{"id":845,"date":"2009-05-02T10:30:47","date_gmt":"2009-05-02T14:30:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/?p=845"},"modified":"2009-05-02T14:42:08","modified_gmt":"2009-05-02T18:42:08","slug":"the-long-goodbye","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/?p=845","title":{"rendered":"The long goodbye"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Paul Adams<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>Paul Adams is blogging the federal Liberal convention in Vancouver this weekend.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Last night&#8217;s tribute to St\u00e9phane Dion began after 11:00 p.m. central time, presumably so that the majority of Canadians living east of Thunder Bay were unlikely even to stumble across it by accident.<\/p>\n<p>A little earlier, Jean Chr\u00e9tien had given a rollicking partisan speech, whose centre-piece was a riff on Stephen Harper&#8217;s absence from the &#8220;family photo&#8221; at the recent G-20 meeting, reportedly because he was in the bathroom.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_874\" style=\"width: 510px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/wp-content\/\/_mg_2483_2jc.gif\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-874\" class=\"size-full wp-image-874\" src=\"http:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/wp-content\/\/_mg_2483_2jc.gif\" alt=\"Chr\u00e9tien wows the crowd\" width=\"500\" height=\"488\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-874\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Chr\u00e9tien wows the crowd<\/p><\/div>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>This speech set a standard that nothing in the program to follow remotely matched.<\/p>\n<p>There was the usual video tribute to the outgoing leader, followed by a speech by Paul Martin, more energetic than memorable. Michael Ignatieff also spoke briefly before Dion himself.<\/p>\n<p>Dion&#8217;s speech was reminder to the roughly 2000 Liberals in the room, and the dwindling audience of those watching on CPAC, of why he is so widely regarded as a decent human being and a terrible politician. It was long (more than 30 minutes), earnest, hectoring, replete with a reference to Schopenauer, and utterly uncontaminated with applause lines.<\/p>\n<p>After Dion finished, the Liberals for some reason had scheduled a further extensive program, including a speech by former Supreme Court Justice and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour.<\/p>\n<p>But Arbour spoke to a nearly empty room &#8212; or so we are left to presume, since most of the media had also long since filed their stories and left the building.<\/p>\n<p><em>Paul Adams, a former political correspondent for the CBC and Globe and Mail, is a member of Carleton\u2019s journalism faculty and executive director of EKOS Research Associates. He is researching a book on the Liberal Party.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_875\" style=\"width: 345px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/wp-content\/\/_mg_2541_2_21.gif\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-875\" class=\"size-full wp-image-875\" src=\"http:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/wp-content\/\/_mg_2541_2_21.gif\" alt=\"Dion hammers home a point\" width=\"335\" height=\"500\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-875\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Dion hammers home a point<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Paul Adams Paul Adams is blogging the federal Liberal convention in Vancouver this weekend. Last night&#8217;s tribute to St\u00e9phane Dion began after 11:00 p.m. central time, presumably so that the majority of Canadians living east of Thunder Bay were unlikely even to stumble across it by accident. A little earlier, Jean Chr\u00e9tien had given a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,11,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all","category-media-commentary","category-political-stragegy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=845"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/845\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":881,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/845\/revisions\/881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}