The challenge ahead for Trudeau
Beyond any argument, Justin Trudeau’s sweeping election victory was the product of a brilliantly organized campaign and of his own exceptional charisma and charm.
To the magnitude of his triumph there is just one serious limit. This is that it’s all happened before, but the other way around.
The preview to Justin Trudeau’s recent achievement involved his father, Pierre, who, in his first election in 1968, stirred up “Trudeaumania” and as a result swept the country as thoroughly as did his son a week ago.
For Trudeau the First, though, it all came unstuck in the next election, of 1972. Only Quebecers’ instinctual, almost automatic, support for one of their own kept him in office, and this by a mere two elected MPs.
Success, this is to say, is impermanent in Canadian politics, not least so because few voters any longer feel strong loyalties to any party, fewer here, quite possibly, than do any others in the world.
In coping with this challenge, Justin Trudeau is in some respects better positioned than was his father. In other respects, his hold on office is the more fragile.
The commonest shortcoming attributed to today’s Trudeau is that, unlike his father, he’s no great brain. True, but misleading. Jean Chrétien, no deeper a thinker than Trudeau, kept Canadians cheering him on through two electoral triumphs by likability and canniness.
Trudeau’s principal defect instead derives from his slogan “real change.” It’s great for an election. To actually bring it off requires a lot of labour and a lot of luck.
Still more challenging, “real change” requires a lot of money, as in the generous and ambitious promises made to Aboriginals. The truth, though, is that our economic growth is slow with little significant improvement in government revenues in sight.
The risk for Trudeau thus is that before long he will be barraged by accusations of having broken his promises.
Here, an Ottawa lobby company has made some shrewd observations. While Canadians wanted Prime Minister Stephen Harper out, writes Ensight principal Jason Lietaer, “the Conservative party itself was not seen as a spent force.” Rather, voters supported its key policy of “balanced budgets.”
That’s the bad news for Trudeau. At least according to Ensight, the offsetting good news for him is that voters “appreciated the tone he brought to the con- versation on Canada’s future,” and, as is Trudeau’s great gift, his understanding of “their perception of what they feel traditionally personifies the Canadian way.”
Trudeau thus has made a powerful connection to Canadians’ sense of themselves while at the same time the Conservatives spoke successfully to Canadians’ sense of the practical and sensible.
For Trudeau the Father in his first election almost a half-century ago, it was all a good deal easier. His opposition to Quebec separation had most of the country automatically on his side. By his cleverness and charisma he offered Canadians what they then most wanted — a leader of their own as smart and as cool as John F. Kennedy.
Today, it’s all more complicated. But it is also more interesting, or will be if the Conservatives can also find themselves a leader who knows, as does Trudeau Junior so abundantly, how to talk to people and how to listen to them.
The way things are going it may not be long before sizable numbers of Canadians may start to feel loyalty to their chosen parties.
The commonest shortcoming attributed to today’s Trudeau is that, unlike his father, he’s no great brain. True, but misleading.
Richard Gwyn’s column usually appears every other Tuesday. gwynr@sympatico.ca