What is John Galt?

I can tell you this much, when looking at current leadership candidates for the Liberal Party of Canada, I think that asking "who isn't John Galt" is far easier.

Belidiot is most certainly not John Galt. Perhaps ironically, she is more like James Taggart than she is like Dagny. Let me clearly state that it is not my intention to pick on her specifically. Public life is really hard, and some of the tribulations that Ms. Stronach faces are because she is an attractive blonde woman, not despite it. Her value to feminism in Canada is a subject for another day.

Her visage, her wealth, and her uncanny ability to be visible make her one of the easier targets for Canada's media to include in conversations about who is the next aspirant Prime Minister. The role of the media in anointing leaders is also a subject for another day.

But to answer the title question, John Galt is the ideal of what a leader is supposed to be. Sure, Rand framed Galt as the perfect individual, in the objectivist sense, but let's be honest- we can't all be John Galt. Asking what John Galt is, rather than who he is, should guide us to pick a better leader, or at least identify what we should be looking for in a leader.

John Galt is someone who inspires me to follow him/her. John Galt is someone whose original ideas are overshadowed slightly by the way that he/she approaches subjects that they know nothing about. John Galt is someone who is willing to do right by society despite the personal sacrifices that they are forced to make. Ok, that last one made Ayn roll over in her grave, but you get the idea.

I tell you what- invent an engine that runs on static electricity, and I will vote for you. Imagine how much that would piss off Alberta.

I don't think John Galt wants to be the leader, rather s/he is thrust into a leadership role because of the example that s/he sets for others. George Bush is not John Galt, but maybe Dick Cheney is. Bill Clinton is John Galt...now. He wasn't in 1992 or 1996. A constitutional prohibition to the best possible leadership: only in America.

22 rumored Liberal leadership contenders, and very few inspire anything more than an unsettling urge to vote for Jack Layton. It is getting to the point where "opponent in leadership race" is an important demographic as it represents such a large percentage of the party.

I would be lying if I said that there was one that stuck out to me above the rest. Despite his brilliance, Bob Rae has previously demonstrated a total inability to lead. For every award winning book Iggy-natief writes, he has the personality of an oyster and views on Israel that will get him shot, possibly by Bob Rae. The survivor of the "Italian civil war" (Fontana, Volpe, Bevilaqua et al) will be in a great position to anoint the next leader, but to actually win requires interesting new ideas and not the 'pick me' mentality that all three have demonstrated. To be fair, Beeker (John Manley), Tobin and McKenna didn't do it for me either.

Louise Arbour is so smart she doesn't want to endure the race to the bottom required to be successful. It is shameful that the logistics of leadership politics will keep out any brilliant candidates. And there is the rub. Why is it that winning a leadership contest (in any jurisdiction, not just Canada) requires a skill-set and a team that is so decidedly different, bordering on antithetical, to the one required for governing the country? Honestly, if you let the Girl Guide who sells the most cookies be in charge of the troop, what you get is a leader with a really fat dad or a pyramid scheme that wastes a lot of food.

All of this is to say that there are serious impediments to public life for people who are not already well connected or do not have a hook to catch the media's attention. Obviously there are exceptions (Bill Clinton comes to mind) who rise above the obstacles they have to success, but they are rare indeed. I bet you a dollar that if Justin Trudeau even sneezed at a television camera this week, his name would be vaulted to the top of polls as an aspirant leader of the Liberals because he is genetically pre-disposed to be a great leader. I mean, it worked out well in America, didn't it?

So where is our John Galt? S/he is probably still a generation away.