Bob Rae or the Highway?

Bob Rae's brought some swagger to the Liberals. It would have been nice if the party had noticed that back in, oh, 2007.

Everybody's talkin' 'bout Bob Rae these days! And by "everybody", we mean the sick and twisted minds devoted to following Canadian politics for the purpose of filling out the back pages of newspapers. But we love 'em anyhow! The Globe and Mail's Lawrence Martin, for one, looks into his crystal ball and sees the interim Liberal leader ascending to the full-time position, despite his promise not to seek the job. "Everything is falling into place for him," says Martin. Liberal stalwart and Rae booster Sheila Copps is the leading contender for the party presidency, and she's already given her OK to Rae to seek the leadership. Plus, the NDP isn't exactly blossoming under their own interim leader, Nycole Turmel, leaving Rae as the unofficial leader of the opposition on the House of Commons floor. Justin Trudeau, he of the famous last name and flowing locks, won't run, and let's just say there's a surfeit of other viable candidates in the Liberal party to take over the throne. All told, Martin makes a compelling case that not only is a Rae-led party desirable, but feasible as well. All Rae has to do now is go back on his most famous promise in front of the ravenous eyes of the media and a little thing called the Conservative Party of Canada. We can't see how that could go wrong.

The National Post's resident Liberal hack (and we mean that in the best way), Jeff Jedras, dispels the notion that Rae can't run because the party executive has forbid him from doing so:

For the umpeenth time, there IS NO RULE that prevents Mr. Rae from running for permanent leader. If he wants to run, HE CAN RUN.

There never was a “rule” at all. The current executive, when tasked with picking the interim leader, said they’d base their selection on several criteria: bilingualism, caucus support, and a promise not to seek the permanent leadership. Those weren’t rules, they were screening criteria. They could have said we’re only picking people that wear suspenders, it doesn’t matter. Point is, once they make the appointment, it’s done. There is no rule.

Well, we're glad that's cleared up. But all of this talk about Liberals conscripting Rae to run, even if he's reluctant, leaves Jedras to ask his fellow Grits "why is this divisive can of worms even being opened?" Good question, considering the Liberal leadership vote is months upon months away. Maybe they should be focussing on the, y'know, party-defining plan that Rae just released.

You can count Postmedia's Michael Den Tandt in the camp of those foreseeing a Rae-vival (sorry), although he thinks that's moot, owing to an inevitable Liberal/NDP merger. Den Tandt parses recent polling data that suggests nearly half of NDP and Liberal supporters would get behind a merger, indicating there's "an emerging well of impatience for silo-building, as Liberal and NDP partisans, together comprising more than 50 per cent of the electorate, watch the Harper government, supported by 37 per cent, move the country rightward in small but steady increments." In other words, the left wants in, and it wants in now, or, failing that, 2015. And despite the glowing reviews for Rae emanating from the press, the party is still clearly stuck in third place among the general public. "The Grits' problem is not personality but something deeper - fatigue with the Liberal brand perhaps, or with core policies, such as its stand on gun control, (it's probably not gun control - ed.) that the party is not inclined to change," says Den Tandt. "Whatever the reason, a weak Liberal party is one that can be groomed for a takeover, disguised as a merger of equals, just as happened to the old Progressive Conservative Party at the hands of Harper's Alliance in 2003."

Like the conditions paving the way for Rae to takeover the leadership, the political environment is, on its surface, ripe for a merger. But all this talk is merely prognosticating. Rae's been leader of the Liberals for just a little over six months, and the NDP leadership vote is still five months away. And then there's the Liberal race itself, at least another year away. All of which is to say that there is a long time to go before the country has even decided which leaders will be discussing such matters as mergers, let alone discussing the merger itself. We're inclined to invoke Paul Wells' first Rule of Politics here: "For any given situation, Canadian politics will tend toward the least exciting possible outcome." Rae rising like a phoenix out of the ashes of the Liberal party to salvage progressive Canadian politics is a fascinating narrative, and you can cherry-pick great facts and notions to make that case seem even more plausible. But when a man well into his seventh decade says he doesn't want a job, and two parties say they don't want to merge, sometimes you just have to take them at their word.