WASHINGTON, D.C.—The classic political observation is that "the time to get to know the government is before it becomes the government." The point for a diplomat is obvious—in a democracy, the "outs" reasonably predictably become the "ins." The government is a known quality—its lines of approach have become (relatively) predictable. So we ask, "What about the opposition?"

Diplomats don't want to start with a tabula rasa on election day. To illustrate, in my personal experience, by late 1992, the Liberals were clearly the government in waiting. The Tories, worn to a frazzle, were very much the underdogs in any future election.

So the U.S. Embassy concentrated considerable energy in meeting senior Canadian Liberals, seeking insights from their personal philosophies that might soon become political policy. Meetings and dinners included Paul Martin, John Manley, Michel Dupuy, Sheila Copps, Eddie Goldenberg, and David Kilgour. Such meetings provided useful scene-setting perspectives for post-October 1993 action.

Fast forward 16 years. By no matter of means is the past, prologue. And this following commentary on True Patriot Love should not in any manner imply a personal expectation that Michael Ignatieff's Liberals will win the next election.

Nevertheless, when an individual with historically strong odds of becoming Prime Minister provides the public with a 175-page, easy-to-read insight into his thinking, it is worthy of examination. Of course, selling it for $30 rather than, let us say, $20 inhibits an audience beyond political junkies. So despite the daunting negative that a colleague dropped the book at the 15-page mark, I persevered and found it worth the reading.

To be sure, it is a somewhat awkward hybrid—another volume in the Ignatieff family saga wrenched into becoming a political campaign pitch. Genealogy combined with a family cross-country trip in 2000 is hammered into shape to endorse his personal political views.

As an American and an aficionado of family histories, the most engaging elements of True Patriot Love are the vignettes and sketches of his mother's side of the clan: great grandfather; grandfather; and uncle. Everyone should have such a family—filled with individuals who combined adventures with contemplation; scholarly professions with personal passion. There are the genetic obligatory founding fathers; enduring mothers; focused, ever-driven offspring; and even the occasional refreshing black sheep.

This material in three central chapters is the core of True Patriot Love. While Ignatieff uses them to construct paradigms for generation by generation visions of Canada, they are most interesting as a biographic history between the mid 19th and late 20th century.

It is the first and last chapters—essentially an analysis of patriotism and an implicit (albeit unstated) Liberal campaign platform, however, that is of professional interest.

Ignatieff struggles with what makes a true patriot. Indeed, he struggles with the concept of patriotism itself, suggesting it was an 18th century phenomenon (when both French (Joan of Arc) and English (Elizabeth I) might beg to differ.

He says "love of country can't be too complex," ("You love what you love and that's good enough for you.") Such is a commitment that could have come from the lips of American naval hero Stephen Decatur ("Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations may she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong!") However, Ignatieff then virtually contradicts himself by professing Canada to be "an invented place" that must be "imagined over and over again" and that "To imagine Canada as a citizen requires that you enter into the mind of someone who does not believe what you believe or share what matters to you." Simple, eh?

Okay, if that is what a chattering class Canadian requires to pound his square peg of existential skepticism into a round hole of patriotic belief, so be it. But unfortunately the reflexive Canadian instinct for the gratuitous slur at Americans is never to be submerged and hence Ignatieff's silly reference to U.S. "infuriating sense of self importance." It begs the question as to why he is infuriated? Is the U.S. not important? Is he lamenting a self-perceived lesser importance for Canada? Really, why not just let the Yanks do their own thing and Canadians do theirs without specious judgments?

In two separate sections of True Patriot Love, Ignatieff seeks to differentiate Canadians and Americans by observing that Canadians have no equivalent to the U.S. Constitution's Second Amendment right to bear arms and that they enjoy free, universal health care. Perhaps inadvertently he thereby gives credence to the dismissive sobriquet that "Canadians are just unarmed Americans with health care." In fact Ignatieff would have been both more scholarly and more accurate to have reviewed the profound differences between a Westminster style Parliamentary system and a constitutionally created federal republic as a basis for our separate national natures.

Ultimately Ignatieff is defensive about his commitment to Canada, admitting that he wanted to leave the country to "play the Palace" but then defending his action as akin to other relatives who had spent years abroad before returning to Canada. When he must fight that hard to construct a framework into which he can maneuver his patriotism, it attracts "he protests too much" judgment. It provides, with his very efforts to deny such a conclusion, greater credibility to the "just visiting" Tory sound bite.

Ignatieff's contortions over citizenship and commitment are ultimately Canadian issues. It is, however, in the final portion of True Patriot Love that Ignatieff offers his prescriptive proposals ostensibly promoting Canadian national unity, but some of which (if implemented) could pose bilateral problems.

Thus I will leave it to Canadians to determine whether they want to build expensive, high speed rail systems over long distances. And nobody who drives a vehicle, regardless of what energy it consumes, can cavil at improving bad two lane highways, regardless whether they are labelled a "Trans Can" or "Ontario 123."

But the suggestion that Canada needs a national energy policy is replete with "wait a minute" questions. The intimation that Ignatieff would "play the energy card" against the U.S. suggests a judgment that U.S. purchases of Canadian energy benefit only the United States. Canada, however, is not a sole provider, and the market place determines buyers and sellers. Thus for Ignatieff to blithely blow off current North-South exchanges with a comment such as "...if the logic of money had determined our destiny, we'd be Americans" and hypothesize some nebulous East-West energy corridor makes one wonder if he is conceptualizing vast ideas with half vast supporting logic.

Likewise, Ignatieff's judgments on international relations are curious. Somehow, he has concluded that we are "living at the end of that American noon hour" and power is sliding steadily across the Pacific to China and India. As an unabashed believer in American exceptionalism, I will simply quote Mark Twain's response when reading his erroneous obituary, "The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated."

Consequently his prescription for a "coalition of the willing" among "European states and developing democracies" to create an international order with "effective international law," "responsible international development assistance," and "a fair world trading system," leads a skeptic to say, "fat chance." If this is anything beyond pre-campaign campaign rhetoric, it needs some serious rethinking. To ask the most obvious questions: Just who would determine membership in this willing coalition? Who would enforce this "effective international law?" and Who would pay for (let alone administer) the funding for more "responsible" economic aid and a "fair" international trade system?

So as a capsule critique, True Patriot Love is interesting family anecdotes, sprinkled with clever literary epigrams and providing an advance peek at the next edition of the Liberal Red Book.

True Patriot Love: Four Generations in Search of Canada, by Michael Ignatieff, Penguin, 2009, 211 pages, $30.

David Jones is a former political counsellor who worked at the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa from 1992-96.