Rehabilitated Rae adds depth to Dion's bench.

This is from the National Post.
A better headline would be: Rae adds deptht to Dion's opposition. This is appropriately ambiguous. Rae will add depth to Dion's opposition as a spokesperson opposing Harper. Rae will also serve along with Ignatieff to add depth to the opposition to Dion's leadership.

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Rehabilitated Rae adds depth to Dion’s bench
Don Martin, National Post
Published: Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Mark Blinch/Reuters
It could be third-life lucky for the politically reincarnated Bob Rae.

The former New Democrat MP, who authored the non-confidence motion to kill Prime Minister Joe Clark's government in 1979 and shocked Ontario by becoming a one-term wonder as premier in 1990, gets another chance to work on his legacy after being elected Monday night as a Liberal-leader-in-waiting.

Rehabilitated, if not reinvented as an elder statesman of the Canadian centre-left, Mr. Rae claimed a Toronto byelection seat Monday to set up a return engagement as MP in the House of Commons, where he entered politics a full generation ago.

When paired with the expected Toronto byelection victory of dynamo Martha Hall Findlay last night, his re-entry has abruptly deepened the Liberal gene pool and sharpened an Official Opposition attack squad with a strangely wobbly government in its sights.

But it's Mr. Rae who attracts gushy expectations that he will stabilize the caucus, add a dose of dignity to House haranguing and import a voice of calming experience to the front bench after he is sworn in on March 31.

Not bad for a man who was arguably saddled with one of the weakest governments in Ontario history at its worst possible recession-whacked moment in 1990.

His most positive legacy from that torturous five-year term seems to have been the introduction of casinos to the province. Imposing Rae Days -- unpaid leave forced on Ontario's public service as a cost-savings measure -- ranks as his albatross.

But that's more than a dozen years ago, and Mr. Rae's appointments to chair probes into post-secondary education and the Air India disaster while mediating in the Sri Lanka conflict have polished his résumé back to general respectability.

Mr. Rae insists he has returned to politics for honourable reasons after coming third in the 2006 Liberal leadership race. "You can't run and then beg off and say, ‘that was interesting'. I owed it to everybody to keep going," he told me, which sounds a bit like unfinished business.

The private concern for some, and the fervent hope for others, is that Bob Rae adds a hefty alpha male to a Liberal troop having second thoughts about Stéphane Dion's leadership and contemplating a do-over if the party bombs in the next election.

Think of potential Conservative successors to leader Stephen Harper and the mind blanks -- a wasteland of rival ambition that makes the Prime Minister very, very happy.

But the Liberals now boast at least half a dozen potential party leaders in their ranks or in the wings, including re-runs by Michael Ignatieff, Gerard Kennedy and, hopefully, Ms. Hall Findlay.

Now, having a bounty of replacements is not exactly what Mr. Dion craves as a measure of his bench strength.

But while the government is frantically calling in second stringers to rescue gobsmacked ministers (prime examples being B.C.'s James Moore deflecting Cadman affair shots and Calgary MP Jason Kenney now heading for Mexico to try to free imprisoned Brenda Martin), the Official Opposition will boast so much front-and-centre firepower that backbenchers fret they'll be squeezed out of the lineup.

Mr. Rae's potential to become a thorn in the government's side has not escaped the party's furrowed-brow attention. Conservative researchers are busily compiling a nasty dossier on his fiscal follies and policy shortcomings as premier that they will use to return fire whenever Mr. Rae unleashes in Question Period.

Of course, the best question is how long Mr. Rae will stand in this Parliament before a general election forces everyone on to the campaign trail.

Despite having his private caucus pleas to avoid a spring election leaked to the media, Mr. Rae insists he's neither an election hawk nor dove now. "I'm just an owl sitting in the tree looking around," he smirks.

"There's not a compelling desire for [an election], but I would say we're at the point where people would not be shocked and surprised whenever it comes," he adds.

If it comes this spring and the Liberals implode on the campaign trail, fresh leadership will be demanded and Bob Rae will be an automatic favourite to win.

But that's only a hypothetical in Mr. Dion's ugliest-scenario future. As of today, the new MP for Toronto Centre is a Rae of hope for an abstaining Official Opposition that often appears hopeless.

National Post

dmartin@nationalpost.com

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