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Dion's 3 strikes interview


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Stéphane Dion's Liberals are accusing the Tories of “shamelessly trying to embarrass” the Liberal Leader after he bungled a portion of a taped television interview.

In Halifax this afternoon, Mr. Dion was asked several times by ATV anchor Steve Murphy about what he would have already done on the economy if he were prime minister now. The question was: "If you were Prime minister now what would you have already done in this crisis that Mr. Harper has not?"

Mr. Dion, who has a slight hearing problem, did not immediately understand the question and had to be asked three times.

At one point a Liberal aide had to come in to explain the question.

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Conservative Leader Stephen Harper seized on a fumbled TV interview as proof he doesn't have a plan for the Canadian economy.

It was an unusual move for Mr. Harper who usually only talks to the media following his campaign once a day.

He said it was telling that Mr. Dion couldn't answer a question about what he'd do differently for the economy today if he was prime minister.

"When you're running a trillion and a half dollar economy you don't get a chance to have do-overs, over and over again," he said.

"I think what this incident actually indicates very clearly is Mr. Dion and the Liberal Party really don't know what they would do on the economy."

He said Mr. Dion can't blame it on his difficulties with English.

"I don't think this is a question of language at all. The question was very clear. It was asked repeatedly. But what's important in the end – after all the times the question was put, the answer was, from Mr. Dion, that he does not have a plan."

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Mark Dunn, Mr. Dion's spokesman, accused the Tories of making fun of the Liberal Leader and his hearing issues.

He called it “shameless.”

He said that Mr. Dion has answered that question a number of times but just didn't understand exactly what anchor Steve Murphy was asking.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/sto...NStory/politics

The interview is already on youtube and is linked in the above article.

The Liberals and CTV are in a tiff about the network's decision to air the false starts of the interview. Duffy and company are defending their decision to play the interview in full, said the stakes are high in this election and it was in the public interest to air the full interview. The Liberals played the disability card, citing Dion's hearing problem. They also intend to pursue this with CTV.

Does Dion have an English comprehension problem? How serious is Dion's hearing problem? Or is it just the big, bad, bullying Conservatives taking advantage of a disabled Dion?

Depending on how this is played out in the media, this may become Dion's Robert Stanfield moment of fumbling a football.

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Or it could become Harper's Preston Manning moment of trying to make political capital from his opponent's disabilities.

Did you even read the article? Harper did not mention anything about a disability. What he did say is that this is not about language but that Dion was not able to address a simple question. He said Dion did not have an answer because he does not have a plan.

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Depending on how this is played out in the media, this may become Dion's Robert Stanfield moment of fumbling a football.

Harper once said it is not good to go negative in the last days of the campaign. That is on youtube as well.

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Here we are about to elect a Prime Minister. Do we not owe it to ourselves to know as much about the candidates as possible? If Dion, a contender for PM, has a hearing impediment, I want to know. If Dion has a comprehension or problem with the English language, I want to know.

Are the Liberals using the disability issue to attack the Conservatives? They are the ones who raised this as the reason he needed four takes to complete an interview with CTV. But on the tape, Dion clearly states more than once "I did not understand the question". He did not say "I did not hear the question".

I ask those who posted so far. Have you even listened to the interview before sloughing it off?

(Oh, and here's a shocker just reported on CTV. The Globe and Mail is endorsing Stephen Harper and this will appear in tomorrow's Globe edition. And here I thought the Globe was biased in favour of the Liberals. I might just buy a subscription.)

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Harper once said it is not good to go negative in the last days of the campaign. That is on youtube as well.

I already noted it is on youtube but thanks anyway.

Harper did not go negative. It is the Liberal campaign team that played the disability card. Have you even read the article and watched the video?

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If anything, it makes Dion look more human

Perhaps thats what you saw.

I saw Dion looking like an idiot. Honestly, I really don't think this will help Dion at all, as for Harper, well he didn't say anything about Dions hearing so I can't see why he could be accused of mocking Dion. He just pointed out that it looked like Dion didn't have a clue. It was a pretty straight forward question after all, not unliike many Dion has been asked in the past, and usually failed to answer sufficiently.

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wow, non-issue, and Murphy changed the question....

How many ways can you ask: "If you were Prime Minister.."

If anything, it makes Dion look more human, something Mr Harper is sadly lacking.

Dion looked and sounded like a dunce. Where's that dunce hat when you need it?

I hope Harper beats the hell out of this.

With this blooper and Chretien attending the big rally for Dion in Halifax on Friday, the Conservatives are sure to rise at least 6% in the polls.

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I watched it and read about it, I think he heard the question, he understood the question, he attempted to deflect the question by going back to script, but he got flustered and asked to start again, then again, then again. This could be the real Dion, perhaps he's more of a straw man than even GW Bush, simply a scripted actor, unable to think on his feet.

Globe is endorsing Conservatives, National Post likewise. Another interesting bit came out in the Post today demonstrating the Liberals appetite for falsehood:

http://www.nationalpost.com/news/canada/story.html?id=868905

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Another interesting bit came out in the Post today demonstrating the Liberals appetite for falsehood:

Ouch! Thats gonna hurt.

After the endless bleating about the heartless cruel Conservatives killing Canadians and not caring at all this is going to be seen as what it is, an outright lie. Of course this was already known but it hadn't been widely diseminated, now it looks like its going to become a little more high profile.

Couple that with Dions Academy Award winning performance and I don't think its going to be the Liberals proudest moment come election day.

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Or it could become Harper's Preston Manning moment of trying to make political capital from his opponent's disabilities.

Do we have any kind of evidence Dion even HAS any kind of hearing disability? It seems to me the first time it has ever been mentioned was in this election to explain his lousy English. The guy has been in the public eye for how many decades, and it's never come up before?

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I see someone who made a simple mistake. Not an uncommon thing for members of the human race. It was nothing but a misunderstanding.

You mean like Stockwell Day stating a river was running north when it ran south?

But that never harmed him, of course.

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I already noted it is on youtube but thanks anyway.

Harper did not go negative. It is the Liberal campaign team that played the disability card. Have you even read the article and watched the video?

There are Tory negative ads all over the place. Harper himself went negative today. He once said it was bad policy to go negative in the last week of the campaign. That clip was played on CBC on Tuesday.

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Do we have any kind of evidence Dion even HAS any kind of hearing disability?

If it's Liberal evidence, how credible is it? The Liberals are trying to play this as a hearing disability for one reason. That's to try and trap the Conservatives into mentioning the word "disability" in their comments which would then be taken out of context and blown out of proportion. It's to try to make a victim out of Dion at the hands of the Conservatives.

The media are all saying the same thing. It is being reported that Dion did not understand the question. No one is saying Dion did not hear the question except for the Liberals.

In it, host Steve Murphy asks Dion: "If you were prime minister now, what would you have done about the economy and this crisis that Mr. Harper has not done?"

Dion struggles to understand the question's conditional subjunctive tense.

"If I would have been prime minister two and a half years ago?"

"If you were the prime minister right now?" responds the anchor.

"If I'm elected next Tuesday, this Tuesday is what you're suggesting?" asks Dion.

"No, I'm saying if you hypothetically were prime minister today," Murphy asks.

Dion attempts to answer, stumbling as he describes his 30-day, five point plan for post-election consultations as a "30-50 plan, in fact the plan for the first 80 days once we would have a Liberal government. Can we stop it now," asks Dion. "Because I think I was a bit slow to understand your question. And I don't think it would be good TV."

The anchor agrees to repose the question, and the it descends into a somewhat farcical and embarrassing encounter as Dion and the host try to make themselves understood.

On take two, Dion says: "Again I don't understand the question, because you ask me to be prime minister at which moment? Today? Or since a week or 60 weeks?"

Dion asks for a third take, and tries to understand as an aide explains off-camera what the question is. "Yes but if I would have been prime minister two years ago, I would have had an agenda," he says to his aide. "Let's start again."

On the third "Thank you for coming" by the host Steve Murphy, both Dion and Murphy chuckle and start over a fourth time.

"Give me a first day where I am prime minister that I can figure out what is your question is about," says Dion.

The television station said the Liberal party had asked ATV not to air the tape, but the CTV affiliate, and the national political show Mike Duffy Live played the whole thing.

Once Murphy asks the question again, Dion says: "I will assume that I have been elected today prime minister. The first thing I would do is to consult with the Privy Council office, minister of finance to know exactly in which situation we are according their data."

From that point on, Dion slips more comfortably back into his usual platform speech.

http://www.thestar.com/federalelection/article/515212#

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I see someone who made a simple mistake. Not an uncommon thing for members of the human race. It was nothing but a misunderstanding.

I think it was a really really unbelievably simple question to understand. It was asked more than 3 times in the CLEAREST possible language.

His english isn't good, but it is plenty good enough to debate in English. He heard the question. He began answering it. He bumbled with some stupid 30-50 plan crap and then realized he sounded like a tard so he asked to restart. Then, even AFTER his aide explained the question, he still couldn't answer. It's not like there was any complicated english.

From my perspective, you can take this two ways. Either Dion really has no idea what he's going to do with the economy and got called out on it, or he's a total moron who can't understand a question phrased in the simplest of language.

If Dion wasn't just avoiding a question he had no answer for then for some strange reason the simple concept of imagining what he would have done in Stephen Harper's place was completely beyond him.

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Do we have any kind of evidence Dion even HAS any kind of hearing disability? It seems to me the first time it has ever been mentioned was in this election to explain his lousy English. The guy has been in the public eye for how many decades, and it's never come up before?

Does this satisfy you:

Hear, hear! Sufferers laud Dion

I guess it goes to show that you don't keep yourself informed much.

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Yeah really I think asking for proof he has a hearing problem is a pretty silly thing to do. I'll believe it because I have no real reason not to.

This interview however was never a question of hearing. They were both wearing mics and Dion didn't say he couldn't hear anyone. He made an attempt at answering the question, bunged it all up, and then after that decided that he didn't understand the time period they were talking about after the anchor said specifically:

"What would you have ALREADY done if you were Prime Minister?"

There could have been no clearer language and rest assured Dion understood the question. He just didn't understand how he would answer it.

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