LIBERALS TAKE FIRST STEP TO REVIVAL WITH YOUNGER FACE

The Liberal Party is inviting the whole electorate to help choose its
next leader, after a weekend conference pried the levers of power from
the party elite, picking a young, denim-clad entrepreneur as president
and calling for legalization of marijuana.

Interim leader Bob Rae dominated the gathering, championing the push
to open up the party and adding fuel to a bonfire of speculation about
whether he wants the permanent job.

The future of the party remains unsettled. President Mike Crawley's
victory over Chretien-era cabinet minister Sheila Copps, who was
backed by the Liberal establishment, was paper-cut thin. And
Conservatives are bound to claim delegates were more concerned with
keeping potheads out of jail than with rescuing the middle class from
its economic doldrums.

But the boldest decision was a move that takes Canadian politics even
closer to the American model, as more than two-thirds of voting
delegates supported the idea of creating a new category known as
Liberal "supporters." Those individuals will not have to become
card-carrying members of the party. Simply by signing up, they will be
eligible to vote for the next party leader, as registered voters do
during the primary contests now under way in the United States.

"When it comes to political parties [people] want to date, not marry,"
one delegate explained during the debate. Party officials hope that as
many as a million Canadians will hook up with the Liberals to choose
the next leader in the spring of 2013.

It took courage for party members, and especially for the elites
within the party who influence the rank-and-file, to surrender control
over leadership selection. Many fear that Conservatives or NDPers will
sign up to rig the vote. Anti-abortionists, extreme environmentalists
and would-be Svengalis of all sorts could all take a shot at capturing
the leadership.

But hijacking a national party is no easy thing. No one has yet won
the Democratic or Republican nomination who was not a Democrat or a Republican.

A proposal to move to a system of regional primary contests, which
would have further mirrored the American model, failed to garner the
two-thirds majority required to pass. It was, in the end, a reform too far.

Mr. Rae embraced the delegates' decision to advocate not just
decriminalizing marijuana as the party started to do when it was
last in government, before backing off but legalizing and regulating it.

"If you want to be part of a group of free-thinking, innovative,
thoughtful, pragmatic, hopeful, positive, happy people, come and join
the Liberal party," Mr. Rae exhorted during his closing speech,
adding: "And after the resolution on marijuana today, it's going to be
a group of even happier people."

In another display of free thinking, delegates chose Mr. Crawley as
national party president over Ms. Copps, the former deputy prime
minister. Mr. Crawley is a lanky 42-year-old long-time Liberal
activist who started up his own wind-and-solar power company. He was
the emphatic choice of the youth wing of the party.

But he defeated Ms. Copps by only 26 votes. And the old rivalries were
there in the corridors: the Chretien wing of the party supporting Ms.
Copps for president and Mr. Rae as permanent rather than just interim
leader; the Paul Martin wing endorsing Mr. Crawley, who is rumoured to
be less than enamoured with the idea of letting Mr. Rae convert his
temporary job into a permanent one.

No one should think for a minute that Liberals have banished their
ghosts. The divisions and the feuds remain. And though the party put
in place new mechanisms for improving fundraising and reviving the 100
ridings across the country where it is effectively moribund, the
actual business of accomplishing these goals still lies ahead.

Beyond that, the Liberal Party still has yet to tell Canadians what it
is, other than not right or left wing. It has yet to tell us what it
would do if it were given power.

That, along with continuing to heal, represents its biggest challenge.
But there will be more than a year for leadership contestants to
define what, for them, Liberalism should be about.

And everyone who wants to can now have a say in the outcome.