Topic: A place to discuss Jack Layton's Legacy objectively

[Rifleman62]

Agree with recceguy, as what he wrote fairly sums it up for me as well.

[Danjanou]

If you believe mariomike's G&M article, it sounds like they paid more around $1100 a month - a bit closer? (I have no clue re:  TO pricing in those days)

That said....It's all about the optics (who isn't getting rent-controlled space when they're paying allegedly full market in a co-op?), and if ANYBODY should have known that, it would have been someone like JL.

The "voluntary" surcharge appears to have been offered only after all this came to light, perhaps as a public pennance and it was shortly after they moved out and bought the nice house. Rental prices in TO were really bad then, they're still outrageous mind bu thr condo boom did create some more rental stock downtown and that slowed the rising rents somewhat by end of decade. $1200-1400 IIRC would have been about right for a 3 bdrm. We ended up paying a grand fof a 2 Bdrm in 2002. Mind a bare closet sized room complete with roaches, bedbugs and shared bath and "kitchen" in a downtown rooming house averages $400-450 these days old buddy.

[milnews.ca]

The "voluntary" surcharge appears to have been offered only after all this came to light, perhaps as a public pennance and it was shortly after they moved out and bought the nice house.

Seen - thanks.

[Chris Pook]

....His inner circle of political advisors have had weeks to 'work' the media and 'script' this week. I suspect that much of what we are seeing by way of public reaction, while genuine, has been carefully but oh so gently 'directed.'

Nae Doot at a', Argyle.

[Technoviking]

I think that some of the outpouring is grief, genuine grief.  Not so much for the tragic suffering and end to a public figure, but because now, without Mr. Layton, the NDP are without a rudder.  And let's be frank: love or hate his policies, he came across as a likable guy.  And now the "Great Orange Hope" is gone, because he had everything going for him for "the oppressed masses".


But, in the end, one pant leg on a time is how he got dressed.  He made deals, he opposed "things" simply to gain points, but I think part of it isn't just that the guy died in a terrible manner, but the NDP supporters out there have lost their best hope at forming a government in Canada.

[Rifleman62]

As long as his "letter" which he "penned " does not come back to martyr the NDP to the stupid and uninformed.

While he was lying in state, commentators were relating the long line ups for PET. I wonder how many in that line have now grown up and matured?

[Infanteer]

But, in the end, one pant leg on a time is how he got dressed.  He made deals, he opposed "things" simply to gain points

But he didn't make gold records.

[milnews.ca]

His inner circle of political advisors have had weeks to 'work' the media and 'script' this week. I suspect that much of what we are seeing by way of public reaction, while genuine, has been carefully but oh so gently 'directed.'

On that note, this from The Canadian Press:

Jack Layton's state funeral will be as much a political event as a religious ceremony.

But while the overt politicization of the NDP leader's death has raised eyebrows in some quarters, his former top aide makes no apologies.

Anne McGrath says that's exactly what Layton wanted as he struggled during his final days to ensure something positive would come of his untimely death.

From the moment he received the bad news from cancer tests in mid-July, McGrath says, Layton began scripting in intricate detail how his death and funeral should play out, planning how he could cushion the blow to his beloved party and motivate New Democrats to carry on his work.

"I think he was continuing to hope that this would not be the case, obviously," McGrath says.

"But he was very clear that if this was going to happen that there had to be something good out of it. I think a lot of people, when you're facing moments like this with death, people look for meaning and he knew that." ....

[Thucydides]

David Frum on Jack Layton's legacy:

http://www.nationalpost.com/opinion/columnists/just+said/5315859/story.html

He did it just as he said

David Frum, National Post · Aug. 27, 2011 | Last Updated: Aug. 27, 2011 5:23 AM ET

I first met Jack Layton in the mid-1990s - I don't have a record of the date, but I'd guess about 1994 - at a pub in downtown Toronto.

Layton was already an important figure in city politics, but his eyes were fixed on a bigger prize. His handlers invited me to come meet the man who they explained would become the first NDP prime minister of Canada.

Why me? I suppose for the reason stated in the punchline of the joke about the aged Jewish man going to Catholic confessional to describe his torrid affair with a younger woman: "I'm telling everyone!"

In the mid-1990s, Layton was unveiling a new kind of left-wing politics: environmentalist, feminist, urban, professional and sympathetic to Quebec nationalism.

At the time, this was a radical concept. Many would say reckless.

The party that Layton wanted to lead was a party funded, supported and elected by industrial, mining and forestry unions. And that power was yielding strong results.

Under Ed Broadbent, who represented the auto town of Oshawa, Ont., the NDP had soared in the 1980s. They polled second after the Conservatives in Western Canada. They had elected premiers in B.C. and Ontario. The old ways seemed to be delivering results.

I pressed Layton on this point during our talk. Did he understand what he was putting at risk with his new strategy? How could he possibly reconcile his opening to Quebec with his party's commitment to a commanding government role in the economy?

I remember two things from our interview most vividly: the weakness of Layton's answers - and the strength of his confidence. Like most politicians, Layton was an activist, not an analyst; a feeler, not a thinker. He felt certain his concept would work. And of course - it did.

The 1990s proved as disastrous a period for the NDP as the 1980s had been prosperous.

The federal party was battered; the union-backed provincial parties were swept from office in B.C. and Ontario. New labour-saving technology and global competition shrank the membership of industrial and natural-resource unions. The base of the NDP shifted to the public sector, and to a workforce that was better educated, more female, more francophone - just as Layton had intuited at the beginning of the decade.

Layton built his party to prepare for a different future. Quebec might seem hopeless NDP territory to everyone else. Layton believed he could break through. The environment might seem a weird issue to emphasize through a global economic catastrophe. Layton believed the environment remained the issue of the future.

Though increasingly ill, Layton had the will and force and guts to put his body through the stress and exhaustion of national elections - and to survive to see his hopes vindicated and his plans succeed.

Layton never did become prime minister. Even granted better health, he likely never would have. Canadian politics don't lean that far left. And now he has bequeathed his successors a legacy at once hugely successful and desperately challenging: Can they hold what he gained?

Layton gained success precisely by discarding old ways. Lesser successors may draw a very different lesson: not to try new ways of their own, to adapt to new times ahead, but forever to follow Jack's ways, even as those ways in their turn become obsolete.

That great political pessimist Enoch Powell observed: "All political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure, because that is the nature of politics and of human affairs."

Only somebody as willfully provocative as Powell would have used the word "happy" to make this point. There is nothing "happy" about early death, and even the most political of men have hopes and aspirations and loves beyond politics.

Yet the truth of Powell's words is this: Layton was that rare politician who lived a life that ended in political triumph. I hoist to him the memory of that long-ago beer to say, "Here's to you Jack - you did it just the way you said you would." How many on this Earth can say the same?

© David Frum dfrum@frumforum.com

[Retired AF Guy]

Looks like the gloves are starting to come off:

From Ezra Levant: Political weaponry: Layton's death has created a paparazzi-friendly partisan rally

From W.E. (Bill) Belliveau: The Canonization of Jack Layton

[Old Sweat]

Out of respect I had avoided commenting on his legacy until now. He achieved an astonishing political success, thanks in part to his energy, drive and personality. However, much of his success in Quebec, where he made truly astouding gains despite a slate of obscure non-entities, was because he pandered to Quebec nationalism. Specifically he evoked the NDP's Sherbrooke Declaration which repudiated the Clarity Act in favour of the 50 percent plus one option so favoured by the independence movement.

To take the party over the next hurdle, which would be to form government, it must at the least win the most seats in the next election. That to me means winning more than 30 seats from the Tories, which may be easier said than done. What about merging with the Liberals? Unfortunately the combined party would still require to take about the same number to gain power in a two party house. This second option depends on the willingness of the Liberals to go that route, which is by no means certain.

Now, what if a sovereigntist party gains power in Quebec and declares it will hold a referendum and not consider itself bound by the Clarity Act? How many NDP supporters, especially the soft social democrats would be willing to go along with that? And the NDP prospects are worse if no union with the Grits happens and it is in a minority position. It would be defeated in the House and then very likely would be crushed at the polls.

Another option is the Quebec support softening, which could move the party back into third place or worse. Even without out that, it still must more than double its support outside Quebec to win a majority.

There are a few other scenarios, none of which are any more attractive. It may be, that just as Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg was the high water mark of the Confederacy, the NDP has nowhere to go but down.

[Rifleman62]

Quebec bled the Liberals dry, then the Conservatives, the Liberals again, formed their own national party to bleed dry, will bleed the NDP dry, all the while bleeding Canada dry.

Enough is enough.

[E.R. Campbell]

Others have said this much better than I, but it bears repeating: Québec politics is a sort of cloud coocoo land full of irrational dreams and devoid of any reasonable sense of history. No one, not Lucien Bouchard and not Jack Layton can or could ever meet Québec's expectations because they are, simultaneously, irrational and contradictory. But Layton played the nationalist card and, for better or worse the NDP is the opposition in parliament and, therefore, for the media, the government in waiting. The NDP caucus is top heavy with young, inexperienced Québec political neophytes who, in most cases, I think, ran on NDP ideals but ended up winning with nationalist votes. They cannot deliver – no one can: Trudeau could not, Mulroney could not, Bouchard could not, Chrétien could not, Duceppe could not, Layton could not have, either.

Québec will fragment again – two or three federalist parties and two or three nationalist parties; it will be interesting to see into which group the NDP falls.

Harper is, I believe learning to govern without Québec – not against Québec, just without it. When AB, BC and ON have even more seats in the HoC Québec and it's fractured, fatuous politics will matter less and less and the other major national party, the Liberals, will, finally, understand that, too.

[Jarnhamar]

I didn't know Mr Layton personally, so I won't get in that long line of people spilling their platitudes, guts, and wearing their hearts on a sleeve about this ordinary socialist that got too much air time. I won't call him 'Jack" like he was my next door neighbour, because he wasn't and first names are reserved for people who you have met and have given you permission to use their surname. I'm sure he was a great guy to have a beer with, but he is just a person. A person that, until a week ago, most couldn't stand because of his communist values.

I am sorry for the way he went. No one wants to be saddled with that crap. I'm sorry for his family, that they had to endure this and I'm sorry for their loss. Cancer is a ***** and no one should have to endure it.

I didn't like his public persona, his policies or his yappy little ghetto dog attitude.

I am not sorry he's gone from politics. I'm not sorry that this will cause extreme gnashing of teeth in his party. And I won't be sorry if his party implodes because he is not at the helm.

To me, Jack Layton was a ponce and a poser. He played to the supposed downtrodden, socially unacceptable for their unwillingness to work, and any others that wanted something for nothing. He lived pretty high on the hog, between him and Olivia for a couple of 'We're all equal, power to the people' bullshit.

He also managed to shanghai every Union organization in the country. Not unexpected or difficult, considering the socialist bent, the small minded, short term worker agenda all these organizations have.

He is not a Saint, he is not a Martyr. He was a person who, most here an elseware, despised. He was a hypocrite. A typical politician. Get over it.

This is the guy that refused to attend Ramp Ceremonies.

He didn't go to Afghanistan, as many politicians from every party did, even though he could have gone to see first hand and chose not to.

He tried to use the deaths of fallen troops as part of his agenda on the 5 o'clock news. Least he could have done was go to a ramp ceremony, but he couldn't be bothered. I don't even remember any official statements either.

He called us "war criminals" with regards to the implications on mistreatment of Taliban detainees by the Afghan authorities. He couldn't look us in the eyes when these accusations were proven false and even offer an apology.

He wanted us to negotiate with an enemy that maims and murders women and children based on their archaic 12th century beliefs.

I really fail to see the 'greatness' of Jack Layton or why we are celebrating his passing. Great guy? My dad was a great guy, but the PM didn't acknowledge him.

Jack Layton was not that special. Quit pretending he was.

 That's my  on the subject. Mourn in private and spare us the bullshit platitudes.

I really enjoyed reading this and couldn't agree more (nor could ever word it so well).

As far as I'm concerned he was an ***.  I'm not going to jump on the greif tourisim train and water down my opinion of him because he died.

I've read one NDP MP said he gave his life for the country? Sure.

[Lance Wiebe]

I am 100% in agreement with recce Guy.

Well said....(far better than I could do!)

[Brad Sallows]

I would not have "canonized" Jack Layton a week before I knew he had any sort of serious illness and I will not now.  Hard turns of fate - or benevolent ones - are not factors which should lift or lower a person's reputation.

[Thucydides]

I would not have "canonized" Jack Layton a week before I knew he had any sort of serious illness and I will not now.  Hard turns of fate - or benevolent ones - are not factors which should lift or lower a person's reputation.

This is done all the time, especially for people reaching the height of their careers or on a rapidly upwards trajectory. When their lives are cut short, there is a general feeling of "what if" and "what might have been" among fans, friends and followers. Music stars like Jim Morrison, Jimmi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Ian Curtis and Amy Winehouse are perhaps the most obvious, but we can also consider James Dean in the movie business or JFK and RFK in the political arena. Generally, a close look at these individuals reveals a very different picture of their personalities and abilities (or even their accomplishments, take an objective look at JFK's presidential record and it is possible he would have had a tough fight to gain a second term).

I'm sure that dozens of other contenders in various fields could be nominated for the "What if" cannonization.

[Rifleman62]

What day is it that Jack will arise again?

[Hammer Sandwich]

What day is it that Jack will arise again?

It'll take about 3 1/2 years.

First, (and this starts right now), they'll run a study to find the tomb.
Then, another grant to decide who goes into the tomb.
Then, another (grant-funded) study to decide how many/who should be in the tomb.
Then, a public poll, (grant-funded), determining if the (Tomb-goers) represent the working populous in sufficient numbers.

Then, caviar and cocktails!
(But, they will feel bad, and invite some "working-class Joes"...)


Then they'll find the tomb.



Lemme know what happens when they figure out how to roll the stone away.

[ModlrMike]

Something like this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zjz16xjeBAA

Followed by lots of this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5P2jJdrz9bY&feature=related

[Thucydides]

In the old days, the departed King was buried with his household possessions, servants and other sundries to assist in the afterlife.

Just saying.........

[Hammer Sandwich]

Something like this?

Right on the friggin' button.

I didn't like the policies or party to begin with, but, from what I've read, I like him a little bit less everyday.

I still don't think it changes the fact that he was an excellent leader (insert Stalin/Hitler/BB Ghali stuff here).

A good leader does not a Saint make.

WHOOPS:...eta: STONE HER!
(always gotta continue any Python)