“Where is Waldo” Ignatieff?

This week he showed up in Ottawa at a funeral. Not his.

He was also seen in Vancouver earlier in the week.

Generally, Ignatieff has been keeping a low profile.

Ignatieff spends his time thinking. He’s an intellectual, a writer and an academic thinker, not an accusation often levelled at Harper.

Ignatieff is respected in Europe and America as a man of letters, a great internationalist. Barack Obama calls him a friend.

Harper is respected in Red Deer and by John Howard in Australia.

Occasionally a world leader may greet him on the way to men’s room in Vietnam.

Hang on to that intellectual image you have of Ignatieff. By the time Harper’s slime ads are through with him, he’ll be wearing his intellectualism around his neck. “Welcome back to Canada, Mr. Egghead.”

Canada is a place where intellectualism passes for a fault among politicians, almost as bad as going to fancy galas for rich folks.

Far better for a Prime Minister to golf three times a week than read three books a week, or write 17 of them.

Ignatieff, the thinker, weighs every decision, going one way and then the other. Great for academics, but a problem for politicians. It passes for indecision. Harper only announces decisions once he’s sure of where he stands. He looks decisive.

Remember Ignatieff last June. He threatened to vote out Harper over employment insurance. In the end he caved in. Harper survived to live another self-righteous day.

The real reason? Ignatieff wasn’t ready for an election. No money, no organization, no candidates, or no platform. Harper would say all of the above. We still don’t know. But we saw Ignatieff think it through. It was painful.

Ignatieff tried to bluff Harper. It didn’t work. He was holding a pair of deuces. Bad decision.

Harper may not have half the brains of Ignatieff, but he knows his politics. Ask the rivals he destroyed along the way.

Ignatieff told us he held off on the election because he didn’t want to spoil our summer. Some summer. Some of us would have paddled in canoes to the polling booths to get rid of Harper.

The polls tell the national story. The Liberals are at 34% and the Conservatives at 33% in the last Angus Reid poll, give or take a margin of 2%.

Last week it was the other way. Next week, who knows?

It all comes down to the campaign. Who’s scared? Who isn’t?

Now Harper is playing games. He says the economy is too fragile for an election. Is that it, or is it because he’s afraid of losing. This is the guy who broke his own election law when he saw a chance of winning.

Wait for the recession to end before making a political choice, Harper says. Kim Campbell once said that an election was no time to talk about complex health issues. Is this no time to talk about complex economic issues?

Waiting for the recession to end could take years. Are we stuck with Harper’s minority government until then?

So how is that recession going? Ask the 1,548,400 unemployed, at 9.2% the worst in 12 years.

Only 778,700 of them qualify for employment insurance. There’s always welfare for the rest. Politicians have some nerve calling it “insurance.” Some policy! You pay but you can never collect.

On Sept. 28 the Commons will be back in session and Ignatieff gets another chance to dump Harper. This time Ignatieff can’t use summer as an excuse. He could find another season. It will be fall. It’s cold in the fall. Too cold for an election?

Meanwhile Harper is ready for the polls. The bank account is bulging, the slime ads are ready, the organizers are primed up, the candidates are picked and trained as of a trip to Ottawa last week.

Harper is waiting for Ignatieff to make up his mind.

Harper could set a Canadian record -- the PM never able to win a majority. If there was anyone else in his party, Harper might already be gone.

If Ignatieff wins, he’ll become the most erudite intellectual we’ve had behind the big desk since Pierre Trudeau. But can he make a decision?