Enter the Liberal B Team

That's it? Only 10? What happened to those dozens of pretenders to the Liberal crown we were promised? Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, when Dominic Leblanc's name was being tossed about, when Denis Coderre and Hedy Fry were said to be "fielding calls," when insiders were talking up Ruby Dhalla's chances. But now? Are Canadians never to experience the thrill of Goodalemania? Is the Age of Fontana over before it began? Where have you gone, Dan McTeague? A nation turns its lonely eyes ... I'm joking, of course. The situation is not as dire as all that. Whatever your political philosophy or partisan stripe, it must be admitted that any race that includes Joe Volpe, Carolyn Bennett and Scott Brison is rich enough in comic possibilities. And comic possibilities, may I remind everyone, are not the only reason to follow the Liberal leadership campaign. The most important, perhaps, but not the only. Actually, it's shaping up to be a fascinating campaign. The problems besetting the party are legion, and multiply the number of criteria by which to assess the candidates. Which candidate can save the party's bacon in Quebec? Which can end the Liberal drought in the West, now closing on 50 years? Is the challenge facing the party to hold onto its urban and immigrant base, centred on Montreal and Toronto? Or is to break out of its big-city stronghold into Conservative territory? Should it even be thinking about expanding its base, or just healing the divisions within? All of this, while rebuilding an atrophied fundraising apparatus, a challenge made worse for two things: the prospect of an extended spell in opposition, and the new campaign finance rules -- particularly the latter, if the Tories' proposed Accountability Act passes. Indeed, the first qualification of any potential Liberal leader must surely be the ability to inspire thousands of individual contributors to write the party a cheque, in amounts of less than $1,000. Which brings us to the candidates. Conventional wisdom has the field tilting strongly left, on the basis of a few stray phrases from leading candidates to the effect that the party had to be "progressive" or "centre-left." But what do you expect? That's where the membership is. Politics 101: Before you can court the centre, you have to lock up the base. In fact, at least four of the candidates have centrist potential, in varying ways. Of these, easily the most intriguing is Michael Ignatieff -- the clear front-runner in the media primary, if rather less so in the party itself. It isn't just the message, combining Trudeauvian appeals to shared citizenship and the federal role with a tough-minded approach to defence and security issues. It's the messenger. Sam Phillips, the Sun Records owner and discoverer of Elvis, famously said "if I could find a white boy who could sing like a Negro I could make a million dollars." Mr. Ignatieff has a bit of the same quality. He can say some quite bluntly conservative thing, yet sound like a liberal the whole time. The words may be on the right, but the music is left. In politics, that's gold. Bob Rae, the former NDP premier of Ontario, may prove to have his own centrist appeal -- if only for how far he has already come. When he says he has learned from his mistakes, he means it, as anyone who has read his writings since then will know. I still don't think he quite "gets" the market economy. He still sees it as essentially a supplement to the state, useful in its own way but ultimately subordinate. But he has forcefully renounced piety as the basis for making policy, which puts him well to the right of much of the Liberal party, and not a few Conservatives. Stephane Dion's candidacy may also prove to have some centrist legs. Though running on an environmentalist message, Mr. Dion's no-nonsense persona has a certain mainstream appeal. And while he will inevitably be seen as the Quebec candidate -- a measure of how far the Liberals have fallen in the province -- I'm willing to bet he'll play surprisingly well in the West: or at least, among western Liberals. Finally, there is Maurizio Bevilacqua. Though not in the first rank of contenders, lacking the organization and name recognition of the others, Mr. Bevilacqua bids fair to be the iconoclast in the race, and the one with the most overtly centrist message. If nothing else, he has arithmetic on his side. There are far more votes to be had from peeling off moderate Conservative voters than from some quixotic attempt to "unite the left." Those candidates would seem to have the most potential to expand the party's base -- always supposing that interests the party. For my part, if you will excuse me, I'm off to a meeting of the Draft Hedy campaign.