Ignatieff's First Week Of School

Michael Ignatieff's first week of school went about as well as can be expected for a lone exchange student facing a never-ending line of hostile instructors.

He got his knuckles rapped, his public image sullied, and his ego ever so slightly bruised during a hands-on demonstration of that old political truism: perception is everything.

It's an axiom that just about everyone who graduates from observer to player in the great game of politics has etched on their soul and tattooed on their butt, just in case they forget. It's not what you mean that counts, Michael, it's what everyone thinks you mean.

Ignatieff has grown accustomed to people having read everything he's written, and being listened to by eager beavers who study every syllable the great commentator of ethical theory has penned over his thirty-year academic career. But when he faced his first audience of voters last Wednesday night, he found not enthralled Harvard students, but Liberal party members far more likely to have a John Grisham novel on their book shelves than Ignatieff's Blood and Belonging.

They were also Liberal party members at the point of apoplexy over having a candidate rammed down their collective throats, one who was not a member of their community, and who apparently had slighted a goodly portion of said community with what they perceived to be bigoted, intolerant remarks in the aforementioned tome.

The newly anointed candidate for Etobicoke-Lakeshore seemed genuinely perplexed by all this, asking with indignation how anyone could "seriously think I would insult any community in our country" given all he has stood for. The assumption was that everyone actually knew what he has stood for, a no small demonstration of arrogance by a man who had just dropped out of the sky and asked the stunned locals if he could represent them.

He was taken out of context, of course. Just read his book, he'd say, and all would be clear. But while that may be fine in a milieu where a single idea can take more than thirty pages to express, straining most people's vocabularies in the process, it's an unrealistic expectation in a world of sound bites and short attention spans.

Such long-winded arguments are ripe for cherry picking by media and adversaries alike. Leaving aside the debate over whether or not Michael Ignatieff is a warmonger who promotes torture and hates Ukrainians, the sad fact is that it is very easy to present such a picture in full Technicolor given his long and controversial publication list.

Over the next few weeks of campaigning, everyone from editors looking for an eye-catching story angle to rival candidates out for the kill, will be pouncing on these literary nuggets of slandering gold like hungry wolves on a box of doggy biscuits.

Crying foul about being taken out of context won't cut it.

Exclaiming that he's spent his entire life teaching human rights does little more than put into question his qualifications to do just that when peppered with questions concerning his views on interrogation methods of terrorists. And suggesting that we should trust what he says because he teaches the US military on such matters gives the clear impression that the winds of Canadian public opinion don't blow farther south than Pelee Island, or he'd have a better understanding of just how far such a rebuttal might fly in Canada...which is about three feet beyond his campaign office's front door, but only with a good tail wind.

That said, all the preparation and practice in the world can't save some students from certain failure when they've made the misstep of choosing the wrong course. So far, Ignatieff has come across as a man out of touch with Canadian public sentiment, who holds views at serious odds with mainstream Canada and even his own party. He seems dismissive of criticism, and appears to find it annoying to have to defend himself.

He has even gone so far as to suggest that representing the people he has thrust himself upon in Etobicoke-Lakeshore will be a part-time job while he teaches at the University of Toronto. Which may be the problem; Ignatieff is a professor at heart, not a politician, and all the cramming in the world may not help him pass the test of dealing with public perception.

Of course, with his disgruntled riding association president pushing for a new nomination race, Ignatieff may still have a chance to drop the course altogether before week's end.