Rae vs. Garneau: The Thrilla on the Hilla

Never has so much ink been spilled over the temporary leader of a third-place party.

The Liberal party is set to anoint its interim leader tomorrow with the hope that whoever it is – either Bob Rae or Marc Garneau, barring any other last-second entrants – can turn the moribund party around before its members select a permanent leader (which, in the Liberal sense of the term, now means more like "until the next election"). The Toronto Star not surprisingly endorses Rae for the job as “a credible Moses to steer them past the brambles and briers.” While using the man who split the Red Sea in two might not have been the best choice as a metaphor, the editorialists make the salient point that his media savvy and wit will help the party stay relevant despite its third-place finish.

One of the Sun chain's more insightful columnists, Michael Den Tandt, suggests it doesn't really matter who ends up as leader so long as the Liberals can come up with ideas that find traction with the public. Den Tandt points to the Liberals' disingenuous mid-campaign shift to the left as a more likely reason than Michael Ignatieff's personal history as to why their support plummeted to all-time lows. “The truth is that nobody cares, really, whether the leader is nasty or nice,” says Den Tandt. “What matters is what he can do for us, and for the country. Canadians have shown, in vote after vote, that we are kitchen-table pragmatists when it comes to public money.”

Before the caucus retreats to deliberate tomorrow, Robert Silver recommends in The Globe and Mail that the party's executive take a second to re-examine the selection process. Instead of shrouding the selection in secrecy like a “papal conclave,” Silver deadpans that the party “could use this new-fangled technology known as 'email' that the kids like so much and 'email' a new tactic that's all the rage called a 'poll' to the Liberal party membership to get their input on this – and hundreds of other issues facing the party.” Putting the power of the party back into its members' hands? Surely something so revolutionary has no place in a parliamentary democracy.