In the May 2011 federal election, the Conservative Party of Canada finally achieved a parliamentary majority, putting to an end a long period of rule by Canada’s “Natural Governing Party,” the Liberals. This outcome startled veteran political journalist Peter C. Newman, who was preparing to write a book about the man he assumed would be our next prime minister, then–Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff.

We got the book, only now it takes the form of a campaign post-mortem as well as a more general account of the rise and demise of the federal Liberals. With regard to the latter, it strikes too high a tone, right from the Götterdämmerung title and baffling epigraph from Dostoyevsky. In fact, the Liberals’ slip from power was the predictable result of obvious factors, including the slow political revolution that united the right and splintered the left (in the process abandoning the middle), and the dismal legacy of years of Liberal arrogance, complacency, and scandal. There was nothing tragic in the Liberal “Armageddon” (Newman’s word) but rather something comic, with the 2011 election playing out like a Ken Finkleman mockumentary.

Nor was Michael Ignatieff a tragic hero, despite Newman’s earnest psychoanalysis and best, if sometimes backhanded, efforts at rehabilitation. (There were moments, the author writes, in which Ignatieff was “unexpectedly impressive.”) No good post-Chrétien candidates for the Liberal leadership have emerged, but the former Harvard professor may have been the worst, thanks to his lack of political savvy and almost 30 years spent outside the country (which made it easy to colour him as an outsider). Indeed, in Newman’s interviews and backroom reportage, Ignatieff inadvertently comes across as another part of the comic drama, appearing as almost a stereotype of an academic out of his element.

Newman, a self-confessed collector of anecdotes, offers up a nice selection here. And though gentle in his criticism, he does add some pointed commentary. In particular, he expresses dismay at how, faced with the most polarizing political figure in Canadian history, Ignatieff was unable to either define himself or publicly communicate any meaningful differences between himself and Stephen Harper. That failure was remarkable, and showed as much as anything why voters abandoned the Liberal party “for something more solid than the mushy middle ground.”