Stephane Dion, leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, may need to follow in the steps of one of his former leaders and take a long thoughtful walk in the snow to ponder his future in politics.
Harper and his Conservative attack dogs maintain a sustained assault on him to the point that their website looks more like a site for the Liberals when it first loads than one about Harper. It has made me wonder what Harper finds so threatening about Dion that he needs to sustain the attack on him? Apparently this hasn’t occurred to members of the Liberal party, particularly those in Quebec, who are also working up an assault on his leadership.
I have to admit, Dion leaves me scratching my head over his ‘leadership’ more than nodding it in agreement. While I haven’t liked his repeatedly leading the party into avoiding taking any solid stands on issues in order to avoid an election, I have actually understood why he’s doing it.
As often seems to be the case in the Liberal Party of Canada, the members are more focused on jabbing knives at the leader than they are on fighting a potential election as a unified group. In many ways, anyone who is going to successfully lead a pack of wolves has to do so in a take no prisoners manner. Dion doesn’t have that manner.
He wanted to lead through a consultive process, which can work in small groups but not usually in larger groups. Even in a small group, the leader has to firmly establish control and the followers have to understand that just because their ideas or suggestions get listened to doesn’t mean they have any greater status than anyone else.
The leader of any size group has to be decisive in his stands, taking them after carefully looking at the facets of the situation and summoning the best information available. Be willing to listen to reason and to modify the stand only after strong arguments have been made to bring the modification around is not a bad thing but it is something that needs to be done sparingly.
A pack of wolves needs to see strong alpha leadership. Dion needs to do some serious soul searching to see that he really doesn’t have that as a part of his personality. He might be able to summon it and even sustain it but he may well have lost his window of opportunity to implement it. His window of opportunity was immediately after being elected leader.
Had he been a quick enough study, his members would pointing to how quickly he grew into the position. Instead they are becoming weary of him not rising to the job, of his beating his head against the same walls over and over. His former rivals for the leadership, even if they are maintaining an outwardly appearance of supporting him as leader, have got to be wondering when it is going to start killing their chances of standing as leader again.
When Dion came up the middle and took the prize from Rae and Ignatieff, I really did wonder if this guy had more than first appeared. It could be that was where Harper’s fear came in, that Dion might be more capable than first appeared. Dion needed to have kept his eye on the ball, his ball, not Harper’s and there is where he made his first error, of many.
Sometimes for the good of the whole the more courageous move is to stand aside and let other, stronger personalities take the lead. Dion may have reached that crossroads.
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