KENNEDY: NOT READY FOR PRIME TIME

I"m not currently a member of the Liberal party and I'm not supporting any of the leadership candidates, but as a political junkie I'm following the leadership race. One of the things that is becoming quite clear is that Gerard Kennedy is not ready for prime time.

I have been a member of the Liberal party and have worked on election campaigns and been an executive member. In the first campaign I worked on, I was asked to write an article for the small local paper. It was read by the campaign team, then sent to party head-quarters. What came back to be published was a shell of what I had written. What I learned was when you are part of a political party, you have to stay on message and stick to party talking points.

None of the people on the Kennedy team seem to have learned this message until the events of the last few days. There was a blogger, Thomas Hubert, who had quite vile anti-Israel messages on his blog. Hubert was a member of a Liberal youth organization and claimed to be associated with Youth for Kennedy. One of the basics of politics is you don't have people associated with you writing articles or letters to the editor that will cause controversy. The people excited about blogging as a new medium and the power of blogging should know the old rules from the MSM still apply to blogging. The Liberal who attacked Olivia Chow online during the last federal election should have been warning enough for the Liberals to monitor what their people are saying.

Another embarassment for the Kennedy team occured with Borys Wrzesnewskyj traveling to Lebanon and making remarks about Hezbollah and Israel that had to be denounced by Liberal leader Bill Graham and now has Carolyn Bennett calling for Borys to resign his post in the Liberal party. A simple phone call between Kennedy and Wrzesnewskyj before the trip could have at least tried to keep Wrzesnewskyj on message and sticking to agreed upon talking points.

Everyone remembers Elinor Caplin attacking the Canadian Alliance as "Holocaust deniers", a ridiculous and unfair statement. Now the Conservatives can use statements from Liberals to paint the Liberals as anti-Israel in the 25 ridings with large numbers of Jewish voters. It doesn't matter if it's fair, Caplins comments weren't fair and no one in the Liberal party denounced or disciplined her. Live by the sword...

Now we have Liberals denouncing Liberals, similar to the situation when Liberals had to distance themselves from Liberal ads in the last federal election. The back-room boys of the Liberal party aren't going to be too amused by the lack of professionalism in the Kennedy camp.