, former CEO of the Lehndorff Group and Newstar Technologies, specialist in corporate mergers and acquisitions, chief Ontario organizer for John Turner’s leadership campaign in 1984. He had first spoken to Ignatieff by phone, out of the blue, in October.

Dan Brock: partner in Fasken Martineau’s government relations and ethics practice group, former CBC reporter, former policy adviser to Finance Minister John Manley, hailed as one of Canada’s top 100 lobbyists. He had arranged for Ignatieff to meet seven active Liberals at a secret three-hour meeting in Toronto in December.

Ian Davey: television producer, erstwhile Manley supporter, son of Keith the Rainmaker, the ad salesman who had served as a strategic wizard to Lester Pearson and Pierre Trudeau. One day, Ian was conjuring up future prime ministers of Canada when he landed on Ignatieff and yelled, “Eureka!”

To mix my biblical metaphors, Apps, Brock, and Davey led Michael up an exceeding high mountain and showed him the kingdom to the north and said unto him, “All this power and glory will we give thee,” or words to that effect, “if thou wilt worship us.”

It wasn’t expressed quite so baldly, of course, but the temptation they dangled over their long dinner at the Charles Hotel went something like this: Ignatieff would deliver a barnburner speech at the Liberal convention in March, move back to Canada by the fall, secure a perch at the University of Toronto, write a book, make a TV documentary, find a riding, knock on doors, and get elected. Though a rookie MP, he would ascend swiftly into the cabinet to sit at the right hand of Paul Martin, learn the ropes of Parliament and government for a couple of years, run for the leadership when Martin retired, win, and become prime minister of Canada.

By happenstance, they caught Ignatieff at a moment when he was open to their enticement. He was approaching sixty years of age. He was in the habit of reinventing himself every decade or so. He was feeling a strong nostalgic pull to return to his native land after almost thirty years abroad. And being a renowned public intellectual at Harvard wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, especially after he blotted his copybook at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy by supporting George W. Bush’s disastrous invasion of Iraq.

What better way to cap an illustrious life of thought and letters than to become un homme engagé, an actor on the stage, a servant of the people, a prime minister? What more appropriate destiny for the grandson of Count Pavel Ignatiev, minister of education to Czar Nicholas II, and the scion of a prominent clan of British imperialists, Upper Canadian academics, and distinguished diplomats? Hadn’t young Michael proclaimed it his intention as a lad on the playing fields of Upper Canada College?

By the end of the meal, according to one participant, the question wasn’t “why?” but “how?”

It wasn’t unlike the urban legend, often attributed to Margaret Atwood, of the brain surgeon who tells her at a dinner party that he’s thinking of writing a novel after he retires. “Oh, that’s a coincidence,” she is supposed to have said. “I’m thinking of becoming a brain surgeon.”