Ignatieff

I wasn’t too impressed with Michael Ignatieff’s recent campaign for the leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada—there was a bit too much of the I’m-a-brilliant-professor-from-Harvard-so-I-know- all-about-the-problems-in-Canada-and-about-how-to-fix-them- even-though-I’ve-been-out-of-the-country-for-almost-thirty- years attitude, in my opinion—but I do find his recent piece in The New York Times on being wrong about Iraq quite thoughtful and sensible. For example:

In private life, we pay the price of our own mistakes. In public life, a politician’s mistakes are first paid by others. Good judgment means understanding how to be responsible to those who pay the price of your decisions. Edmund Burke, when first elected to the House of Commons, told the voters of Bristol that he would never sacrifice his judgment to the pressure of their opinion. I’m not sure my constituents would be happy to hear this. Sometimes sacrificing my judgment to theirs is the essence of my job. Provided, of course, that I don’t sacrifice my principles….

In my political-science classes, I used to teach that exercising good judgment meant making good public policy. In the real world, bad public policy can often turn out to be very popular politics indeed. Resisting the popular isn’t easy, because resisting the popular isn’t always wise. Good judgment in politics is messy. It means balancing policy and politics in imperfect compromises that always leave someone unhappy — often yourself.

I often find it interesting how the same people will alternately criticize politicians for not sticking to principles and for not doing what their constituents want them to do. Which is it? Are politicians supposed to do what they think is right or what their constituents think is right?

Ignatieff doesn’t succeed, though, in avoiding throwing in a few jabs at current politicians:

In politics, learning from failure matters as much as exploiting success. Samuel Beckett’s “Fail again. Fail better” captures the inner obstinacy necessary to the political art. Churchill and De Gaulle kept faith with their own judgment when smart opinion believed them to be mistaken. Their willingness to wait for historical validation, even if far off, looks now like greatness. In the current president the same faith that history will judge him kindly seems like brute stubbornness.

That last sentence doesn’t befit the reflective nature of the rest of the piece. Or the previous part of the paragraph. It may well turn out that the current president’s faith is brute stubbornness. But presumably smart opinion in the days of Churchill and De Gaulle would also have recognized that leaders prior to them displayed virtuous obstinacy while thinking that Churchill and De Gaulle were merely stubborn brutes. Stubbornness on behalf of the good and stubborness on behalf of the bad will both look like brute stubbornness to its opponents and a virtuous standing firm to its advocates. So I don’t see what the point is of accusing the president of brute stubbornness. The problem is that his judgement is wrong, not that he is sticking to his judgement in the face of opposition.

Anyway, immature, silly barbs aside, there is some good stuff in Ignatieff’s piece.

Sydney