Leadership and Politics

By pressing the niqab issue, the Conservatives made an enormous strategic mistake. In fact, it was probably the single biggest blunder by any political party in this extraordinary election season.

Pierre Trudeau knew something about the devastation caused by war. As a young man in 1948, he traveled from London to see the convulsions of Eastern Europe in the wake of World War II. He saw the fighting that wracked the Middle East following the birth of Israel. He saw the madness of India’s partition and the chaos in Shanghai as the nationalist armies retreated before Mao’s onslaught. As he later wrote in his memoirs, “the route that I had chosen was strewn with obstacles created by armed conflicts of that time. It was incredible— everywhere I went seemed to be at war.”

The attacks of last September 11 tore a ragged hole in the fabric of our reality. Through that hole we glimpsed something hideous. As is in our worst nightmares, it was indistinct and incomprehensible. We couldn’t see its beginning, its end, or its true form. But we knew immediately that this thing – whatever it was – was both profoundly dangerous and utterly terrifying.

It has been a month since we finally learned that George W. Bush will be the next president of the United States. Pundits have issued their solemn assessments of the presidential-selection process and moved on to comment on the next wave of momentous events in our adrenaline-charged political universe. But in their rush, they’ve missed a key lesson behind the fracas in Florida.

We might not have much respect for them, but we should have some sympathy for the leaders of the new world we’ve created.