The ad campaigns have just begun, but already the Conservatives are painting Michael Ignatieff as out of touch with average Canadians.
Their previous ads -- with taglines like: "Just visiting," "Just in it for himself," and "Didn't come back for you" -- cast the Liberal leader as a gatecrasher who arrived too late to the politics party. This time, Ignatieff's own family background finds itself front and centre.
In fairness, it's the Liberals themselves who made Ignatieff's origins an issue.
In a video called "This is who I am" posted earlier this month on the Liberal website, Ignatieff talks about how his father George came to Canada on a boat in 1928 "with nothing," to give his children a chance at a better future," and "lived that immigrant dream, up the ladder one rung at a time."
The Tories immediately attacked that portrayal as disingenuous.
They shot back by posting a Web ad arguing that Ignatieff's father was hardly a typical hard-scrabble immigrant.
"The Ignatieff immigrant experience is one of significant wealth, first-rate educations and privilege. Very few Canadians can claim this 'immigrant experience," the ad intoned.
Ignatieff's father's family was indeed once part of the Russian aristocracy. Before the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, his grandfather was the last czar's education minister and his grandmother, a princess.
After fleeing Russia, Ignatieff's father, George, lived on a British manor for a decade before coming to Canada. And once George arrived in Canada, he became a Rhodes scholar and later, a diplomat and ambassador to the UN.
Ignatieff was infuriated by the Tory ad, telling CTV's Question Period last weekend that Stephen Harper's party had distorted the facts and crossed the line of political decency.
"Their attack on me is a disgrace," Ignatieff said. "They've attacked my patriotism. They've attacked my commitment to the country. And now they're attacking my family...
"A Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian. I am a proud Canadian. I won't take that from him or from anybody else."
One wonders whether the ads risk backfiring.
Many, including University of Windsor's Prof. Lloyd Brown-John, have said they smack of the ugly tone of "birthers", the U.S. conservatives who are trying to depict President Barack Obama as "un-American" because of questions about his birth.
Winnipeg political commentator Frances Russell wonders whether the Tories released the ads simply because they resent Ignatieff for being well-educated with an aristocratic pedigree.
But should it really be a shock for a politician to have come from wealth and good connections? Throughout time, and in many parts of the world still, "good" family ties are assets – and indeed, prerequisites – for entry into politics.
In the U.K., politicians have long sprung from the "upper classes." And while there's no literal aristocracy in the U.S., there is arguably a political aristocracy. America's electoral landscape is littered with candidates from wealthy families -- the Kennedys, the Rockefellers and the Bushes among them.
It's odd then that being born into privilege may become a political liability for Ignatieff.
Globe and Mail columnist and Question Period host Jane Taber remarked recently that the fierce rhetoric about whether Ignatieff is the product of "real" immigrants is a reflection of how highly prized the votes of immigrants are to each of the three main political parties.
The Liberal leader's video aimed to convince Canadian newcomers that Ignatieff understands their mindset, by right of his own immigrant history. The Conservatives, for their part, want new Canadians to see Ignatieff as "not one of them" – the son of an immigrant in name perhaps, but so unlike them.
The irony, noted a recent Globe editorial, is that Canada's current immigration system now prefers immigrants just like George Ignatieff: skilled, "business-class," and with means. Through Immigration Canada's skilled-worker program, points are awarded to potential immigrants for having university education and skilled work experience. So Ignatieff's father today would have been in plenty of good company.
But then, Canada likely doesn't like to think of itself as a country that prefers elite immigrants to desperate ones. That simply doesn't jibe with the image we have of ourselves.
We prefer to think of ourselves as a citizenship of salt-of-the-earth immigrants who pulled themselves up with our own bootstraps. We prefer the self-made -- both in our men and in our politicians.
It remains to be seen whether the Conservative attack ads will work as intended.
Ignatieff's popularity already remains desperately low. The most recent polling suggests that less than 15 per cent of Canadians think Ignatieff would make the best prime minister, compared to the 35 per cent of those who prefer Harper.
Over two years of Liberal Party leadership, it seems Ignatieff still struggles to connect with Canadians. Even after a summer bus tour of "practice" campaigning, it's not clear whether he has shaken his image of elitist aloofness.
And in politics -- Canadian politics especially -- one needs a man-of-the-people image in order to survive. As an article in The New York Times commented, Canada is a country "where politicians with even the vaguest hint of self-importance are more likely to be mocked… than revered."
