Bob Rae with Ontario Ombudsman Daniel Hill, March 1984.

You sound more elegant when you speak French, Pierre Trudeau told his children. Those of us who don’t really speak French will never quite know what this means. But we can catch a glimmer of it when we read in Le Devoir that “Le Torontois Bob Rae est devenu le chef intérimaire du Parti libéral du Canada.”Â  Say what you like: “Torontois” does sound more elegant than “Torontonian.”

Even in French of course no “Torontois” has ever been altogether successful in Canadian federal politics. (Mackenzie King was born and raised in Kitchener, back when it was still known as Berlin, Ontario. And during his long career as an MP in Ottawa he variously represented: Prince Albert in Saskatchewan; Glengarry, Waterloo North, and York North in Ontario; and Prince in Prince Edward Island.)

In fact Bob Rae himself was born in Ottawa. His father was “an eminent Canadian career diplomat,” and the young Bob Rae “attended Crichton Street Public School in Ottawa, Horace Mann Public School and Gordon Junior High School in Washington, DC, and the International School of Geneva.”

The young-adult Bob Rae “graduated with honours from University College, University of Toronto,” however, before going on to Balliol College at the University of Oxford, on a Rhodes Scholarship. He subsequently took up long-term residence in Toronto. He has always represented Toronto electoral districts in both his federal and provincial political careers. And he currently sits as federal MP for Toronto Centre.

 With Toronto Catholic School Trustee candidate, Sandra Anthony, 2010.

So it is no doubt fair enough for Le Devoir to allude to “Le Torontois Bob Rae” today. And for this and a few other reasons it is also a good thing that in accepting the job of new interim federal Liberal leader, following the massacre of the party this past May 2, 2011, Mr. Rae must give up any residual aspirations to become the next permanent federal Liberal leader, to be chosen “between 18 and 24 months” from now. (And besides his wife says he really doesn’t want the permanent job, even if the interim leader could apply for it.)

All the same, it may well be that Mr. Rae has finally got the Canadian political job for which he  is best qualified – and even the job for which the Canadian Great Spirit has wisely chosen him, at last. It is impossible to know just what the future now holds for the once mighty Liberal Party of Canada. But if it does have any future of consequence, Bob Rae is likely enough nicely positioned right in the middle, between its past and whatever the future may bring.

Mr. Rae’s progressive assets …

The selection of Mr. Rae as interim leader was made by the Liberal parliamentary caucus in Ottawa (in both the Canadian House of Commons and the unreformed Senate of Canada), and then quickly ratified by the party’s national board of directors.

Bob Rae and Marc Garneau, April 2011.

As reported by Jane Taber: “Mr. Rae ran against Montreal MP Marc Garneau in a secret ballot –  and although the view was that it would be a coronation for Mr. Rae, who has so much caucus support, especially among senators, it was not quite the case …  an insider says Mr. Garneau had some significant support, partly in reaction to former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien’s efforts at lobbying for Mr. Rae and partly as a result of Mr. Rae’s musings on election night about a merger with the NDP.”

Mr. Rae has apparently made clear that, as interim Liberal leader, he will “not entertain a merger with the NDP.”Â  And this no doubt also makes sense because the freshly empowered New Democratic leader Jack Layton is not at all interested in any kind of merger with the Liberals at the moment either.

Bob Rae’s history as an NDP federal MP and then as the first NDP premier of Ontario, however, does put him on the more progressive lefty side of the Liberal Party of Canada – which is almost certainly the side that has the strongest potential future. It was one of Michael Ignatieff’s mistakes to stress that the party was “centrist” not “left.” (This probably helped in at least some degree to bring the Layton New Democrats to their current unprecedented federal status as official opposition in the new 41st Parliament.) And Mr. Harper has already made it clear enough that he is prepared to court economic liberals who are paranoid about both “social conservatism” and the mere word “socialism.”

Bob Rae at Kandahar airfield in Afghanistan, November 2010.

At the same time, Bob Rae began his Canadian political life as a Liberal, and he has returned to the fold. His brother John is a Vice-President of Power Corporation, a prominent member of the federal Liberal Party, and served as an adviser to Liberal Prime Minister Jean Chrétien. All this gives Bob Rae today some intimate ties with perhaps still potent practical political and economic sides of Canadian Liberalism, that the Layton New Democrats may ultimately find they need to somehow connect with before the next Canadian federal election in 2015.

Similarly, if you still believe that neither the Liberals nor the New Democrats are going to be able to defeat the new Harper Conservative Party all by themselves, Bob Rae’s history as Ontario NDP leader at the time of the 1985—1987 Liberal-NDP Accord, that finally ended more than four consecutive decades of Progressive Conservative rule in Ontario provincial politics, could also prove helpful, in rebuilding a more responsive Liberal Party of Canada that can resonate with the changing moods of the challenging 21st century.

And his elitist liabilities (which really don’t matter in the end) …

Bob Rae and Margaret Atwood, November 2009.

At the same time again, Bob Rae’s recent description of the Liberal vision as a “Profound belief in the Charter (of Rights and Freedoms), a profound respect for the diversity of the country, a dislike of authoritarian governments, a dislike of narrow mindedness, a determination to move beyond ideology, a rejection of cheap and easy solutions, a rejection of the bumper-sticker approach to government” has a nice ring to it, in some ways. But it still lacks a number of things. And for want of better words one of them could be called a populist touch.

The Hon. Robert Keith Rae, PC, OC, OOnt, QC, BA, LLB, BPhil, LLD (hc), MP, that is to say, somewhat too closely matches the ironic stereotype of the North American liberal elitist and cultural aristocrat in our time. (This was also part of the problem of both Stéphane Dion and Michael Ignatieff, of course – and a problem not faced by either Jean Chrétien or Stephen Harper, even if Mr. Harper’s populism is almost all an artifice manufactured by spin doctors.)

Bob Rae and Liberal candidate for Vancouver Island North, Mike Holland, August 2010.

Canada being what it is, this elitist/populist conflict has, especially over the past half century or so, become entangled (often quite misleadingly) with assorted real and alleged conflicts between various regions and centres. The one real thing about Mr. Harper’s populism, it would seem, is that he apparently did not feel he fit in with the establishment of the Toronto where he was born and raised. So he moved to Calgary to start a new life of freedom. And he retains the anti-Torontois feeling of being left out that passes for populism in many regions today – starting with Quebec City and Montreal, and then moving across the land, from Halifax to Hamilton, Thunder Bay, Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Calgary, Vancouver, Victoria, Yellowknife, and beyond.

Bob Rae, for better or worse (and for ultimate success in Canadian politics today it is bound to be worse?), would never seem to have felt that he did not fit in with any establishment. He was raised from childhood to honour and work comfortably with and for such things. The federal riding he sits for today is Toronto Centre, which includes the ancient Central Canadian establishment enclave of Rosedale. He reaches out and embraces such things almost instinctually. They have been good to him, and he believes in returning the favour.

Bob Rae with Hilary and Galen Weston, November 2010. DAVID COOPER/TORONTO STAR.

From the other side of the room, so to speak, Bob Rae just does not understand what it is like to feel you do not fit in. It is true enough that, as explained in his Wkipedia biography: “During his period in Britain he became involved with social work, helping squatters find rental accommodation in London. He attributes the experience with helping him develop a deepened commitment to social justice and, on his return to Canada in 1974 Rae joined the social democratic NDP. He worked in labour law during the mid-1970s.” But, as noble as all this may be, it is of course not the same as feeling that you yourself do not fit in.

In his own way, it would seem, Stephen Harper does understand what it is like to feel you do not fit in to the establishment that hovers somewhere above you, ultimately indifferent to your fate. He claims to be an ordinary middle-class Canadian, and as misleading as this claim is, there do appear to be large numbers of ordinary middle-class Canadians who believe it. The next permanent leader of the Liberal Party of Canada ought to be someone who can at least similarly pretend to be an ordinary middle-class Canadian too – and, of course, of course, definitely not someone who can in any way be realistically described as “Le Torontois Bob Rae.”

Meanwhile, the federal Liberals need an interim leader who can start rebuilding the party for the deeper future. And if you have any progressive impulses at all that are not rabidly NDP-ideological, it is at least some kind of optimistic sign to believe that Bob Rae just might be exactly the right person for this job, right now! And it is comforting to think that if the Harper Conservatives do suddenly unleash a new round of attack ads on Bob Rae, as he expects, and like those they unleashed on Mr. Dion and Mr. Ignatieff, they will just be wasting the hard-earned money of their many middle-class donors.

Bob Rae and Lynn, campaign co-ordinator for Okanagan-Shuswap Liberal candidate Janna Francis, 2011.

Because by the time a great many Canadian voters start thinking seriously about federal politics again, the Hon. Robert Keith Rae, PC, OC, OOnt, QC, BA, LLB, BPhil, LLD (hc), MP will no longer be leader of the Liberal Party of Canada. And only the results of the more subtle and crafty but still admirably high-minded skills he undoubtedly does enjoy will be in evidence, in ways that only a few very close observers will actually be able to see. Even so, with all his all-too-human faults and frailties, there are no doubt still more than a few among us who will want to wish Bob Rae good luck.

A joke I received in my email yesterday from an esteemed colleague illustrates the ultimate point:

Pierre Trudeau, Queen Elizabeth, and Vladimir Putin all die and go to hell. While there, they spy a red phone and ask what the phone is for. The devil tells them it is for calling back to Earth.  Putin asks to call  Russia and talks for 5 minutes.  When he is finished the devil informs him that the cost is a million dollars, so Putin writes him a cheque. Next Queen Elizabeth calls England and talks for 30 minutes. When she is finished the devil informs her that the cost is 6 million dollars, so she writes him a cheque. Finally Pierre Trudeau gets his turn and talks for 4 hours.  When he is finished the devil informs him that the cost is $5.00. When Putin hears this he goes ballistic and asks the devil why Pierre Trudeau got to call  Canada so cheaply. The devil smiles and replies: “Since Stephen Harper took over, the country has gone to hell, so it’s a local call.”