Irresponsible

The consensus seems to be that Stephane Dion's stay as the Libs' leader is done with in the wake of the Libs' election losses. But it's worth noting just how little faith the Libs apparently had in their leader even before the results were in - and how their public message contrasted against their own concerns about Dion:

Dion rejected advice from some Liberals on election night to immediately announce his resignation as Paul Martin did in 2006, when his minority Liberal government was defeated by Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who prevailed again this time with another minority government.

Dion was not prepared to make such a dramatic move because he was reeling from the election outcome, having been told only shortly before the polls closed that the Liberals were about to take a hit. He was protected from the bad news to keep him pumped during a final cross-Canada sprint on election eve to ridings where Liberal candidates were in big trouble.

Particularly in the context of the campaign which the Libs were actually running, the last paragraph should be a stunning one. For all the talk about Dion micromanaging the Libs' campaign, his handlers apparently kept him far out of the loop, insulating him from negative polling numbers on the assumption that he wasn't capable of dealing with them.

Now, if the Libs figured that were true of their leader, it would be a problematic situation at the best of times. But the 2008 campaign was something else entirely: even as the Libs were trying to shelter Dion from political reality for fear that he couldn't handle it, they were publicly trying to sell Dion as the leader best positioned to deal with an economic meltdown in progress.

It's worth noting that the problem may not be with Dion personally: given the judgment of the Libs generally, it's entirely possible that they were wrong in their assessment as to how he'd handle the information. But the fact that the Libs fought to put Canada and its struggling economy in the hands of a man who they didn't trust to deal competently with even a small dose of bad political news shows the degree to which they were willing to gamble Canada's future to serve their own interests. And that mindset offers reason to be relieved that the Libs didn't succeed in the effort.