Travers seeks a few good men, and women

Liberals need to do a little soul-searching

Fissures in party are decades deep

Jan. 28, 2006. 01:00 AM

JAMES TRAVERS

Just days after defeat, federal Liberals are frenetically looking here, there and everywhere for a new saviour. Their time and energy would be better spent searching for the party's soul.

Liberals surprised themselves and Conservatives Monday by finding a good way to loose. Now, the country's dominant political force is in grave danger of missing for the second time the message voters delivered in two elections spread over 18 months.

An 11th-hour surge in June 2004 secured a minority victory. Last weekend, lingering discomfort with Stephen Harper and tough, misleading abortion advertising stampeded enough voters back to Liberals to cost Conservatives at least 14, mostly Ontario, seats and ensure a party that ruled almost unchallenged since 1993 wouldn't be reduced to a rump.

So, instead of licking wounds and learning lessons, Liberals today are feeling rather good about themselves. Paul Martin's wise, elegant and instant resignation pre-empted another round of patricide, strong ministers survived to give an inexperienced Conservative cabinet fits, and the popular vote held up well enough to help reduce a bulging financial burden.

All that stands between Liberals and their usual place at the top of the political heap and bottom of the public trough is an energizing leader and a few Conservative mistakes. Not quite.

Fissures in a party that once took pride in its cohesiveness now run decades deep. Martin is the first leader since Pierre Trudeau to leave before being knifed in the back and his successor's first job will be to restore some semblance of harmony.

"The party as a whole needs to get over the tribal feuding and regroup around some common ideas and beliefs," says John Manley, the former deputy prime minister who this week stepped out of the still unofficial race.

Liberals and the lengthening list of wannabe leaders should listen. A contemplative truce is necessary if the party is to discover if it still has a purpose beyond winning elections, managing power and rewarding its friends.

That's mostly what governing parties think about. They don't have the time or luxury to consider broad public policy options or defining values as they take care of helter-skelter business.

It wasn't their wish, but Liberals now have an opportunity for introspection. How they go about it, academic and former Trudeau adviser Tom Axworthy correctly argues, will make the difference between a short-term fix and a lasting, long-term repair.

Martin is the first leader since Trudeau to leave before being knifed in the back

"Just picking a new leader is the easy way to do it," Axworthy says. "In my view, it would be a mistake."

Leaving it to the successful contender to define the party would miss the point of the last two elections. Liberals not only blackened their brand with scandal and entitlement, they wandered so aimlessly between promise and delivery and muttered so much about obscure values that their image is hopelessly blurred.

To restore the brand and focus the image, Liberals beginning a traditionally gritty and opaque leadership contest must demonstrate saintly integrity while building from the ground up, not top down, a superstructure of clear values, innovative ideas and marketable policies.

Getting the sequencing right is essential. If their priority is having a leader in place if Harper fails, Liberals won't take time to reconsider what made Martin so appealing while he was toppling Jean Chrétien and why that support faded so fast.

Strange as it seems at the end of a continuum that began with majority and ended in defeat, Martin identified — but couldn't fully implement — a winning Liberal formula. Slashing the democratic deficit, preparing for wrenching economic changes and recognizing the importance of big cities are essential pieces of the 21st-century kaleidoscope.

But there are other large pieces that Martin's clique failed to grasp or arrange. They misunderstood Quebec's appetite for a federalist alternative, couldn't cope with a political right that was coalescing while the left fragmented or with a double power shift from east to west as well as from urban cores to the suburbs and beyond. Most of all, they missed that parties must deliver what they sell in an age when savvy consumers are all-powerful.

Sure, choosing the appropriate leader is fun and significant. Going back to the future with a Chrétien-era power-broker or even an influential Martin minister will shape a much different future than if Liberals opt for a fresh start, a clean slate.

But what's essential is that thoughtful Liberals rise on their hind legs to regain control of the party and set its course. That's not easy for an inclusive party standing uneasily in the mushy middle of the ideological spectrum.

It requires a complex process where leadership contenders become ordinary Liberals long enough to debate party identity and decide where it would take the country if again trusted with power.

After a long internal struggle, Conservatives know who they are and are mostly candid about the Canada they want. Liberals must now decide if they have the courage to endure the same cathartic process.

If not, they will be leaving it to yet another saviour to rediscover the party's soul.