Angry in the Great White North

Liberal Party leader Stephane Dion drives for consensus, or so we're told:

Student Taralee Duffield asked [Bob Rae] why he thinks Dion is a better leader than Harper.

Rae said Dion "plays well with others" while Harper is too controlling to be a team player.

What nonsense.  People who know Stephane Dion describe a very different man:

"On issues that are important to him, he's very arrogant and doctrinaire," says Guy Laforest, who has known Dion for years, from when they co-edited the Canadian Journal of Political Science, to when they'd spar with each other on Radio-Canada's Le Point. "He doesn't want to be 57-per-cent right. He wants to be 100-per-cent right. And that in a way is what destroyed our relationship."

Dion is a man who cannot compromise on his principles, even – yes – if it means losing friends, agrees Denis Saint-Martin, a friend and former graduate student of Dion when the latter taught at the University of Montreal. "Principle is more important than anything."

So Stephane Dion is tough?  Knows how to come out on top in a fight?

Saint-Martin, when asked whether Dion has street smarts, laughs hysterically.

So how do we reconcile this obstinate image with this promise to seek a consensus with economic advisors?

During the French televised debate Wednesday, Dion announced a Liberal government would convene financial regulators, top economists and premiers within 30 days of an election victory to assess the national economy and chart a path forward.

If I might hazard a guess, I think Stephane Dion shows that bull-headedness on those issues he cares about.  For things that don't interest him, he's just as happy to delegate.  That looks like he plays well with others, but really, it's just laziness.  No, impatience.  Just as he is impatient with people who disagree with him on those issues he cares about, he is just as impatient with those people who bother him about those issues he doesn't care about.  We saw that when Stephane Dion handed the question of what to do with candidate Lesley Hughes, who was accused of promoting 9/11 conspiracy theories that were anti-Semitic, over to an organization that was not part of the Liberal Party itself:

Earlier, Dion fended off questions about Hughes, saying the Canadian Jewish Congress was investigating to determine whether in fact the blog post should be construed as anti-Semitic.

A real leader deals with all the issues that cross his desk.  Of course, some issues fall into a leader's comfort zone, and some don't.  But with Stephane Dion, it seems clear which issues are which.  Those issues on which he is well versed (or more accurately, those issues which he thinks he knows a lot about) are the ones he comes to a decision on, and on which he refuses to budge.  Everything else is negotiable, or more accurately, he's happy to have other people decide what to do about them.

One more example.  When it comes to what items in the Liberal platform would be implemented first, Stephane Dion refuses to budge on the carbon tax.  He's convinced that the carbon tax is the right thing to do, so he won't hear of a delay.  Child care?  Drug plans?  Whatever.  Let someone else worry about those things, as long as he gets his carbon tax:

Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion says the global economic crisis could slow implementation of his party's promises if he's elected prime minister on Tuesday.

In an interview with Global TV, he said that the downturn in the economy could force him to slow down the “pace of investment we wanted to make in the first two years.”

He was careful to say, and he repeated this to reporters later in a scrum, that the Green Shift plan would not be affected.

Rather, he would look at slowing down his commitments on child care, a catastrophic drug program and getting more doctors.

“If we don't have the room to act the first and second year, we'll do more the third and fourth year,” he said.

Most Infexible: The more I hear about Stephane Dion, the more I realize that Stephane Dion has no business leading a political party, much less a country:

If you want to meet the most inflexible head of a major political party, Mr. Dion takes it in a cakewalk. He's had a relatively strong week to be sure, but has never been much inclined to make the kind of mid-course corrections required in uncharted waters. He is a priest not a proselytizer, better at righteousness than salesmanship. The Green Shift has been an electoral disaster not because a carbon tax/income tax swap is a bad idea, but because his proposal is ill-timed, ill-considered (why mix an anti-poverty initiative into a tax on greenhouse gas emissions?) and ill-presented. You cannot be a leader without creating followers and Mr. Dion has failed to attract followers to his signature policy.

The sooner Stephane Dion leaves the political scene, the better.