Take me to your...uh...leader?

Leadership races. Oh boy, what great fun!

(Snore...)

Sigh, how predictable. So the the PCs here in Manitoba have a leadership problem. What now? We've just gone through three elections in a year, and here's a slate of new leadership races, Federal NDP, Federal Liberals, PCs and Manitoba Liberals, all facing identity crises. WHO WILL LEAD US? WHO?!

...WHOOOOOOOoooooo?!?!?!??!

Kevin Engstrom at the Winnipeg Sun is going to tell us all about it. Problem is, his column suffers from lack-of-good-candidates-itis. Just like every other column about leadership races. Here is how he ends the column, opining that Seinfeld hero Michael "Kramer" Richards may be the best candidate:

"Yeah, I’m as underwhelmed as you are about it. Another pretty downtown lawyer to replace the pretty downtown lawyer not enough people liked."

As a media critic I've got always got a bone to pick with the media. But over the last year there has been an oh-so-obvious trend dictated by the mainstream narrative it is starting to get annoying. This boring trend is the same old, same old, nothin' to see here, move along. Oh boy, yet ANOTHER boring election. Scoff and roll your eyes at the next leadership convention, or the next TV debate, because it's all the same, nobody has bold new ideas and the current crop of politicians blows chunks.

Every. Single. Leadership. Race. Somehow, there is NOBODY to step up, the pool of suitable candidates is laughable, pathetic even.

The Civic Election 2010 was characterized as boring and unexciting, the Federal Election of 2011 got the same treatment and the media's eyes glazed over the Provincial Election of 2011 with a collective groan of "we've heard all this before," then racing (pun intended) off to write articles about how pathetically the Tories bombed and how useless McFadyen was. (A tiny bit of hypocrisy if you ask me.)

Let's start down south. The Republican Leadership has been laughed at by their own party for failing to put up a "suitable candidate." One look at the candidates and the Republican Party holds their noses. What could they possibly be looking for? You can only hate taxes and gay people so much, and together as a group, they might just have more hate for these two things than all of America combined. But still it's not good enough.

The Federal Liberals have been having the same nose-holding scene now for years as they play hot potato leader. Paul Martin! No, Stephane Dion! No no no, Iggy! Yeah Iggy! No! We want Bob Rae! No wait we don't want Bob Rae. But WHAT OTHER CHOICE DO WE HAVE?!

The NDP chose this guy way back when named Jack Layton. Jack who? Now the late Jack has left a vacuum in the party. Who to replace him? Wait. Seriously? This is who we have to choose from? Don't we have anyone better?

Now here at home. The Manitoba Liberals? Jon Gerrard? Please! Give me something EXCITING! Oh wait, there is nothing exciting in the Liberal party? Harry Wolbert, really? This is the best we have?

And the Progressive Conservatives. Maybe the PCs themselves think they can produce a good leader, but Sun Media doesn't. The Sun laughs in the face of the leadership race. Ha! Look at these clowns! There's NOOOOOBODY to choose from. It's so bad, we're even putting in people like Sam Katz and Michael Richards for comedic relief.

What is up with this stuff? Who do people want, Jesus? I gotta say, if you had THAT GREAT a candidate for leader, wouldn't he be leading already?

Leaders don't grow on trees. They take time to develop, they are weak at first as they learn the ropes, but people with the right qualities, given time, will turn into fine leaders. Such as our current Prime Minister, and the aforementioned late Jack Layton. Both were given over 5 years and multiple elections to hone the craft of leadership.

I look at the list of PCs that Engstrom has identified and think, hmm, yeah I can see Ron Schuler as leader of the party. I can also see a good race for the leadership out of a few key guys. What IS wrong with this batch of the political gene pool?

What is it people want to see? And even if what they want to see is given to them, will they even recognize it? The Provincial Election here saw complaints about no "new bold ideas" when said bold new ideas were offered by the Liberal platform and the Green platform, just nobody bothered to give them credit for it. No-one it seems, wants to give credit to fine candidates for leadership, either.

I just can't buy in to the idea that there are not any good leaders, for any leadership race, in any party. There are MPs and MLAs who have spent a long time at their jobs, know the system well, and have skill sets that are routinely overlooked. Candidates in the media's eyes seem to get judged on what they say in public, not how well they are at negotiating and persuasion. In case the media missed it, a lot of what makes politics politics happens behind closed doors. Where you don't get to observe.

It also has a lot to do with how you interact with members of your own party, and that isn't always going to come out as obvious on the floor of the House.

What seems to happen is that instead of looking at potential candidates' resumes, we look at their public commentary and behaviour, choosing to judge based on what the general perception of what they are like as a person instead of on their accomplishments, merits and suave within their own party.

Then again, it is always easier to do a drive-by smear job on a party and balk at their lack of candidates than it is to actually give the more prominent members of the party a closer look. And I'll admit, the ridiculousness of some of Engstrom's suggestions and comments made me read all of it. If that is the goal of the newspaper, to create a shallow piece likely to provoke a reaction, well fine.

But it does not do our political climate any favours. Nor does it help us move away from the idea that politics is all the same old, boring shit. And that isn't likely to increase voter turnout. And if voters aren't engaged then it must be boring.

So now let's get back to bitching about how there's no exciting possible leaders!