Derrick O’Keefe on the failed intervention of Michael Ignatieff in Canadian politics:
In January 2005, three insiders from Canada’s Liberal Party came calling on Ignatieff at Harvard. Writing in The Walrus, Ron Graham described the meeting. The kingmakers from Ottawa outlined a scenario whereby Ignatieff would return to Canada after three decades abroad, win the party leadership and in short order become prime minister of Canada. The Liberals were the country’s “natural governing party,” after all. It’s not known whether there was mention of sweets and flowers. Ignatieff accepted the invitation.
In the end, however, his visions of conquest proved almost as delusional in Canada as they did in Iraq.
It depends on how you view his mission. As I understand it the Liberals were a centrist, left leaning party before Ignatieff got his mitts on them, while he always has been a rightwing courtier to power. So if you needed somebody to not wage opposition against Harper’s conservatives, destroy the liberals as a party and hand Harper a majority in parliament, he was the man to do it, and he did. Just like with Iraq, where all the meaningless guff about being greeted with flowers had always clearly been nonsense, the idea that Ignatieff could do anything else was idiotic. Assuming the people who wanted him as leader weren’t idiots, they may have gotten just what they wanted — and bugger the liberal voter.