You’ve got to wonder …
You’ve got to wonder …
September 24, 2009 by timkanereporting
You’ve got to wonder …
The Liberals are on a roll. They had a good week. The TV ads aside, the Liberal leader’s live performances were a giant leap forward from some earlier outings and his disappearing act this summer. Now Ignatieff is out there and presenting himself like a real contender. The Liberals have finally come to understand that the Opposition opposes and the third party disposes in a minority government. The Liberals are now opposing and they are getting better at explaining themselves.
Mr. Ignatieff’s speech to the Toronto Board of Trade on Monday was a strong performance. He began that speech by speaking directly about the Conservative attack ads: ”I was watching a game on television the other night, and in the break I caught one of those Conservative attack ads, saying that I was only in it for myself and that I was going to create this scary coalition with the ‘socialists’ and the ‘separatists’.” Well, by the end of last week, those ‘socialists’ and ‘separatists’ were propping up Stephen Harper.”
He ended that intro by saying, “a week is a long time in politics.” No kidding.
Last week the Liberals continued to appear weak with the latest iteration of their no-news TV ads. The message in the latest on ‘Green Jobs’ TV spot are at least compatible with the forest setting, which appeared incongruous with the earlier ads on ‘Jobs’ and the Liberal ‘Worldview’. Maybe Ignatieff is finally leading them out of the woods.
But those ads, while still running on networks across the country are, in a sense, old news. The new Liberals are finally starting to act like an opposition party.
Starting with the Toronto Board of Trade speech on Monday and then on Thursday in Burlington where they launched their ‘Non Construction Site of Stephen Harper’ ‘Zero jobs created’ campaign, the Liberals are finally beginning to exercise their role as Official Opposition and at last offering up some tangible alternative policies to the government’s.
The Burlington event was a well orchestrated stand-up news conference with Michael Ignatieff and Gerard Kennedy the party’s infrastructure critic. It was a perfect day, blue skies, a bright yellow field in the background and in the distance the green horizon created by a cluster to trees. Ignatieff’s white shirt and Kennedy’s light blue, popped nicely making picture-perfect television. At least that’s how it appeared on CTV. Over at CBC, it was a very different picture altogether. The blue sky was grey, the yellow field was brown, the green trees pale and the bright faces of the two Liberals were covered in shadows. Why the difference in images? Both had professional camera crews, the latest in satellite technology to transmit the images and sound. Technical screw-up? The camera operator forgot to check for white balance?
Just asking … but you’ve got to wonder. There is too much at stake not to.
