Today, the Conservative Party members voted for Rona Ambrose to be their interim leader. To put it mildly, I was very surprised.
She’s held eight cabinet posts in the last nine years. I recall seeing video of her in full-on damage control mode, and very little else. When has she stood up and really made an impact in a positive way? When have we seen what she’s really all about? I thought surely one of the other seven people vying for the interim leadership would be a better fit.
Then it hit me. None of the other seven are any better. Harper was such a micromanager that the only time anyone in his cabinet said anything was when they said exactly what Harper wanted them to say. Beyond a very few trusted people close to him, everyone else may as well have been a Harper clone. Ambrose was certainly very visible, but I doubt we’ve heard any of her own words in those nine years.
This is the legacy Stephen Harper leaves behind. I was going to suggest that all the conservative MPs (except yours, if you have one) may as well be new people for all we know them…but it really is worse than that. If they were new, we wouldn’t expect to know them.
I wish Ambrose, and her successor, all the luck in the world. They’re going to need it to move past Harper’s very long shadow.
Shawn
There is an upside. apparently if you take the interim job, you then can’t run for the full time position. after the election, she is gone.
Rick
I was hoping it would be Nicholson, for exactly that reason. But honestly, i can’t imagine Nicholson running for PM. The party wouldn’t let him be the PM-seeking leader. Won’t happen.
Shawn
I said the same thing. She is useless.
Rick
I can’t say whether I agree at this point. Now that the puppet strings have been cut, we can see what she’s all about. She may be useless…but we have no idea at this point. IMO, anyway.