We must not allow it to happen to our next Leader. That is exactly what happened to Michael Ignatieff and to me.

They will spend millions of dollars on negative ads which will portray the Liberal Leader as odious, incompetent, self-centred, un-Canadian, soft on crime, tax-hungry, etc. The next time around, their first objective will be, again, to define the new Liberal Leader before the Liberal Party can do it. The Conservatives have brought US-style “permanent campaigning” to Canada. The first lesson the 20 defeats taught us is that it will be very difficult to win the next election if we lose the pre-campaign. For sure, there is more than one reason: some, such as Jack Layton’s exceptional political talent, are strictly circumstantial. What we need to do now is identify the root reasons of our recent failures so that we can make the necessary adjustments that will put us back on the path to victory. But he also examined the reasons for the party’s recent problems, and changes needed to correct them: match the Tory imagery machine, and rebuild confidence in Liberal economics. He concluded that the party must not abandon its traditional role as a centrist party, devoting much of his talk to the glories Liberaldom has wrought in the past. Dion, speaking in Halifax, also embraced the “whither the Liberals” theme. Meanwhile, much less attention was paid to an earlier address by Stephane Dion, the former Liberal leader who lost to Stephen Harper’s Tories in 2008. To become a viable alternative to the Conservatives and NDP, the Liberals will need more than clichés. If anything, the speech could have been - and might well have been - delivered by any Liberal leader over the last 20 years, except for a few minor changes to reflect today’s news and statistics. Instead, it was filled with empty clichés and shopworn rhetoric attacking the Conservatives and NDP. Rae’s “road map” speech lacked any direction, was devoid of details of how the party will change and provided no clue on how it will get from here to there. Indeed, as it stands now, the Liberals’ vaunted “road map” is more like a map to nowhere. Despite all the advance hype surrounding it, though, the speech surely disappointed those who wanted to hear about the party’s plans to reform itself, regain voter confidence and, ultimately, return to power. Columnist Bob Hepburn was notably unimpressed. Unfortunately, the excitement failed to penetrate to all levels of the Star’s newsroom.

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