It is too early to predict that Thomas Mulcair will fit that bill in three years but on this — the very first week of his tenure as NDP leader — he is starting off looking like the strongest challenger to emerge from the opposition ranks in half-a-dozen years.
Intellect for intellect, the Liberals were as ably served by Stéphane Dion and Michael Ignatieff as the NDP will be by Mulcair.
Notwithstanding two flat convention speeches (for which he made up with a round of competent post-victory media appearances), Mulcair brings stronger communication skills than Dion or for that matter Ignatieff, whose training in the give-and-take atmosphere of academic debate did not prepare him for the cut-and-thrust of partisan politics.
Dion and Ignatieff were products of a party that saw itself as a government-in-exile. The hypothetical frame within which the Liberals portrayed their last two leaders was that of prime minister, not that of effective opposition leader.
For obvious reasons, the NDP treats its unprecedented official opposition role as an opportunity to prove itself and has set its sights on the leader it feels is most likely to make the most of it.
The new NDP leader’s aggressive style is also more suited for the current take-no-prisoners era on Parliament Hill than the gentler approach of his beleaguered Liberal predecessors.
Whatever may come his way, no one is likely to caricature Mulcair as a deer caught in headlights. That’s probably good news for the NDP, as voters do not as a rule support parties out of pity for their leaders.
And then he takes the helm at a more propitious opposition time in the Harper cycle.
The record suggests that it is hard to beat an experienced prime minister. But that is in no small part because they usually leave it to a successor to harvest the grapes of wrath that they have seeded.
Pierre Trudeau in 1984 and Brian Mulroney in 1993 did exactly that.
By the time the next election comes around it will be more than a decade since Harper first led his party in an election.
There are exceptions but things often tend to go sour for a ruling party at or around the 10-year mark. That is also when the fire tends to go out of the belly of a government leader.
That is not to say that Mulcair will not be facing a steep learning curve in the months and years to come. Almost all opposition leaders go through a crossing of the desert and many don’t survive it.
But past experience also suggests that some of the forecasts that are attending Mulcair’s victory should be treated with a grain of salt.
After they each won the leadership of their party on an anti-merger ticket, Peter MacKay and Harper were fully expected to keep the rival conservative factions apart and yet they did not.
And then when he took the helm of a reunited Conservative party, Harper was widely written off as a transitional leader.
His past positions were said to make him an impossible sell in Quebec and his brand of conservatism combined with his Western Canada political roots were deemed to make him a non-starter in Ontario.
He was — most pundits opined — not cut out to win the job of prime minister . . . until he did.
Finally, as recently as a year ago, it was conventional wisdom that no federal party — least of all the NDP — could aspire to more than a toehold in francophone Quebec as long as Gilles Duceppe was at the head of the Bloc Québécois. Twelve months ago, no one (including himself?) expected that Jack Layton would become leader of the official opposition.
Mulcair may well be a long shot for prime minister but no more so than Harper was on his first week as federal leader a decade ago.
Original Article
Source: Star
Author: Chantal Hébert
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