Liberal leadership debates have been lacklustre affairs

For the most part, leadership campaigns take place out of sight of the media and the public, in private meetings between candidates and party members.

Still, the public candidates’ debates are important because they can attract interest in the party, publicize the candidates and test them.

By that standard, the leadership debates that were held by the Quebec and federal Liberal parties on the weekend both failed to accomplish what they needed to do.

The Quebec Liberal leadership campaign, which officially began in October, didn’t attract much media or public interest for the first two months.

Party officials hoped that this would change after the Christmas holidays, when the public debates would begin.

With only three candidates sharing the 90 minutes in each debate, each one would have a lot of time to distinguish himself from the others.

But the first two of the five debates, open to party members only, didn’t attract much interest — even among Liberals themselves.

For the opening debate, held Jan. 13 in the QLP stronghold of Montreal, party members didn’t quite fill the 484 seats in the eastend Collège de Maisonneuve auditorium.

Neither of the French-language all-news cable channels is televising the debates, held on usually slow-news weekend afternoons.

That leaves the general public as well as party members who don’t attend the debates to watch them by livestream on the Liberal website, which the party reminds its supporters by email before each debate to do.

But for Sunday’s debate, on such important themes to the QLP as ethics and federalism, a counter on the web page for the livestream indicated that fewer than 600 people watched.

And in the next day’s edition of La Presse, the Liberals’ favourite Montreal daily, the 10-paragraph story on the debate was stuffed onto Page A8.

The problem, as I wrote last week, is that the QLP launched its leadership campaign too hastily for its own good.

It’s still the party of former leader Jean Charest, and there has been little time since he stepped down after the Sept. 4 election to put distance between the QLP and the legacy of the recently departed leader to which it remains loyal.

That leaves the leadership candidates little room in which to distinguish themselves f rom Charest, and from each other.

The result has been two debates with few sparks between the candidates, who have taken mostly complementary positions, with only minor differences among them.

If this continues, it will leave the Liberals to choose on the basis not of policy but of image — and, probably most important, popularity with the voters, with a general election possible by spring of next year.

That currently favours Philippe Couillard, even if he has not outperformed Raymond Bachand and Pierre Moreau in the debates as much as he has in the polls.

Like the Quebec Liberals in the timing of their leadership campaign, the federal Liber- als erred in setting the rules for theirs.

Needing a contest among candidates, first to attract interest, then to provide a test for presumed winner Justin Trudeau once he entered, the federal Liberals made it easy to enter their leadership race — too easy, as was apparent in the first candidates’ debate on Sunday.

There were nine candidates, only three of whom — Martha Hall Findlay and Marc Garneau, in addition to Trudeau — look as though they’re running to win, and not for publicity.

So far, the campaign has looked like a coronation procession for Trudeau.

But a debate, whether it’s among leaders in a general election or candidates in a leadership campaign, temporarily eliminates the advantage of a front-runner by putting his or her challengers on the same footing.

With nine candidates sharing two hours of debating time, however, Trudeau’s exposure was reduced.

This gave him less time in which to shoot from the hip and go off half-cocked, which he has a tendency to do. And it gave Hall Findlay and Garneau less time in which to draw Trudeau into showing what they say is his lack of substance and experience.

That meant the debate didn’t provide Trudeau with the test he needs before the Liberal Party sends him out to fight for its survival against Stephen Harper and Thomas Mulcair.

And it meant the debate didn’t serve to showcase Trudeau, whose charisma is the only cause for any excitement among the electorate about the Liberal campaign.