Prescient & Eloquent Ignatieff

On Thursday, Ignatieff's speech on the detainee issue was was eloquent and his reference to the Government's "Soviet zeal" in redaction was prescient, given their subsequent Stalinist position on obeying the House's orders. The speech reads well, but it was also delivered as it reads, soberly & pointedly, as Ignatieff has behaved over the detainee issue - you can watch it here, starting at the 11:20 mark, or 1h20min in. He may still be playing a role, but I wonder whether after a lifetime of role-playing it took the experience of actually wielding real responsibility, his awful performance and the unanimous kicking he's deservedly gotten, while trapped in a boring small town in the country of his birth, for him to finally break out of his self-made prison of artifice and become a proper human being, a real adult. He's noticeably aged, physically, in the few months since becoming leader, at a rate so quick that would have taken him years in the past. Maybe the imposed stoicism of his chosen position as usurper and leader and its subsequent consequences have allowed him to become truly centred for the first time in his life. If so, good for him, though I fear it may have come too late for the party and the country. But he is behaving like a serious, responsible adult on the detainee issue, and his speech and manner are free of his past actorly flourishes - he's speaking clearly, succinctly and measuredly, neither pleading nor thundering. As I say, I may be seeing too much into his behaviour, maybe he's still playing a role, that of responsible politician this time, but it is possible he's finally become real and that's why his appearance and speech have altered so drastically so quickly. It sometimes takes a traumatic period to act as a chrysalis, forcing one to drill down into one's core so as to survive, psychically, and re-emerge as different, stronger version of oneself. In any event, while he may have become a better man and politician, he starts from so far back it doesn't infirm my standing judgment of him. I still hold to the same views. But good for him and good for us if he has found himself, and maybe something good can come out of it, for everyone. As previously noted, given all my criticism of him, it would have been wrong of me not to make note of this positive possibility.