Martin was one of the worst politicians in modern Canadian history.

Martin never had any feel for where the country was, or how things would play out politically. The BMD issue is a good example of the former. An overwhelmingly number of Canadians wanted to see John Kerry beat George Bush. That did not happen and the US election confirmed for many that Canadians were made of stronger moral fiber than their American cousins. The musings of Canwest aside, Canadians wanted nothing to do with “Jesus land” in the wake of Bush’s victory. The Bush administration either did not take into an account political realities in Canada, or did not care to notice. Either way, they pressed Martin to sign on to BMD. In the process they helped turn the whole BMD debate into a referendum on what Canadians thought of the Bush administration. Bush’s actions gave Martin no choice. However, rather than giving the Bush administration a quick and firm no, Martin “dithered”. As a result he was predictably pillared by people on both sides of the debate. Canwest and the Sun media chain pillared him for not joining on and majority of the Canadian people pillared him for being slow in saying no.

A good example of the later is SSM. Martin and crew figured that because SSM was contentious and not a winner with most voters (The population was equally divided on the issue. However, only 60% of Canadians vote and majority of likely voters were opposed. Indeed, as a rule of thumb the older one gets the more likely one is to a) a vote and b) oppose to SSM.) As such, right from the beginning they figured that they had to couch the SSM issue in terms of charter rights and respect for the rule of law rather than explicitly about the dignity of gay Canadians. This showed that party brass fundamentally misunderstood the cultural importance of the issue as well how much damage the issue could cause the Tories. 

SSM has replaced abortion as the new cultural litmus test. It separates old from young, progressive from regressive and to a lesser extent rural from urban. That said unlike abortion it is not likely to remain this way for long. Abortion is still an intellectually contested subject. Homosexuality on the other hand is not and as it is opposition to homosexuality that underpins most of the opposition to gay marriage, the whole movement toward gay marriage has come to seem as historically inevitable as the triumph of the civil rights movement. Opposition to SSM irrespective of the issue of homosexuality is also based on a weak intellectual foundation, albeit not as weak. There is simply no good argument for not going ahead with it. To top it all off, there are but two options within the context of the Canadian legal system, viz., the former status quo or gay marriage. The civil union “comprise” that Stephen Harper speaks of is so much pie in the sky. Civil unions are a provincial matter and not a Federal one. Moreover one of the reasons the issue landed in the Federal court in the first place was because the Provinces had rejected the civil union option. Equally specious is Harper’s contention that abandoning gay marriage would not require invoking the notwithstanding clause.

In sum, the gay marriage issue might not be a winner if viewed in isolation. However, having the Conservatives defend a legally, morally and intellectually bankrupt position certainly helped the Liberals. It also helped that Conservatives appear to be on the wrong side of history. Subsequently, Martin realized it was a winner. However, neither Martin nor the beer and popcorn boys realized just why; they mistakenly believed that Canadians admired them for defending the charter. This hurt the Liberals during last month’s election. Not knowing the truth of the matter, they shifted the debate from the Conservatives conceptually disastrous “defense” of “traditional” marriage to Martin’s rushed proposal to scarp the notwithstanding clause.

Any future Liberal leader must have a good handle on the national pulse and he or must have a sense of how issues will play out. Such leaders are difficult to find. Trudeau was such a leader. He was not only able to grasp many historical trends, he was often able to capture their essence in a turn of a phrase. “The state has no business in the bedrooms of the nation” is a good case in point. By way of contrast, Martin was what marketers call a late adapter. He seemed only able to grasp a historical trend when it had washed over him. All that being said, what will be more difficult still is getting the party to abandon polling for policy. With the temperamentally conservative Martin out of the way, things will be better. Still I sense reluctance on the part of the party brass to recognize that a winning issue is not necessarily a politically popular one. SSM is a good case in point. They also do not seem to grasp how volatile is the cultural landscape is right now. SSM is again a good case in point. Support for same sex marriage skyrocketed in a few short years. Some issues are simply in need of champion. Those how know me, know that I feel that the liberalization of Canada’s marijuana laws could be another such issue. Intellectual robustness accounts for something politically in some cases, but with regard to culturally significantly issues it almost always counts for a good deal.

The next leader has to be a fighter. Martin was not. When under attack, his first inclination was always to turtle. As time wore on, he displayed all signs of suffering from learned helplessness. The best example was the whole David Dingwall affair, but there were others. For over a month the Conservatives made ludicrous allegations against David Dingwall and instead of fighting them, Martin, looking like a deer in headlights, “dithered” and then fired Dingwall. Thanks in no small part to the gross incompetence of the beer and popcorn boys and Martin, Dingwall was convicted in the court of public opinion, even though he was guilty of nothing more than arrogance. Indeed, "Among the audit's findings: The $5,800 allegedly spent on one meal was for a two-day seminar involving 24 mint personnel. The money allegedly spent on chewing gum was covered under the allowable $20/day incidental expenses. There was no evidence of the alleged $13,000 for one day of travel – but two claims for $13, 693.83 for a four-day conference in Phoenix and mint-related meetings in New Brunswick, the UK, Switzerland and Germany." In typical Conservative fashion, Harper dismissed the audit’s findings on the grounds that Dingwall had "made the [expense] rules up himself. And those rules allowed him to claim any kind of expense he wanted." However while “the facts don’t matter” to the Conservatives and to their leader, an independent auditor was of a different opinion. "A separate audit into the process of reviewing the mint president's expenses found that crown corporation "goes well beyond what one could expect to find in most private sector corporations.''

According to the review by Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP -- a firm specializing in corporate law -- the mint has a stricter process for monitoring the spending of its chief executives than most private sector corporations." 

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All that being said, Martin’s actions during Dingwall gate were not entirely unexplainable. The major media organizations ran with Pallister’s allegations as if they were fact and after that the legions of Tory Toadies at Canwest and the Sun media chains carried the “story” for a month; they only fell silent when the price water house report came out. That brings me to yet another point. Canwest is a de facto extension of the Fraser Institute and Sun media a de facto extension of the Conservative party. The Liberals can not expect a fair accounting from either. Indeed, as various media studies have shown these organizations were entirely hostile to Martin and Martin is about as right wing as a Liberal gets. The Liberal party must start making better use of alternative media to get its message out. Blogs and internet forums are two vehicles and independent newspapers and student newspapers are another. The former need information; the latter need connections. The Liberal party also needs to start establishing relationships with the latter for other reasons. Many people working on student newspapers and independent newspapers move into the MSM.

The Liberals will also have to do a much better job of framing the debate. For reasons that defy explanation, Martin allowed Harper to frequently determine the terms of debate. Part of the problem was that Martin used the very terms of reference opposition leaders used. Martin’s use of the terms “democratic deficit” and during the election “fiscal imbalance” are good cases in point. (Liberals need to develop their own catch phrases instead of disastrously using other parties. For example, I suggested in the past that the Liberals give Canadians more vacation and that they refer to gap between what Canadians get in terms of vacation and what Europeans get as the “vacation gap”.) However, it went beyond that. Certain parties are associated with certain policy ideas. The Conservatives have long been the champion of mandatory minimums and a triple E senate. (Both are completely without merit by the way.) It makes little sense for another party, who has traditionally opposed to these ideas, to adopt these policies on short notice. However that is exactly what Martin did during the election. He pledged to do something about the “fiscal imbalance”, said he favored an elected senate and promised mandatory minimums. In the process he gave all the credit the parties associated with these policies and gained nothing in the process.

The last thing that the new Liberal leader will have to do is to purge the social Conservatives from within the Liberal party. Indeed, once the Conservatives and Bloc finish dismantling the spending powers of the Federal government, the ability of the Federal government to establish various social programs will be highly constrained. The Liberals will have no choice, but to develop a platform that is in tune with the new spending realties and as social conservatism is the one aspect of the Conservative platform not liked by most of the MSM and is not well liked by urbanites, the young and the educated, a socially liberal agenda is really the way to go. Furthermore, the party also needs to reestablish itself in Quebec and part of rebuilding process will be committing to policies that appeal to socially liberal Quebec. Start slowly and start with, oh, Tom Wappel. The added benefit of such a purge is that the party will get younger. Something the party badly needs to do.