Harvard shocked by Canada’s rejection of Ignatieff

[crazy canuck]

More for our American friends then anything else so I started a new thread.

Turns out Havard is agast that Canadians wouldnt elect one of their own.  Also turns out the bright bulbs at Havard have no idea what is happening in Canada - their explanation for why Iggy lost is because of his views on the war in Afghanistan which actually had no impact on the election at all. 

Cellucci, the former US embassador got it right. 

Boston's chattering classes are struggling with the stunning political defeat of one of Harvard's most popular academics at the hands of Canadian voters, painting Michael Ignatieff's historic loss as Liberal leader as a new low in Canadian politics.

A series of editorials and articles published this week in the Harvard Crimson, Boston Globe and elsewhere have blamed Canadians for being close-minded and anti-American when they handed Mr. Ignatieff and the Liberals the party's worst defeat in history.

"Harvard sees itself as the centre of the universe, so I'm sure it felt it very deeply," said Graham Wilson, chair of Boston University's department of political science.
In a front page article, The Boston Globe said the main reason for the Liberal collapse was that Mr. Ignatieff — the former director Harvard's Carr Center of Human Rights Policy and an expert on international military interventions — had views on the Canadian mission in Afghanistan that had pushed "war-weary voters toward the more left-leaning New Democratic Party."

The paper's editorialists noted with some disbelief that Canadian politics had become "surprisingly caustic" and described the "sadness and indignation" his former Harvard colleagues felt at seeing that Conservative attack ads painting Mr. Ignatieff as a foreign Ivy League elitist had played so well with Canadian voters.

"For a country that is stereotyped here in the U.S. as a country that is accepting of everyone and everything, this federal election depicts a Canada that is moving in a steadily more exclusive and narrow direction," wrote Shalini K. Rao, a Canadian student, in the Harvard Crimson newspaper.

It was a tough lesson in humility for one of the world's most prestigious universities that while a former student could be elected president — and the first black one at that — its star professor couldn't win his seat in a Canadian riding.

"I think they're unhappy that his time spent in the U.S. at Harvard ended up hurting him not really helping him in the election," said Paul Cellucci, former U.S. ambassador to Canada and a former governor of Massachusetts. "They're not happy about that and I don't blame them. You would think that spending time in Harvard would have a positive impact on your future career path."

The reaction to Mr. Ignatieff's defeat has focused largely on trying to explain how his reputation as one of Harvard's most respected professors, a charismatic intellectual who could pack classrooms and once graced the cover of GQ magazine, could have worked against him with voters.

Mark Leccese, a journalism professor and media blogger at Boston.com, wrote that Mr. Ignatieff's colleagues were dismayed that negative connotations about Harvard — long a code word in U.S. political rhetoric for "out-of-touch elitist" — seemed to have crossed the border into Canada.

"If Ignatieff had been a professor at the University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople, would the ad have been as powerful?" he wrote.

But U.S. commentators trying to make sense of Mr. Ignatieff's defeat seem to have little understanding of how well political ads questioning Mr. Ignatieff's time abroad played with Canadian voters, Mr. Cellucci said.

"They don't fully appreciate that as great a relationship as we have, the United States and Canada, as close as we are, it's important to Canadians to be Canadian, not American," he said. "I think that's the point that they're all missing and this effort by the Conservative party that kind of turned Michael Ignatieff into an American, that's what really hurt the most. I don't think some of the commentators are aware of how deeply Canadians want to be different than Americans."

However, those commentators who pay close attention to Canadian politics would likely be more surprised that a renowned scholar had even become head of a political party in the first place, something that would rarely happen in the U.S., Mr. Wilson said.

"Being an academic would not be a good start in this county and being an academic who had spent a long time outside of the United States is a double whammy," he said. "People would be less surprised that it happened and was done badly but that it happened at all."
National Post
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[Malthus]

Heh, Iggy got canned because he, and his party, had nothing much to offer anyone. It had little IMO to do with "Canadians wanting to be Canadians", and everything to do with the fact that the Cons successfully usurped what used to be the Lib's greatest strengths - appealing to local constituents, one riding and one group at a time - and toning down on their social conservative rhetoric to make them palateable.

In contrast, Iggy & Co. appeared to totally take local constituents for granted, seeing them a steady support for the political careers of Iggy & Co.

Take Iggy's own leadership in my riding (in theory, his riding) of Etobicoke-Lakeshore. He was "parachuted" in to replace a popular Lib incumbent in a riding that was considered "safe". Other would-be applicants were disqualified from running on flimsy grounds - leading to much fury within local Lib ranks, many of whom were Ukranian (my in-laws, for example!) who already disliked Iggy for his writings on Ukrainian nationalism. In spite of that they held their noses and voted for him - once.

Having imposed himself in this strong-arm manner (or been imposed by the Lib machine), he proceeded to do - well, nothing - for "his" riding. Is it any wonder he lost it?

All this gave teeth to the Con's attacks, about how Iggy really could not give a shit about those he claimed to represent, and only wanted to feather his own resume.

What the good folks at Harvard are forgetting is that all politics are local. Ironically, Iggy lost his own seat because he forgot that, too.

[crazy canuck]

What the good folks at Harvard are forgetting is that all politics are local. Ironically, Iggy lost his own seat because he forgot that, too.

I agree with that.  I also think Celluci correctly identified why the attack ads, portraying him as essentially being on leave from Harvard, worked.

[Barrister]

I agree with CC's analysis.  It wasn't an anti-intellectual message, it was an Anti-American (or at least, not Canadian) message.

Remember Dion was an academic as well, and that was never used against him.

[Camerus]

And I'm shocked at Harvard's inflated sense of self-importance.   

The anti-American spin of the Conservatives probably played a role in the defeat of Ignatieff, but I think it was far from the main cause (and certainly the Afghan war had almost 0 relevance in this election).  The Libs' lack of real ideas (ironic for an esteemed Harvard prof) and inability to brand themselves successfully was a much more important factor.

[Grey Fox]

Wait, what are Iggy's view of Afghanistan?

[Barrister]

Wait, what are Iggy's view of Afghanistan?

Well as an academic he was a hawk - supported war in Iraw and Afghanistan.

As leader he wanted Canadian troops out of Afghanistan.

[Grey Fox]

It's understandable, he saw the number I would want the Canadian troops out too in his place.

[The Brain]

I don't understand this thread, nor do I want to.

[crazy canuck]

I don't understand this thread, nor do I want to.

Too much radiation kills brain cells.

[Malthus]

What the good folks at Harvard are forgetting is that all politics are local. Ironically, Iggy lost his own seat because he forgot that, too.

I agree with that.  I also think Celluci correctly identified why the attack ads, portraying him as essentially being on leave from Harvard, worked.

I don't agree with this:

"I think that's the point that they're all missing and this effort by the Conservative party that kind of turned Michael Ignatieff into an American, that's what really hurt the most. I don't think some of the commentators are aware of how deeply Canadians want to be different than Americans."

Iggy did not lose beacuse Canadians saw him as an American, much less that this "really hurt [Iggy] the most". Iggy lost because his party lacked purpose and failed to make connections with local constituents. 

It would not have made a big difference if Iggy spent those thirty years teaching at U of T rather than Harvard - he'd still have lost, and for much the same reason: lack of purpose and lack of connection.

Admittedly, spending many years outside of Canada did not help, but it wasn't the key to his failure.

[crazy canuck]

Malthus, he is commenting on why the attack ads worked not why the Liberals lost the election all though obviously there is a connection between the two.

[Malthus]

Malthus, he is commenting on why the attack ads worked not why the Liberals lost the election all though obviously there is a connection between the two.

Even so.

The reasons the ads worked is that the thrust of them - I believe the slogan was "he didn't come back for you" - had teeth, because Iggy and his party was seen as a buncha empty suits.

It wasn't simply that he was being branded as a Yank, it was that he was being branded as an opportunist, fundamentally uncaring about constituents, just using 'em as a stepping-stone to leadership. The same sort of ads would have worked, had he been an academic at U of T all those years.

The "Yank" aspect added flavour, but it wasn't the meat of the matter.

[Scipio]

When all the Russian Canadian immigrants of my parents generation were telling me they were voting against Ignatieff, I knew he was doomed.  You have to carry your own ethnic group.

[Malthus]

I don't understand this thread, nor do I want to.

Too much radiation kills brain cells.

Really.

I mean, there can be nothing, but nothing, as interesting as Canadian politics.