Paragons of Mediocrity

As I write this, Bob Rae is gaining ground on Michael Ignatieff in the race to become Liberal leader, Stephane Dion is gaining on both of them, and Canadian media are rushing all over themselves to convince us This Is Important, Damnit. Their enthusiasm betrays them.
The media doesn't like Stephen Harper. (Probably why he, in turn, doesn't like the media.) It's not so much anything Steve has done or not done, more a matter of who he is, and is not. He was born in Toronto, but is not from Toronto. He's well-schooled in classical liberalism, but is most emphatically not a Liberal. You can almost see it in the stories which praise Harper for his stand on China, his steadfast support of our troops, and most recently for that surprise "Quebec nation" motion that so enraged Gilles Duceppe...there's a barely hidden subtext saying hey, that wasn't bad...for a Conservative. What a pity he's not one of us.
And so, the media, wishing mightily for someone more to its collective liking, has seen him flitting around Montreal and crowned him Our Next Prime Minister. All that's left is to name him.
Please.
If I had to place myself in the Canadian political landscape, I'd stand squarely in the middle of that old ghost town called Progressive Conservative. Which means I'd have no problem voting for a clean, fiscally responsible Liberal party and leader...if such a creature existed. It doesn't, alas, not yet. More depressingly, it almost seems as if Liberals, by and large, don't recognize the need for renewal.
One who does--one who did--is Martha Hall-Findlay. Unfortunately, she came in eighth of eight on the first ballot and was thus dropped out of contention that she never had in the first place. Sad, because her views on Canada and the Liberal Party's place within same are refreshing, honest, and voteworthy, at least in my view. And she's a woman, which is, in this man's eyes, important.
So we're left with seven, four of whom are legitimate contenders and three who are jostling to be kingmaker.
Michael Ignatieff, the current frontrunner, is too smart for the room, and he wants everyone in the room to know it. Worse, he spent thirty years looking at the room from well outside and he seems to think Canadians will throw their arms wide open welcoming a Prime Minister who might as well be American. I just don't get the Liberal fascination with this man: he has all the smarts but none of the charisma of a Trudeau, and what's more, several of his views mirror Harper's. Oh yes, and he seems to be prone to foot-in-mouth disease...that whole Quebec nation trial balloon nearly popped in his face, and as for "not losing sleep" over what he later termed "war crimes"...God, the satire writes itself.
Bob Rae: If you lived in Ontario from 1990-1995, you don't need a primer on Bob Rae. Here's a man who taxed dirt. He claims to have "learned from" his time as Premier, portraying himself as battle-hardened. Harper and Layton working together would slaughter him in Ontario. He's a leftist analogue of Brian Mulroney...hey, Libs, do you really want that running your party?
Stephane Dion: Warren Kinsella's calling him the next leader, in a scenario that's looking quite plausible right now...the top two contenders cancel each other out and number three sneaks up the middle.
I'll admit my dislike of Dion is irrational. He's our biggest Kyoto-booster, which means he's our biggest economy-buster. He's from Quebec, which in my honest opinion is the last thing the Liberal Party or Canada itself needs. His website doesn't make any mention of the sponsorship scandal or the need to recover and learn from it, not that I could see, at any rate.
Gerard Kennedy is also known around Toronto as "Mr. Food Bank." He sits further left than Bob Rae. As is typical of his ilk, his website is really big on promises and woefully short on funding for those promises. No, thank you.
It really makes you wonder if the smart people stayed out of this whole leadership business. I tend to think the big Liberal names who opted out--Rock, Manley et al--understood something the rest of them don't, that the Liberal Party deserves something a little more harsh than a few minutes in the political sin bin.

I suspect they'll be there a mite longer, yet, no matter who comes out of this. Most of Harper's core constituency is still with him and I believe he's impressed quite a few people who didn't vote for him last time around. No matter how you feel about Harper, you surely must admit he's not the boogeyman past Liberal campaigns have tried to paint him as...