Ponderage

[bcholmes]

Bob Rae has an interesting article in Macleans, about which I'd like to say a lot more (I don't, for example, agree with his characterization of the NDP). One part that really struck me is this:

Taking what my father called the pulse of democracy should not deter people from understanding that things change -- and that things must change. Henry Ford said, "If I'd asked people what they wanted, I'd have given them a faster horse." We need to listen -- but we also need to lead.

(This reminds me of one of my favourite quotations, from Benjamin Disraeli: "I follow my people; am I not their leader?")

Edit: fixed link.

Comments

[ex-helygen254.livejournal.com]

Your link is missing the h in "http".

[avt-tor.livejournal.com]

I don't think Jack Layton is the brightest bulb in the House of Commons, but he does think tactically at times. To me, thinking like the opposition is having an everything-they-do-is-wrong reflex. John Turner had that back in the '80s, and Stephen Harper has that today even though he's Prime Minister; he's still fighting the last election campaign.

Bob Rae is a wise, insightful, charming person; he just happens to have been a bloody f***in' incompetent first minister (and, since I'm old enough to remember, finance critic). Which might be okay if he'd say, "Oops, about the '90s, my bad, this is what I did wrong and this is how I'm not going to do that again." But apparently he's hoping that voters either don't understand numbers that are too big, or else that voters will simply have forgotten what the Bob Rae government did to Ontario.

I would not mind seeing Bob Rae as foreign minister, justice minister, or minister-of-everything-nice-and-fluffy in some future government. But I would be scared to see him as prime minister, finance minister, president of treasury board, or any job where he has signing authority for large amounts of taxpayer's money. He does not understand the consequences of moving tens of billions of dollars out of people's pockets (a defect he shares with Steven Harper).