King Arthur Movie Tristan

Warren Kinsella, a bright capable guy who knows a thing or two about politics, wrote a column in yesterday's National Post: How Dion can Get His Groove Back. According to Kinsella, Emperor Dion's (and that is clearly the implication given in both the headline and the quote "Too many Martin era Liberals cling to Dion's robes.") plight is sad, and not entirely of his own doing.

For Mr. Dion's Liberal party, the Gomery Commission was a shattering blow --discrediting federalism and the perception that Liberals could manage government, all at once. The party has yet to recover from it.

Here's a tip for Warren Kinsella, and the rest of the Liberal party. it wasn't the Gomery Commission that dealt the shattering blow, it was the acts committed by members of the Liberal party that the Gomery Commission investigated that dealt the blow.

Kinsella sounds like a criminal who, when caught, blames the policeman who caught him, or the girlfriend who reported him when he winds up in jail. It is not those who uncover your dirty deeds, it is the perpetrator of the deeds who is responsible. The Gomery Commission didn't hurt the Liberal Party, the Liberal Party hurt the Liberal Party. Insiders putting taxpayers cash into brown paper bags and handing it over to people connected to the party, for work never done, did the damage to the Liberal Party. A government that either ignored or was oblivious (or duplicitous) to the obvious signs of criminality around it created the perception that Liberals could not manage government, not Mr. Justice Gomery or his commission. (Or, for that matter, the press and bloggers who reported on it). If the Liberal party is discredited, it is the Liberal party who is to blame, that's what these guys need to understand.

As Kinsella himself says at the end of the article,

Until it learns those lessons, the Liberal party will remain what it is. Which is to say, mired on the opposition benches and sad.

Problem is, Warren Kinsella and the rest of the Liberal Party still don't understand what lessons they are supposed to have learnt.