Angry in the Great White North

On the one hand there is the man of ideas:

On Tuesday, [Michael Ignatieff] said that the recent nastiness in the leadership campaign is just the candidates "pushing and shoving" as the party prepares for the riding associations to select delegates for the December leadership convention.

Mr. Ignatieff said the race is ultimately a "battle of ideas" that will unite the Liberal party — and he doesn't expect things to get any rougher.

On the other hand is the man who doesn't like ideas:

[The] most unlikely element of [Bob] Rae's strategy for upsetting the front-runner, Michael Ignatieff, and holding off the other surging contender, Stephane Dion, is that he admits he's not running on his ideas.

In an era when just about every politician with ambition boasts of a vision, a blueprint for transformative change, a new way of doing politics, Rae dismisses all that as unimportant. "It's not a campaign about ideas," he told Maclean's. "You're electing a leader, you're not electing an agenda."

Funny thing is, all the long-time Liberals are fading fast as this race shapes up to be Ignatieff vs Rae -- the two "outsiders". So will the Liberals choose the outsider campaigning on ideas, or the outsider who is campaigning without ideas.

It's an exciting time to be a Liberal.