Our villian is better than their villain

Given a choice between a scary villain and a histrionic incompetent, I'll always choose the villain, thank you very much. Paul Martin's biggest problem is that he's revealed himself as a simpering indecisive wimp, and worse he's turned into a laughing stock without any respect from the populace. It's not the corruption, it's the indecision, stupid. Trustscam is about the waffling and the coverup, not the crime.

Joe Clark in comparison looks like Rambo. Clark in fact would have wiped the floor had he still been running, but sadly both timing and luck was never on his side. Dammit Joe, we'll never know, will we?

Stockwell Day? Scary, yes, but not a villain, instead he's the definition of "laughing stock". Not enough respect to be a villain. Sorry. The definition of a villain is a scary person you still respect, the kid that's left alone in the playground. Paul Martin has turned into the kid even the teachers want to bury in the snow.

Preston Manning? People said he was "scary" but unfortunately he was mostly annoying, especially when he was right, which was very often. This turned him into a lecturing pastor/parent, not a villain. Preston was the right wing Ed Broadbent, without the hippie chick sex-appeal. He wasn't a villain, didn't want to be, and consequently he went only slightly further than Ed. Like Ed, he's still worthy of respect as a statesman, however.

On the other hand, Chretien was a villain, but he was our villain. That was his schtick, and he stuck to it like glue. People hated him but voted for him anyways, just because. The Liberal villain was better than the Alliance non-villain. Or at least used to be, until the Alliance and now the Conservatives finally found a villain of their own. Chretien, that old master, knew when to leave. He left only when his nemesis had to finally face a real contender.

Now we have the reverse, a Conservative villain vs. a Liberal wimp. And look at the results.

People say they want decent, intelligent, kind, rational careful folk as their leaders, but that's not true. If it was Ed Broadbent would be retiring after twenty-five years of rule, Margaret Thatcher would still be a housewife, and Ronald Reagan would have died a B-movie actor. People don't want nice when it comes to their leaders. Look at the French. When was the last time the French had a President that wasn't a villain?

People want villains. Chretien understood this. Trudeau perfected this, sometimes with machiavellian excess, and Mulroney unfortunately let his villainry get out of hand and just like in the Bond movies Canada pressed the "self-destruct" button on his party.

Ignatieff's handlers seem to recognize this.

Peterson's speech about him at his fundraiser was, in a nutshell, "our villain is better than their villain", which, in essense, is what leadership contests are about.