X Marks the Spot

Liberal leader Stephane Dion stopped by Mississauga, and after his roundtable discussion at the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters offices in Malton, he gave me ten minutes in his hotel room to ask him some questions.

If you've ever spoken to a politician in person, you know that 10 minutes isn't a lot of time. They ramble, they go on tangents that conveniently lead to their message, and they throw in jabs at their rivals. That happens with nearly every question you ask a politician. It's infuriating. So, in ten minutes, I asked three questions before the communications manager, waving crazily in my peripheral vision, cut me off.

Regardless, it was an experience, even if the softball question I threw to Dion about his local MPs couldn't be boiled down to an easily quotable 10 words or so.

As for Dion, he seems like a decent guy, but lacks the presence most leaders seem to naturally possess. Bob Rae possesses it, as does Michael Ignatieff. Gerard Kennedy, when I met him, did not. Dion comes across as a normal guy, but not a normal guy in the Stephen Harper normal guy way. Harper's like the guy who sits beside you at the bar to watch the hockey game and can recount, play by play, Rick Vaive's best-ever single-game performance as a Leaf. Dion's the guy who sits beside you at a lecture at the ROM who has some esoteric knowledge about Ghengis Khan and the possible reasons for his mysterious death in 1227.

Both are normal guys. They're not larger than life. They're just life size. In fact, Dion was noticeably small. He's roughly the same height as I am (5'11"), but he has a very thin build. Can an effective leader be life size? Why do I expect that party leaders should be taller than me?

How much does that matter?

Anyway, Dion was kind. He was welcoming. His English seemed worse in real life than it does on television (in his defence, my French is virtually non-existent), but he set aside some time for us, so we're grateful.