A Harris/Decima poll back at the beginning of May showed that most Canadians thought Stéphane Dion was “weak, uninspiring and unintelligible.” Not exactly a winning combination of attributes for a man aspiring to become the next leader of the country. The bright side, if one can call it that, for Liberals in any case, was that for all of those apparent flaws, people generally found him more “likable” than Stephen Harper. Forty-seven per cent said there was something or other about Dion they didn’t like, compared to 55 per cent who said the same thing about Harper.
That generally lukewarm assessment came to mind when reading Michael Coren’s somewhat conflicted opinion of Dion in this morning’s National Post based on a recent appearance the Liberal leader made on his TV program. By way of damning him with faint praise, Dion is “a profoundly decent man who is a perhaps the most honest leader of his party in living memory,” according to Coren. At the same time however, Dion lacks the required “steel and guile” to be PM. He’s “naïve” and “vulnerable to critique” Coren says — callowness, in his opinion, that he claims is the “product of inexperience.” Apparently, it’s simply beyond belief to someone a profoundly cynical as Coren that a politician might actually be ingenuous rather than, as he seems not only to expect, but to want: a steely, tough-talking, obfuscating liar.
Speaking of which, I wonder when Mr. Harper will be appearing on the program. Perhaps if he does, then we can find more out about his God. Presumably, it’s one that conforms more closely to Coren’s template “of strength, love, judgment and mercy who is the eternal alpha and the omega” rather than the “postmodern godhead of secular niceness” that Dion conjured up in a hapless attempt to make his message more appealing, or perhaps just more comprehensible to the faithful viewers of Coren’s show.
