Wasted Effort

There's a lot to be upset about in the death of Jack Layton: the sheer cruelty of cancer taking a victorious fighter just as he reaches the apex of his career, the heartbreak for his ever-hopeful fans and followers, the loss of what appears to me to have been a decent, driven, thoughtful person, far too early in their life.

The worst of it, though, is the stunning loss of potential creativity.

I was very much looking forward to watching the thrust and parry between Layton and Stephen Harper, two leaders who really, really believe their view of the world is correct and if we all would only get on board with their beliefs, all would be well. Layton's blazing passion versus Harper's gimlet-eyed cool would have been a delight to behold in Question Period, for those of us who are into that kind of thing.

I was also excited about seeing how the nascent movement to unite the left was going to turn out. Now, with the Liberals, Bloc and NDP all leaderless, we are in for a few years of one-party rule, which makes for boring politics, not to mention a clear lack of accountability.

But what I was most eagerly anticipating was the attack ads.

You have to know the attack was being burnished, in spite of Layton's illness. After all, he'd been Opposition leader since May, a full four months. It seemed like mere minutes after he became Opposition Leader, ads pillorying Stephane Dion were on air. The ad wrecking ball was swinging toward Michael Ignatieff before he'd even stepped off the plane from Harvard. But in their cases, attacking was like shooting fish in a barrel. It was obvious what the thrust would be: he's not up for the job, he's not from here. duh.

Layton might have been harder to skewer since he embraced the very things that might have been used against him. He was an unabashed mustachioed urbanite academic on a bike. How do you attack that?

In some parts of the country, the attacks could simply have shown Layton with his 'ethnic' wife on their bicycle at the gay pride parade, perhaps with the copy line, "enough said". But in other parts of the country, such an ad might have been seen as actually being in support of the NDP.

Maybe the ads would have used a line like, "He can't even walk, how could he lead?" with a shot of Layton holding up his cane. Would the ads have gone as far as to call Layton a "Pinko"?

It's tragic we'll never know what brilliance was in store.

I imagine a heartbroken advertising executive weeping today as he gently opens his palm over a calm lake in the northern woods, releasing a memory card into the waters below, the copy, pictures, video and plans for a narrative arc softly coming to rest beside the hulk of an Avro Arrow.