Michael Ignatieff’s slippery habits

Michael Ignatieff has some slippery habits. And they seem to make many people uncomfortable, even angry.

Michael Ignatieff has some habits that unsettle and upset people.

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Okay, those opening lines were sort of self-referential. [1]   It was a self-amusing play on the opening bit for an article about Michael Ignatieff that I wrote six and a half years ago.

Who is Michael Ignatieff? Iggy is an international academic-cum-Canuck politician.

Back when I wrote my first piece about Iggy, the more complimentary word “surprising” stood in the stead of “slippery.” 

So, what happened to Ignatieff in the meantime? I mean, what was it that spurred me to rewrite such a deathless and finely-executed lead? 

Well, a few things, I suppose. Not least of them: the Iraq War debate. 

Michael Ignatieff, you see, took a rather pro-war position on Iraq back in 2003, when the US-led war was launched. He’s been something of an interventionist hawk. Ignatieff has stuck to his virtual guns since then. 

 

Up until now. 

Today, in The New York Times Magazine, Michael Ignatieff retracted. Iggy performed a mea culpa for all of America to read. Ignatieff writes that the Iraq War “condemned the political judgment of a president,” but also condemned the judgement of Iggy and other sideliners who cheered for war in Mesopotamia. 

Not a pretty sight. Nor was Iggy’s mea culpa.

Yet, this much should be said: Ignatieff’s pro-war arguments were not quite the unequivocal and fervent ones that you’d hear from the likes of other pro-war pundits, like, say, Christopher Hitchens. Ignatieff seemed to hedge and qualify on some fine points.

But Iggy has expressed himself in true Ignatieffian fashion elsewhere. So there’s no point in me reiterating here, because Ignatieff is much better at imitating his own style than I’d ever be.

I will say this also: there remains much to recommend Michael Ignatieff. The cat can write. The cat thinks big. And the cat’s written some fine and interesting tomes. [2]   Despite my pre-move library purge, I kept a few Iggy books, and still crack them open on occasion, to refresh an idea or look up a factoid.

Ignatieff scribbles his mea culpa in comparably fine style.  

I mean — WOW!   Ignatieff pulls no punches.  

Iggy mentions (more than once) that he’s a former “denizen of Harvard.” So only a brave man or fool would dare question his judgement! He’s a bloody professor for gods’ sake! 

Iggy uses phrases like “distant hoofbeats of the horse of history” and “in charmed lives warning bells do not sound.” Which tells me that Iggy is one smart and fancy fellow who could clobber most of us in any staged debate. He also uses the word “ruefully.” Which tells me Iggy spent some time around Cambridge or Oxford — and those guys can debate the pants off any North American chap! (And if they couldn’t debate our pants off, I’m sure they’d like to try!) 

In his NYT piece, Iggy also invokes Machiavelli, Burke and Beckett. So I know we’re dealing with a guy who’s read a bunch of smart books. And Iggy invokes his intellectual godfather, Isaiah Berlin (more than once). [3]  In fact, Iggy goes so far as to call his philosopher idol Isaiah a “prophet” — which slapped me as really over-the-top and desperate. [4]

       

POP QUIZ: What is the difference between a philosopher and a prophet? 

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So, once again: what happened to Michael Ignatieff, the man who was once an intrepid journalist and human rights scholar at Harvard?? 

My modest and tangential guess:

The impulse for reelection as Liberal MP for Etobicoke-Lakeshore (a Toronto, Ontario electoral riding) has trumped the academic impulse for intellectual integrity. 

Read: the Iraq War has become increasingly unpopular round the world, and it was never too popular here in Canada. When he entered politics a couple years ago, Ignatieff took some heat for his hawkish arguments about Iraq. Now, between Canadian electoral cycles and during the silly summer season, was probably a safe time to repent and sneak to moral high ground. [5]

The trouble with such late mea culpas is this: Michael Ignatieff is making virtue out of his apparent (political) necessity. He’s staking a moral high ground that was already staked long ago, by academic/journalistic/political colleagues, many of whom can claim inconvenient foresight dating back to the early part of this decade, before the Iraq War was started. [6] 

When I read that New York Times piece by Ignatieff, one word came to mind: Slippery. 

Actually, another ‘S’ word came first: Sleazy.  

But I didn’t want to be too hard on Iggy, because I do admire him for some earlier works. 

All of this somehow calls to mind Jack Black’s timeless lines from the flick High Fidelity:            

BARRY
 
[…]  Subquestion - is it in fact unfair to criticize
 
a formerly great artist for his latter-day sins? 
 
“Is it better to burn out than to fade away?”
 

So, is Michael Ignatieff burning out or fading away?

Probably neither. My guess: he’s posturing for his next big move.  

After all, Ignatieff is a leading member of parliament (deputy House leader) representing the Liberal Party, Canada’s so-called ‘natural governing party.’ He’s still a comparatively young, and seemingly vigorous, man. He was a contender for the Liberal party leadership last year, and there’s still a fair chance he will one day be a prime minister or foreign minister (or both) in the not-too-distant future.

Iggy thinks academics are too theoretical.