...that the Toronto Star would resort to damning a Conservative candidate with faint praise.
Acidic condescension and sarcasm is more the standard formula...
Hudak, the member for Niagara West-Glanbrook, seemed by and large content to reiterate his well-worked talking points and evade comment on anything controversial.
He is, a breathless province will be relieved to know, "blessed" to have the wife he does, dotes on his 19-month-old daughter, is grateful for the sacrifices of his immigrant grandparents.
In short, Hudak demonstrated to the Star what PC party members by now know. He is a solid, engaging, increasingly disciplined professional politician.
Add in a generous sprinkling of associations with the presumed anti-christ of Ontario political history...
On the one hand, Hudak say he's grateful for the support of former premier Mike Harris, and proud of his part in the Harris government.
On the other, Hudak appears to want a little distance put between himself and the past. He is less the second coming of Mike, he suggested, than he is sort of Mike-ish.
In temperament at least, that's hard to gainsay. Hudak appears to want people to like him. Harris seemed happy to collect enemies. Hudak maintains a scrupulous affability. Harris was an angry profanity looking for a place to happen.
Hudak also lacks – though may yet develop or luck into – a couple of useful things Harris had.
By the time of the Common Sense Revolution, Harris had a platform that fit him like a glove. Hudak still sounds as if delivering lines that seem neither visceral nor founded on an intellectual superstructure.
And for good measure, make some cryptic reference to an evil American, preferably one perceived as much-maligned by your buddies in the newsroom...
There was no mention of any book that had recently engaged him, or any lesson from other jurisdictions (other than a B.C. initiative to cut red tape), anything of what has happened in the United States or Ottawa, any guiding star more compelling than Ronald Reagan's 11th Commandment that "thou shall not speak ill of another conservative."
I can't think of a better sales pitch for the new leader of the provincial Conservative party, than to have the Toronto Star go into full-on Perez Hilton-style bitchy queen hate-spew, under the guise of professional interview...can you?
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