Saturday, February 21, 2009  Lacking distinction  I noted
yesterday that both Stephen Harper and Michael Ignatieff appear
to have gone out of their way to emphasize bipartisanship in
their meeting with Barack Obama. But let's look in a bit more
detail at what Ignatieff had to say, and what it may say about
the likelihood of the Libs reversing their current lack of
effective opposition in the future: Mr. Ignatieff spent a lot of
time talking about the importance of bipartisanship in Canada on
foreign policy and how they had made the decision to back the
government on the deployment after the Manley Commission, and
that they saw this as not a partisan issue; it was more
important to get the country together on issues like the budget
and on Afghanistan and Pakistan, and that this was a commitment
that they were sharing across the parties, and that they wanted
to work together with the United States. Now, the first obvious
point is that in emphasizing "bipartisanship", Ignatieff looks
to have cut off a substantia