On choosing one's battles

While the Libs' response to the arrest of a civil servant for leaking details was a bit dubious from the beginning, I was prepared to let it pass without comment in and of itself. But David Akin notes that not only has Dion taken a traditional strong Lib stand against accountability, but he's also gone out of his way to provoke a battle with the NDP...even when given a golden opportunity to highlight the Cons' policy failures instead:

Reporter: Mr. Layton has just said that he wishes the Conservative government would be as zealous in reducing pollution as it is in reducing leaks.

Dion: Mr. Layton will never govern. I have a responsibility as Leader of the Opposition. I want to become Prime Minister of this country. I need to be respected and I will never encourage this kind of behaviour whether it's from Environment Canada or Finance Canada or whatever. I will not speculate on this specific case. I don't know if I may come with accusations against the government when I don't know what is happening. I will not comment on the specific case. For the principle, I think civil servants must respect the secrecy of their role.

Of course, at the best of times the attitude espoused by Dion can only be described as the kind of arrogance that got the Libs booted out of office to begin with. But this example of it is particularly damning for a few reasons.

First, it seems to have occurred out of a relatively spontaneous exchange. An argument might be available that the Libs' usual attacks on the NDP are the product of strategists or spin doctors. But Dion's knee-jerk dismissal of Layton seems to be his first personal reaction to a mention of the NDP, even when the message from Layton is one that Dion would presumably support at least in part. Which can leave no doubt that for all the effort to present himself as something above politics as usual, his first impulse is to head directly for the gutter.

Second, while showing what Dion apparently believes personally, it also calls into question the honesty and sincerity behind his arrangement with the Greens. After all, if Dion believes that the leader of a party with 29 seats should be dismissed out of hand due to his supposed unlikelihood of forming government, surely that must reflect an even greater contempt for a party which has never won a single one. (Unless, of course, Dion has reason to figure that May will be a part of the Lib fold before too long - but that would reflect even more deviousness behind the alliance.)

And third (and most importantly), it suggests that Dion is so eager to slam the NDP on a relatively small issue that he's willing to ignore a major area of policy agreement just to get in a single shot at Layton. Surely Dion's most obvious apparent goals - to oppose the Cons and to secure environmental action - would be best met by riffing off Layton's statement to discuss the importance of reducing pollution by passing the amended C-30. But Dion's decision to turn away from those ends would seem to suggest either that Dion is awfully easily distracted from his party's main apparent goals, or that his priorities lie elsewhere.

Now, I'm certainly not going to claim that Dion can't or shouldn't criticize Layton, just as it's entirely legitimate for the NDP to focus attention on the Libs when warranted. But if he's eager to turn discussion in that direction even at the expense of letting the Cons off the hook for both their iron-fisted management style and their poor environmental policy, then there's just one more reason to think that the Libs are far from the most effective opposition party in Canada - and that it's long past time to prove Dion's assumptions wrong.