The Bruce Report

He’s tall, intelligent, principled and affecting. He’s an internationally renowned scholar of history and public affairs. He is genuinely interested in the condition of his nation. He speaks well, both on the spot and off the cuff. To the camera, he smiles when he must, and scowls when he should. He is, by some standards, the near-perfect candidate.

And yet, Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff, whose approval ratings have rarely broken 30 per cent, is set to make history as one of Canada’s great, political underachievers.

This is partly his fault. His peculiar brand of substance and style is so decorous he sometimes strikes his fellow citizens as bookishly inattentive. He can, occasionally, resemble that respectable uncle who shows up on Christmas Day to deliver a homily on the rights of man just as his nephews and nieces are running out the door to test their new toboggans. He’s not much fun. Then again, who is, these days, on Parliament Hill?

Historically, Canada is not particularly well known for its surplus of political charisma, but the current slate of Ottawa-bound elders would make a convention of particle physicists roaring good company by comparison. (A neutron walked into a bar and asked, “How much for a drink?” The bartender replied, “For you, no charge.” Well, you get the idea).

Still, Canadians have not traditionally punished their politicians for the vice of nebbishy stolidity. In fact, we’ve generally admired this quality. Legions of us despised former U.S. President George W. Bush because he appeared to us the reckless cowboy, dangerously unfamiliar with the responsibilities of his office, and the pivotal role his nation plays in the affairs of man. We adore Barack Obama, from afar, for exactly the opposite reason. Ironically, though, we remain politely disengaged from the political life of our own country.

If leaders like Ignatieff fail to inspire us, it’s largely because the broad concept of Canadian leadership has somehow lost its power to move us in any direction except sideways. We’re no longer enamoured of the good in our public service, but of the good enough. And in even this, “enamoured” may be too strong a word, given our recent ambivalence toward exercising our democratic rights.

According to a report released by Elections Canada last year, only 58.8 per cent of registered voters in this country cast ballots in the 2008 general poll, the lowest turnout in history. A CBC item summarized the findings as follows: “A survey conducted for the agency found that 57 per cent of those who didn’t vote blamed ‘everyday situations’ – such as being on holiday, being too busy, family obligations or work schedules – for their failure to cast ballots. Thirty-six per cent cited negative attitudes toward politics or political parties, including 14 per cent who said they were too apathetic and eight per cent who said they were too cynical to bother voting. The survey also found considerable public interest in making it easier to vote.”

Making it easier to vote? The only thing easier in a peace-loving, affluent society such as ours is falling out of bed. Still, the survey points to the essential paradox of our time: We don’t vote because we don’t trust the system or politicians our actions install; we, therefore, purchase, through our inaction, the very system and politicians we claim to despise.

It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but it does suggest that the real problem with Michael Ignatieff is not his mind or character, his ideas or ambitions, his resonance or dissonance.

It’s the talisman he – and every other elected representative in Ottawa – has become over the past few years: the ugly, disengaged, irrelevant official, mining the bedrock of public discontent for specks of political gold.

And as we made him and all the others in our own image, we have to wonder: Who are Canada’s truly great, political underachievers, after all?

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