{"id":2710,"date":"2010-07-27T09:07:00","date_gmt":"2010-07-27T13:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=2710"},"modified":"2012-06-04T14:35:43","modified_gmt":"2012-06-04T18:35:43","slug":"the-comeback-kid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=2710","title":{"rendered":"The Comeback Kid?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The good people at The Mark<\/a> asked me to pen a short essay on a Canadian historical comeback Michael Ignatieff could learn from. So I took the most recent example, focusing on Stephen Harper circa 2005 – that infamous “Glad as Hell” tour when Harper went coast to coast to try and humanize himself, and ended up a laughing stock. But here’s the take home message<\/a> from that:<\/p>\n

I would argue the real lesson to be learned in Harper\u2019s comeback wasn\u2019t that he rode the wave of scandal to 24 Sussex. It was that he only won after presenting a clear vision that resonated with Canadians. Harper\u2019s \u201call scandal, all the time\u201d campaign in 2004 didn\u2019t work, so in December 2005 he started to campaign with a policy announcement every morning. He had priorities that showed he stood for something: lower taxes, cleaner government, and getting tough on crime. Suddenly, Stephen Harper didn\u2019t look so scary.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You can read the rest of the article, and the mandatory leather vest jokes here<\/a>. Also on The Mark<\/em> are comparisons to Jean Chretien (by Misters Jedras <\/a>and Silver<\/a>), Robert Borden<\/a>, and Pierre Trudeau<\/a>.<\/p>\n

To that list, I’d add one more case study, which I considered writing about – Mike Pearson. Think about it. Before the 1963 election, he’d already lost twice. He certainly wasn’t charismatic. He was an academic who had lived in Europe and the US.<\/p>\n

Yet somehow, he won. And he only won after promising “60 days of decision”.<\/p>\n

I know I’m beating a dead horse here (hey, it could be worse, this could be another<\/em> post about the Census) but I’ll make the point yet again – to win, Ignatieff needs to show Canadians what he stands for.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The good people at The Mark asked me to pen a short essay on a Canadian historical comeback Michael Ignatieff could learn from. So I took the most recent example, focusing on Stephen Harper circa 2005 – that infamous “Glad as Hell” tour when Harper went coast to coast to try and humanize himself, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[983],"tags":[1148,1178,1177,1180,1179,991],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2710"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2710"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2710\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3708,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2710\/revisions\/3708"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}