From Ignatieff's problem to his biggest asset

Adam Radwanski

Say this for Bob Rae: He's an absolutely remarkable public performer.

Yesterday, he was defiant - a champion of his party's grassroots full of righteous indignation over party elites' attempt to take their votes away from them. Less than 24 hours later, he graciously stepped aside to endorse Michael Ignatieff - his tone and demeanour virtually unrecognizable, displaying not a trace of bitterness.

Compare it to, say, Stephen Harper's periodic attempts to seem concilliatory, and you get a sense of how good Rae really is at this game.

I'm not entirely sure what that says about his personality. But if I'm Ignatieff, I'm not worried about that right now. I'm worried about how to use Rae's skills to overcome my own shortcomings.

Ignatieff can be a strong public performer too, but in a much different way. He has the capacity to be seen to rise above the fray - something that may be of particular appeal to voters after what we've seen the past few weeks. But that will require him to avoid getting sucked into the trap of many opposition leaders in the country, wherein they wind up spending way too much of their time outside the House of Commons attacking the government in the same tone they would use during Question Period.

Rae, on the other hand, can spend every minute attacking the government if he wants to, since it won't be his image the Liberals are peddling. And as one of the best and most experienced opposition politicians in the country, he'll likely do a damn good job of it.

Unlike Ignatieff, too, Rae is someone who can afford to say yes to every media invitation - as he's been doing lately. Whereas Ignatieff needs to be carefully controlled to avoid veering wildly off-message, Rae can do multiple TV appearances daily without saying a single thing he hasn't thought through.

In other words, it's not in Ignatieff's interests for Rae's profile to be reduced now that he's out of the way in the leadership race. The more profile he has, the more Ignatieff should get to focus on what he's good at.

Ego may yet get in the way of Ignatieff and Rae complementing each other when one of them answers to the other. But if Jean Chretien and Paul Martin - actively hated each other - were able to pull it off for most of the 1990s, two supposed lifelone friends should presumably be able to do likewise.