Michael Ignatieff's Successes and Failures in his Memoir, Fire and Ashes
811 Words3 Pages
In his memoir Fire and Ashes Michael Ignatieff draws on his successes and failures in Canadian politics in order to provide his readers with insight on how to be successful politicians. In his book Ignatieff focuses primarily on the factors he believes led to his failed first campaign for Liberal leadership and his eventual failure to become Prime Minister. Throughout Fire and Ashes Ignatieff emphasizes the importance of imagery, framing, and narrative over being the most qualified or deserving candidate. Nonetheless, Ignatieff's political career should be classified as being a far cry from a failure. Mr. Ignatieff's political career was far more successful than that of most other Canadian politicians. It is a shame that the most noteworthy part of his career happens to be his tremendous loss in the 2011 federal election. It is also unfortunate that Ignatieff will go down in history as "Michael Ignatieff...just visiting" as a result of an attack ad. This was where Ignatieff truly failed. He failed to achieve the image Canadian's expect of their Prime Minister. Instead, he ended up being illustrated as an outsider who only returned to Canada to seek election for his own personal interest. Ignatieff does put too much of the blame for his mistakes on the other political parties, mainly the Harper Conservative's, in Fire and Ashes. He and his staff were unprepared to handle modern attack ads. Rather than simply brushing them off, Ignatieff corroborated them by going on the