Late, constantly grimacing leader of the Federal Liberals who presided over the 2010 election defeat by the Harper Conservatives and the party’s replacement as official opposition by the late Jack Layton and his herd of not necessarily French-speaking Quebecois cats, most of whom were recruited while dead drunk in the Student Union building at Carleton University a few days before the election was called. Ignatieff is a world class intellectual with a first-rate brain, but like many intellectuals, has a tendency to freeze when asked stupid-but-loaded questions, and possesses all the personal warmth of a ten year old refrigerator. One suspects he wanted to be Canada’s next Trudeau, but a philosopher-king needs to have wit and charm along with intelligence, and can’t afford to listen to what his media handlers tell him about staying on message. Ignatieff’s inability to connect with Canadian voters led the party to its worst defeat in parliamentary history, and three days after the election he accepted a job doing what he should have been doing all along: lecturing in a university.