For a struggling Dion, good debate may be not good enough

By Don Martin
Canwest News Service

Liberal Party Leader Stephane Dion, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. (Blair Gable/Reuters)

OTTAWA - On a night when Liberal leader Stephane Dion had to defend his grand green scheme, define his leadership potential and deliver the message in the most coherent English of his political career in order to survive, he got it done. Almost.

The question as this debate limped along without serious sparks or substance: Was his target audience watching?

That clicking you could hear half an hour into Thursday's debate - the sleepier of the two - was the sound of remotes turning to the U.S. vice-presidential debate blanketing the American networks.

But for Dion, the stakes were unnaturally high as a Liberal party that's been around since Confederation was at risk of losing its status as one of the top two national parties from a stubbornly resilient New Democrat Party while his leadership ratings continue to tank.

Dion oozed sincerity and exceeded low advance expectations by communicating reasonably well as he strove to reverse the damage of an 18-month Conservative campaign to discredit his character as pale, passive and priority-challenged.

Following up a performance that seemed to impress Quebecers in the French debates, despite his bizarre move during the first debate to introduce a 30-day economic consultation project if elected prime minister, Dion delivered blanket feel-your-pain responses to every question.

Unfortunately he can't be declared a standout winner because Prime Minister Stephen Harper was far more engaged than the previous debate and deflected the group attacks with relative ease.

Harper had obviously spotted danger in a recovering Dion and went for the jugular within seconds of the debate's opening, no longer the restrained above-the-fray French debate participant mocked in some pundit reviews Thursday as a Valium-drugged.

He denounced Dion as an election rival "panicked" by his trembling poll numbers into a knee-jerk economic policy.

The New Democrats, whose leader Jack Layton was deemed by polled viewers as a French debate loser, had to shine in his bid for Official Opposition leader.

But he failed to recognize that Dion is his most dangerous electoral competition, wasting most of his breath attacking the prime minister and leaving the Liberal leader to sound a more rational and reasonable option for those advocating government intervention in the economy.

Green leader Elizabeth May, bless her, showed flashes of debating brilliance even on issues outside her environmental specialization.

She moved hard against Harper from the get-go by demanding the prime minister produce a platform which, come to think of it, is rather late in coming, and accusing him of being an environmental "fraud" for the second night in a row.

But the more she talked, the less she seemed anything more than a protest ballot or a place to park a vote for a public disgusted by all of the above.

Oh, right. I almost forgot. Bloc Quebecois leader Gilles Duceppe was there as a protocol obligation. Enough said.

It was a far snoozier exchange than the French version and the more you listened to the four-leader opposition pile-on, the more favourably isolated Harper became as the only party leader in favour of tax decreases and opposed to a massive government intervention to prop up the manufacturing sector.

Of course, the search for a win-lose-or-draw ranking assumes that these debates matter and votes sway dramatically in the aftermath, a doubtful theory given an electoral history of these chat room winners becoming ballot-box losers.

But with Conservative strategists confiding the government majority that was at their fingertips two weeks ago is now a brass ring lunge out of their grasp, every bit helps. The recent lost love for Harper in Quebec has hit the campaign with a harsh dose of reduced expectations, even though the ultimate result of another Conservative government is not in much doubt.

It will now take a continuing collapse of Liberal support in Ontario and B.C. for Harper to make up the alleged lost gains in Quebec.

Perhaps Dion's performance has stemmed some of the bleeding. But out in the real world where the debates were simply a regular program pre-empting irritant, even supposedly safe candidates report frosty doorsteps and the party's organization on the ground seems shallow and in such disarray that insiders are worried they'll have trouble identifying and getting out their vote.

Liberal party volunteers in the regions where electoral recovery is possible desperately needed a morale boost from the English debate last night.

Dion's pivotal performance won't have them cowering with embarrassment at having a disaster of a leader, but it fell short of captivating enough for the battered Liberal brand to stage a miracle comeback.