The New York Times this week pro­filed Michael Ignatieff, the new leader of Canada’s Liberal Party. He may not have the charisma of Barack Obama, but he does have a Facebook group. And besides,

Although the clauses “for a Canadian” or, now, “for a politi­cian” are often attached, peo­ple almost always describe Mr. Ignatieff as glam­orous. Maclean’s mag­a­zine once named him Canada’s “Sexiest Cerebral Man.”

Ignatieff, who was born in Toronto, has taught at Harvard, hosted pro­grams for the BBC, penned essays for the New Yorker, and writ­ten 16 books. And for the past sev­eral years, he’s been back in Canada.

Mr. Ignatieff shocked friends and col­leagues three years ago by chuck­ing the life of the mind for the hurly-​​burly of pol­i­tics and return­ing, after a long exile, to his native coun­try to win a seat in Parliament. And if he was bored, it wasn’t for long. Last December, after a tumul­tuous fort­night of machi­na­tions in par­lia­ment, Mr. Ignatieff, 61, became the leader of the oppo­si­tion Liberal Party, which has been called Canada’s “nat­ural rul­ing party” and has been in power for much of the last century.

Should his party win con­trol of the gov­ern­ment, some­thing it came close to doing last week and still hopes to in the com­ing months, he would become the next prime min­is­ter of Canada.

Interestingly, MacClean’s writer John Geddes ques­tioned the source of the “Sexiest Cerebral Man” quote, blog­ging in “Who called Ignatieff our ‘Sexiest Cerebral Man’?” that the mag­a­zine “…can’t find any elec­tronic record of hav­ing described him in those three words.” It sounds clever, though…

And for a much more detailed take on the man who would be prime min­is­ter, check out this Globe and Mail fea­ture.