Through the twentieth century, Canada’s Liberals were the most successful party in the western world. Since 2003 however, they have suffered five leaders including an interim one and have been in a funk. When Paul Martin assumed their leadership that year his popularity was sky high and they seemed unbeatable. The party boasted over half a million members and Martin was flush with cash. He used the surplus funds raised in his leadership bid, over $10 million, to pay off the party’s outstanding debt. Diminished in the public eye in the aftermath of the 2004 sponsorship scandal and subsequently rejected in the scandal’s denouement in 2006, the Liberals nevertheless believed that their stay on the opposition benches was only a time out. That would change, they thought, soon after they chose their new leader who they simply assumed was destined to become the next prime minister. They took a ridiculous amount of time to make their choice, almost a year.

Stéphane Dion’s inability to catch the public’s fancy led to the Liberals cowering in front of Stephen Harper’s minority government through 2008. Dion could shrug off caucus opposition to his disastrous carbon tax policy because he was not beholden to his MPs. A party convention, not the caucus, had elected him. The Liberals went on to capture a smaller share of the vote in the last election than in any of the 39 that preceded it. This contributed to their cowering some more. They claimed outrage with the Conservatives’ November economic update but they let the Throne Speech pass after the update was tabled. This permitted Harper to establish that he had secured the confidence of the Commons and gave his request for parliament’s prorogation a certain credence.

One lesson the Liberals took from their marathon 2006 leadership race was to take less time in choosing their next leader. The recent leadership “race” ended in a matter of hours. However, the Conservatives’ argument that the quickie selection by the Liberal caucus violated democratic principles is none of their business and, more to the point, bogus. There was arguably a larger “democratic deficit” at the Liberals’ 2003 convention at which Martin’s apparatchiks on the party’s national executive and its provincial wings ensured that, by controlling membership sales, only he could triumph. That is why Allan Rock, Brian Tobin, and John Manley bowed out of that race, which was actually a coronation, its featured attraction an ineligible voter, Bono.

The idea that caucus members ought to select their party’s leader is a sound one, but the Liberals and Conservatives dropped the idea in 1919 and 1927 respectively. The public elects caucus members to parliament. That is democracy in action. In contrast, many if not most “party members” at meetings that select delegates to leadership conventions are party transients, their memberships bought for them and their participation often subsidized by the paid organizers of the leadership hopefuls. Many constituency associations are non-existent or rotten boroughs, having fewer members than delegates that they are entitled to. This makes the process ripe for manipulation. What is “democratic” about it? Such manipulations explain, in large measure, how Brian Mulroney triumphed over Joe Clark in 1983 and how Belinda Stronach, despite her lack of French, did so well among the francophone Quebec delegation in her bid for the Conservative crown. Quebecers constituted only 4 percent of the party membership at the 2004 Conservative convention that elected Stephen Harper, but they were entitled to nearly a quarter of the delegates.

What stinks about Michael Ignatieff’s ascension is not how he became Liberal leader but how he earlier became a Liberal candidate for parliament. Party brass opened up a Toronto constituency for him and ruled out other candidacies, including that of a constituency officer. To his credit, however, Ignatieff won the riding in the subsequent general election for parliament. This suggests that the public, at least in his constituency and likely elsewhere, does not much care how “democratic” party nomination and leadership races are.

Had the Liberal caucus been able to select Martin’s successor, it would certainly not have been Dion. By leaving leadership selection to a convention of ostensible party “members” – especially in a party like the Liberals, which did not even have a national membership list until recently – the selection process suffers a serious flaw. Party members can impose, as in the case of Dion, a leader on a parliamentary caucus that does not have confidence in him. This weakens the parliamentary parties, which are composed of democratically elected MPs. It strengthens the power of the extra-parliamentary party, the party brass, and especially unelected outsiders who aspire to capture a party, as Mulroney did and Stronach hoped to do.

In any case, the parties – largely steered by the media who like long drawn-out leadership races – are too leader-driven and the current leadership selection process reinforces this, thus weakening parliament by marginalizing MPs. Had the Liberal caucus selected their leader, Ignatieff would likely have had the job in 2004 and the party and its leadership candidates would not have run up such debts. The party would have had a leader from the get-go, not a bench warmer. Allowing the caucus to choose its leader may look undemocratic, but it isn’t.

Nelson Wiseman teaches political science at the University of Toronto.

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CBCNews.ca, Gov. Gen. rushes home to deal with politcal turmoil with commentary by Nelson Wiseman