Pulling the Foot Out

 

Pierre Poilievre has made a serious mistake, in condemning Christine Anderson. He now risks losing enough voters to Maxime Bernier to take away his chance of beating Trudeau. Even if this does not happen, we know from past experience that moving to the middle does not get you any more votes. It gives people no reason to vote for you. Ask Erin O’Toole. Ask Andrew Scheer. Ask Tom Mulcair. Ask Mitt Romney. Ask John McCain. It is a losing strategy.

What Poilievre should have said is something like this:

“Christine Anderson is a democratically elected representative of the German people. Not to entertain and to respect her shows contempt for the German people, our good friends and allies. It does not mean we agree with all her views. Cooperating with those with whom we sometimes disagree, on matters of agreement, is the lifeblood of democracy. It is the lifeblood of civil society. Much of the ill-will and suffering in Canada today is caused by a Prime Minister who refuses to even speak with those with whom he disagrees, who simply calls them names and slanders them, as ‘racists or ‘misogynists’ or ‘antisemites’ and the like. 

This man who danced around in blackface with his tongue out and a banana stuffed down his trousers.

We Conservatives do not want that kind of Canada, nor that kind of world. We respect people, the people of Germany and the people of Canada, and we welcome those who come here from abroad.”

Poilievre has now stupidly missed his chance. I guess he thought he could duck the issue by having the statement sent out by someone in his office, and just to one reporter, Brian Lilley. Lamely playing right into Trudeau’s accusation that the Conservatives hide their true feelings behind claims they “just didn’t know.” That backfired, because everyone noticed it anyway, it painted Trudeau in the right and the Tories in the wrong, and it made him look like a coward.

Now that he has not immediately dissociated himself from it, he will not be able to convince anyone he is sincere in doing so, that it was some advisor going rogue. He will just look more cowardly, less principled, and callous as well. He will also be throwing Brian Lilley under the bus. He cannot afford to alienate the few members of the media not already trying to destroy him. He will not look like a leader.

I suspect his failure to either acknowledge the statement by his operative, or dissociate himself from it, reflects indecision. He and his office do not know what to do. Yet this too now makes him look weak and cowardly. He cannot stay silent now, and he cannot dissociate himself from the controversy. He put his foot in it.

He has t take full responsibility, and apologize. People will respect him the more for it. It worked for JFK after the Bay of Pigs. It is something I firmly believe as a teacher: if you do not know the answer, you immediately own up to it. If you gave the students the wrong information, you immediately own up to it. Indeed, if you are a good human being, and you realize you have done something wrong, you immediately own up to it. That is what real leadership looks like.

He should issue something like the following statement:

"I regret deeply my lack of respect last week, expressed through a member of my office, but with my knowledge and consent, for Christine Anderson, a duly elected fellow parliamentarian and representative of our friends, the German people. I cannot endorse all her views. That is not the point. We are all individuals, and have the inalienable right to our views, and to express them freely. We do not have to always agree with each other to support and love one another, to work together to build a better Canada and a better world—a lesson I wish our present Prime Minister would learn. I must humbly remember it too. I apologize to Ms. Anderson, a fellow democrat and believer in human freedom, and to the German people, for my lapse in judgement. And I pledge to try to do better."

If Poilievre is a good man, and a leader, he will say something like this.

But I don’t expect him to.