Louise Arbour - Can We Be Serious?

Yesterday, CalgaryGrit posted a link to a Tyee story suggesting that Louise Arbour is being encouraged to run for the Liberal Party Leadership. This is my favorite part:

Former Canadian Supreme Court Justice Louise Arbour, head of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, is seen to carry the iron-clad credibility the Liberals need in a post-Gomery world. Sources say a "Draft Arbour" campaign is in the exploratory stage and gaining momentum.

I can certainly understand the point. Louise Arbour is a woman who is at or at least near the pinnacle of Canadian Acheivement. On top of her current role at the UNHCR and the robes she left behind as a justice of the Supreme Court of Canada she's been a law professor, Vice-President of Canadian Civil Liberties Association, Chief Prosecutor of War Crimes before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia.

She really would "carry the iron-clad credibility the Liberals need in a post-Gomery world." As to CalgaryGrit's contention that she has no political experience, I'd say that anyone who can (a) get anything done in the UN or (b) lead the charge on all the issues no government is interested in dealing with is more than able to navigate the political ins and outs of the Canadian reality.

Here's the thing, she's spent the last few decades ascending to the place she is now. She's currently pushing the US around on Guantanamo and is going to Russia to push Putin around on things like Chechnya and the Caucasus. She's got the support of the Secretary-General and her own agency and assuming Allan Rock's work on UN Reform goes anywhere she could be lined up to take on an even more significant role over the next ten years.

Would anyone of her stature and intellect, given the position she is in and the good she can acheive there sacrifice it all to have an outside chance at life in Stornoway and the unflattering side of Question Period? That is gonna be a tough sell and it's not much of a product. The party would be better off for her candidacy but I don't know that the world would be. I'd say we would all be best served if she were to continue her work and to continue it unblemished by partisan politics.