Michael Ignatieff now belongs to a very exclusive club that includes Jean Chrétien, Brian Mulroney, Pierre Trudeau and even Stephen Harper. Ignatieff, the federal Liberal leader, has just learned that to succeed he must have a power behind his throne or a Cardinal Richelieu type to do the things Ignatieff can’t afford to do.

Ignatieff today is almost exactly where Chrétien was as Opposition leader in 1992. Down 11 points in the polls, Chrétien came to the realization that things just weren’t working out in the Office of the Leader of the Opposition, and his chief of staff had to go.

That meant Chrétien had to sit down with his old and loyal friend, Eddie Goldenberg, and tell him he was bringing in the late Jean Pelletier, a former mayor of Quebec City with few roots in the Liberal party, to take over as chief of staff.

Pelletier’s arrival also meant the arrival of Peter Donolo, who, upon taking over as communications director, fired the entire press office in the OLO.

In 1987, Mulroney realized he was going to have a hard time getting Canadians to support free trade, let alone re-elect him in the next election. So, he asked Derek Burney to be his chief of staff. Burney’s condition of acceptance was simple: a lot of loyal friends who got Mulroney elected in the first place would have to leave the Prime Minister’s Office. They were all gone within six months.

Marc Lalonde is the chief of staff Trudeau turned to after almost losing the 1972 election. In the words of Larry Zolfe, Trudeau had gone from “philosopher king to Mackenzie King” by the 1974 majority victory.

In the summer of 2005, Harper was a very frustrated leader of the Opposition and the butt of everybody’s jokes. Yet, six months later, he was prime minister.

In Harper’s case, there were really a string of Cardinal Richelieus, beginning with Tom Flanagan and Doug Finley, former campaign director of the Conservative Party and now senator, and Harper’s current chief of staff, Guy Giorno.

Today, Harper is recovering in the polls and Canadians are even beginning to like him.

So, given Ignatieff’s recent troubles, Ian Davie should not really have been surprised he would be replaced last month by Donolo, a man with a particular — and valuable — talent for making abstract issues compellingly tangible for voters.

Paul Martin may not have been remembered as the finance minister who killed the deficit had it not been for Donolo’s ability to make the necessary fiscal pain palatable to the public.

Recent history shows that politics has not changed much from 17th-century France. There must be an SOB behind the throne who can quietly think the unthinkable, keep the troops in line and invisibly plot — just like the original cardinal.

Had the unfortunate Martin had such a person behind him as prime minister, Martin might have remained PM beyond the ill-fated election of 2006. Similar things could have been said about Robert Stanfield or even the gaffe-prone Joe Clark.

Regardless of whether Ignatieff ultimately succeeds — or should that be Donolo? — watch for some big changes very quickly.

For starters, Ignatieff will probably take himself out of day-to-day strategy, tactics and party minutia, and concentrate on being a retail politician. Neither Donolo nor Richelieu would have it any other way.

Next, it’s the narrative, stupid. For some reason, rookie political leaders believe their own press clippings and really believe they are the messiah who has come to save the party (and the country).

From now on, there will be no more dithering about where Iggy should stand. Donolo will decide what the leader’s story will be and how it will be developed. Good politics, like so much of good marketing, is good storytelling.

Mulroney understood this, when he declared that Canada was a land of “small towns and big dreams.” So did Trudeau, when he said “the state has no business in the bedrooms of the nation.”

Up until now, even the current Liberal leader’s body language has been stiff and uninspiring. As the London Observer recently asked: how can one of the finest writers and intellects in the Western World be reduced to just another politician mouthing bromides and platitudes?

The answer is probably that there has been no one in the OLO with the cachet, fortitude or experience to tell the boss to be himself and take some stands.

@page_break@Since Trudeau, Canadians think charisma is everything in politics. And it is certainly important. However, as Trudeau and Mulroney understood, it has to be combined with a story or narrative that will win the hearts and minds of enough voters to win.

This is how Finley and others in the Tory backrooms took an awkward nebbish whose suits didn’t even fit him properly and turned him into prime minister in 2006.

From now on, watch out for a sharper, more focused and more energetic Iggy, who is also likely to get much credit from the media for appearing to turn himself around.

And, of course, Donolo — and maybe the cardinal himself — will approve. IE