Though not for the time being!

“I’ve never hidden that I’d like to direct the destiny of my party. . .” Coderre says. Now how’d we know that?

Coderre was a guest on Christiane Charette’s popular morning talk show on Radio-Canada the other day.

Coderre brags that he was responsible for Michael Ignatieff cleaning the Toronto gang out of the office. True. Ignatieff did take the advice and bring out the broom.

At least Coderre didn’t brag about being responsible for the Liberals’ miserable showing in Quebec byelections this month. We figured that out ourselves. Unfortunately for Coderre, so did Quebec Liberals.

It’s perfectly normal for an ambitious politician such as Coderre to nurture leadership ambitions, but when you kick the boss in the butt, do you have to follow it up with a punch in the nose?

Of course, Coderre insists he still supports Ignatieff. Sure, but with support like that, Ignatieff doesn’t need Stephen Harper around.

As for Coderre’s chances of controlling the Liberal “destiny,” he’s dreaming in Technicolor. Are Liberal rank and file are going to vote for the guy who aced the boss?

They’ll thank him, even tell him it had to be done, but as for putting the executioner on the throne. . . . It just doesn’t happen like that in politics.

When Coderre walked out on him, the Russian Count said there would be “consequences.”

How right he was! Without Coderre running the back rooms the Liberals were hammered by everybody else in the byelections.

Ignatieff has been sinking in the polls ever since.

Right now the Liberals are as popular as when Stéphane Dion was running the shop. We all know what happened to him.

No wonder Harper can be off visiting Asia for a month and a half.

The Liberals yearn for power, as they watch Harper have his way with Canada, running up a huge deficit and pouring money into Conservative ridings.

Liberals have their own ridings to pour money into.

Right now they’re watching Justin Trudeau coming down the track like a high-speed locomotive. There’s not stopping him, it seems.

He travels the country, day after day, speaking to packed halls morning, noon and night. Liberal riding associations are fighting each other to have him. They all want him as guest speaker so they can make a killing on ticket sales. It’s not for his ideology. He could talk about the weather for all they care.

The youth come to hear him and be inspired; older folk come to compare him to his dad. Standing room only.

They call him “Young Trudeau” as if “Old Trudeau” were still around. Trudeau the younger, born Christmas Day 1971. He insists he’s not ready for any leadership bid, that he is still learning his politics, one rubber chicken at a time.

The Conservatives have reason to worry. He could be ready within in a year or two. Politics is that fast, nowdays.

But there are problems, serious problems. First, he does lack experience – greener than an Outremont leprechaun as they say.

And secondly, he lacks the respect and backing of his peers. Packed halls of curious folk don’t make up a delegate count.

The old men in the party want him to pay his dues first. He may have Gerard Kennedy and Dominic Leblanc with him – but that’s the youth wing in the caucus.

The old fellers want somebody who is one of them, somebody who’s been to Harvard and has written 17 books, not spent the last 12 years teaching snotty-nosed kids in B.C.

Trouble is that old men in politics, like generals, are always trying to fight the last war. We see what that got them.