Age, plus experience
Logic says Justin Trudeau ‘just as ready’ as anyone
Daily and nightly I’m now bombarded with a 1:04 minute Conservative Party ad attempting to plant doubt into my wisdom on the question: Is Justin Trudeau ready to lead Canada? The ad asserts in the quick, cheap valuation of four paid Conservative actors that the age, experiences, traits of Justin Trudeau cause them to devaluate him as “Just Not Ready!” for the Prime Minister of Canada job.
Logician Bertrand Russell’s algebraic principle is a great way to disavow any credibility about this ad. It states: If All A’s are B’s. And X is A. Then X is B!
So if A is (having appropriate prior experience) before becoming B ( first elected as Prime Minister), And X (age) is relevant to A, then X is equally relevant as credible B.
Cases in point: consider experiences, ages, and traits of many a great former PM, world-leaders, human rights advocates, and presidential contenders. Men who at epochs in their nations’ progressions stepped fully into public life.
Successful figures at their mid-lives taking on leadership roles. Wholly involved in their political arenas tackling critical issues of their times.
Pierre Trudeau elected PM at 49. John F. Kennedy elected US President at 44. Martin Luther King Jr leading civil rights marches in his thirties-something years (assassinated at age 39). Barack Obama the first African-American US President elected at 48. Nelson Mandala jailed at 44 for opposing apartheid oppression, later becoming South Africa’s first black President. Bobby Kennedy, 42, assassinated as US presidential contender during the 1968 Democratic Party leadership race.
It’s is crucial to point out: Justin Trudeau (age 44) is not simply applying for the job of Prime Minister.
He (like the other federal party leaders) is calling on all Canadians to use their intrinsic and sound wisdom to absorb the issues (such as cultural, social, economic, environmental, political, human rights to name a few of the most obvious) critical to our sustainability’s of co-existing in a deliberative representative democracy – all loosely, knitted together with deep diversities about our national value judgements of what Canadians seek to call-out and influence in the federal debate; to personally assess their lots in life after nine years of Conservative rule under Stephen Harper’s helmsman ship; and make a voting, value judgment.
Each voter using his/her level of wisdom to make a critical personal, value judgment of what they want for a future national government – based on a synthesis of past ‘human truth’ performances of the party in power, in relation to a prophecy of what federal government they desire for setting a collective destiny in Canadian futures. So the question is not about who’s ready for the PM crown: The question is more about the Canadian electorates’ capabilities to make a wise choices, then about who leads what party at their midlife.
Any party ad that condescends to my intelligence and my wisdom as a privileged Canadian voter immediately is diminished in my assessment because they pollute the air-waves with stock ads that can not even be qualified for politically worthy debate.
To me the ‘Just Not Ready’ ad is lowest denominator-ism, which is the same ignorant and unimaginative level of quality as an unintelligent and condescending advert akin to the Conservative Party “face ad” back in 1993, demeaning Jean Chrétien's facial deformity caused by Bell's palsy.
An ad attacking the partial facial paralysis of Prime Minister Jean Chrétien; an ad backfiring on C-brand for its lack of sensitivity to a physical deformity caused from a childhood health affliction.
If this unimaginative level of political advertising is reflective of Conservative values and intelligence, it makes me question whether Stephen Harper (age 47 when first elected PM) was ever ready enough to lead our nation – his early life reflecting, an awkward and aimless university drop-out, a mailroom clerk, a computer room geek, who didn’t actually get his life on any track until his ‘thirty-forty something years’.
What’s the most relevant variable in any political equation? Canadians should be well informed to make a wise choice about their next PM on Election Day. As Bertrand Russell posited: A wise man is a better measure of things than a fool!