Observations of a News Junkie

Stephane Dion announced today that he will step downas leader of the national Liberal party in May, when the annual convention will be a leadership race. There was already speculation about who would be interim leader if Dion resigned immediately, but he promised to stay at the helm until a new one is chosen.

“We must look beyond leadership to understand what went wrong in the campaign. … and begin to fix our problems so that we can, I hope and I am confident, form a Liberal government again for all Canadians,” Mr. Dion said.

I’m not surprised he is leaving his position. He needed to step aside after the Liberal showing in the election and not wait until he was booted out by his party. He said, during a press conference today explaining his plan, that the Conservative attack ads portrayed him wrongly and that he was misrepresented. While that may be true, it’s also accurate to believe he struggles with communicating his ideas and lacks the charisma to rally people to his plans. While he is very smart and I’m sure very capable, those qualities are not obvious to the general public. He’s not the leader that I would be proud to have represent Canadians to other nations.

Here’s an interesting column from the Globe and Mail about where the Liberal leader went wrong and how he could have redeemed himself.

So … the big question is now, who will replace him?