I was on a treadmill as I watched Stéphane Dion resign. (Block that metaphor!) Nothing so ill became his era as its ending. Let me count the ways:

It was unpolitical. As former colleague Liza Frulla said: "He has no instinct." He doesn’t play the game, or seem to know one is on, or that it’s in a category that includes: win, lose, ends, means, strategy, tactics. The Tories were better equipped, he said, meaning they had more money that they spent even before the election, misrepresenting him and his green plan. As if he’d stood by on the sidelines, not even trying to get in and play.

He seemed somehow undemocratic. He "accepted" the voters’ choice, though he "disagreed" with it. But he spoke as if the burden was all on them, and he’d had no duty to engage and win them over. Even in his best moment, the debate, his answer to Stephen Harper’s attack on the Green Shift was: Don’t let this man get away with lying. But how were voters to know it was a lie and which lie it was? By doing independent research? It’s as if he came, brought his Green Shift along, and left it to them to opt in or lose out. He blamed the voters and the Tories, not his own failure to argue and persuade.

He was … not smart. Let’s leave it at that. But there is a difference, and it has never seemed clearer, between highly educated and smart.

Of these, the crucial one is: undemocratic. It may appear harsh, but here’s what I mean. What impressed many was Dion’s idealism and "vision." Yet, the 20th century was littered with the damage done by idealistic visionaries who implemented their visions even if the people didn’t get it, on the assumption they’d fall in line. Of course, that isn’t Stéphane Dion; he accepts the voters’ verdict. But his exclusive reliance on his noble vision is still troubling.

Politics basically divides between those for whom it’s about ideas, about their notion of what’s best for everyone, and those for whom it’s about working with others to formulate a vision, or program, on the premise that people have the right and ability to determine their own fate. This distinction is muddied by the cult of leadership, or "strong" leadership, which exists among us in its way, as it did in those 20th-century political disasters. Does it ever occur to anyone that you can have leadership without a vision? Or that a leader could cheerily accept rejection of his vision and continue to lead – in a different direction chosen democratically? At the least, a leader has to work to justify his vision. Yet … "Perhaps I should have explained why I wanted to be prime minister or I should have explained what the Green Shift would have done for them," Dion said. Perhaps? Is he only now realizing that he should have explained (there’s that darned conditional subjunctive again) instead of assuming they should have known? He said he’s resigning since "it is cemented in the mindset of Canadians too much what I represent" and "to change that would be a tremendous effort." But that effort is what his leadership should have been entirely about. What else was he doing there? Waiting to be elected so he could execute his great, misrepresented plans?

At the last Liberal convention, I ran into hardened journalists who were convulsed with anxiety that Dion, who they so admired for his idealistic vision, would lose. That is what the cult of leadership does to you: You tend to forget the genuinely democratic component, even as you retain interest in gritty "political" analysis and gossip.

I don’t think the Liberals who chose Dion were wrong. It was a decent choice, but it was part of an ongoing process. In the next phase, he failed them. Now the journalists have moved on to the race for a new Liberal leader. That’s a pity. There’s still much to be learned from the last one.

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Rick Salutin

Rick Salutin is a Canadian novelist, playwright and critic. He is a strong advocate of left wing causes and writes a regular column in the Toronto Star.