Liberal campaign "A series of strategic errors"

The Sun's Greg Weston ripped the Liberal campaign to shreds in an article today, exposing to voters that it's nothing more than a series of strategic errors. (and intones that it's just a pre-cursor of what a Liberal government would look like, if they somehow get elected)

Best line of the article: "He visits a school to talk about tainted meat and hiring more inspectors. Maybe in the coming weeks, he'll visit a meat packing plant to talk about education."

Dion's campaign fails to pass inspection
By GREG WESTON

WALKERTON -- The school gymnasium is packed with more than 800 high school students for a "town hall" encounter with the Liberal leader who wants to be the country's next prime minister.

It is the perfect backdrop for Stephane Dion to make a campaign announcement on education, drugs, apprenticeship programs, cellphone rates -- anything that will go with television footage of a crowd of high school kids.

Instead, Dion announces to 800 suddenly scrunchy faces that if elected, a Liberal government will hire more food inspectors.

It's the same just about everywhere Dion's campaign has gone in the first four days of this election. Little of it seems to have a strategic purpose and even less is boosting the Liberals' electoral chances.

He visits a school to talk about tainted meat and hiring more inspectors.

Maybe in the coming weeks, he'll visit a meat packing plant to talk about education.

Perhaps more to the point, all the smart people running the legendary Liberal Red Machine should maybe do a reality check of their own strategies.

First, someone desperately needs to break the news to Dion his own election rhetoric is not intended to be taken literally, that his touring the country for 37 days is not really for him to win over voters, mangled speech by mangled speech, one handshake at a time.

The modern campaign is all about television, and the leader's tour is mainly a means to provide photo-op footage to frame the day's announcement.

All the talking to Canadians is done a few million at a time, on the nightly news and the next day's headlines.

Campaigns inevitably become a metaphor for what kind of government voters can expect from a party and its leader.

In Dion's case, so far, all signs point to a Liberal government, which, at best, would be confused, if not chaotic.

In Montreal this week, Dion casually mentioned in passing that a Liberal government would double the current $1,200 a year child care supplement introduced by Stephen Harper's government.

There wasn't a mother, child or other TV-friendly sign of daycare needs in the place.

Frantic reporters running around after the event, trying to get details about the $1,200 childcare promise, were led to believe it's all part of the Liberals' Green Shift carbon tax plan announced in June.

Turns out it's not -- it just happened to be included in their 44-page document detailing the Green Shift.

It was the same story yesterday.

Dion's first event of the day was a "roundtable discussion" at a reception hall in Mississauga, an event intended to showcase a very impressive line-up of accomplished female Liberal candidates.

Almost as an afterthought, Dion happened to mention that a Liberal government would give more than a million of Canada's poorest seniors up to $800 more a year, an increase of almost 10% in the federal guaranteed income supplement.

Again, there's not a senior in the place for reporters to interview for a guaranteed positive reaction.

And again, the media's referred to the documentation for the Green Shift.

"The increased funding for seniors was actually announced last fall," a member of Dion's team explains.

"It was included in the documentation for the Green Shift, but it's not actually part of the Green Shift ... The full cost and details of it were announced as part of the Green Shift, but it won't be funded by the Green Shift. Details of that will come later."

Stop the presses.

No plane, trouble getting candidates in Dion's home province of Quebec, and lots of strategic errors on the campaign trail.

Looks like the Tories might be right... Stephane Dion is just not worth the risk.