Let's Get Ready to Rumble

No fewer than 16 potential Liberal leaders schmoozed those lonely Alberta Liberals on the weekend. But where was Landslide Annie? Surely in a field that included Paul Zed there was space on the panel, and in the contest, for the former Deputy Prime Minister.

The would-be leaders diagnosed the Party's ills, and what, other than the Martin "Board", caused the electoral defeat.

Finally-a-Liberal -Bob Rae was one of them, and all but declared his intentions the join the race.

The Globe's Campell Clark winnows down the field to the top five candidates: Gerard Kennedy, Bob Rae, Michael Ignatieff, Scott Brison and Stéphane Dion. Calgary Grit gives his on-the-scene take on the gathering.

Ignatieff is generating a lot of interest, but begins the campaign addressing the baggage of his support for the War in Iraq, his convulated comments on the use of torture, and the fact he hasn't really lived in Canada for three decades. He tackles these issues in an (on-the-record) interview with Peter C. Newman where he admits that presenting himself as an American in his writing was wrong:

I shouldn't have used the "we." I'm not and have never been and will never be an American citizen, so I shouldn't have done that. Sometimes you want to increase your influence over your audience by appropriating their voice, but it was a mistake.

Ignatieff is going to have to work harder to win over the pundits. Jeffery Simpson, elder statesman of the punditocracy, slammed Ignatieff in Saturday's Globe saying "Such is the state of the federal Liberal Party that someone who has paid scant dues to it -- and limited ones to Canada for 35 years -- is considered a possible leadership winner...".

Meanwhile, Hugh Winsor tackles the Iraq baggage issue today in the Globe.