Enjoy the bromance Justin, Barack bring out the Zen in each other.
State dinner in Washington is like prom night for leaders facing a short-lived friendship
All too often, politics makes us cynical.
Broken promises, waste, dysfunction, inertia, blah blah, yawn. Sometimes it feels like our leaders exist only to disappoint us. If there were a way to tax pessimism, no economy in the world would be in deficit. We’d be flush with the riches of our own misery. So when something emerges in the political arena that is heartwarming, we should cherish it. We should buy it flowers and cuddle it and feed it peeled grapes and whisper romantic verse to it by candlelight.
I am referring to the most beautiful sight in politics right now: the bromance between Justin Trudeau and Barack Obama.
No, no. Do not start. Please, not a cynical word about the Prime Minister’s visit to Washington this week. La, la, la, I can’t hear you.
I just want to bask in the glow of what the White House is calling a “special relationship.”
At a time when the world is in turmoil, when politicians are hardwired only to bicker with other politicians, these two bring out the Zen in each other. They are simpatico. They think the same. They smile the same. They finish each other’s sentences. I wouldn’t be surprised if they make an announcement about climate change on Thursday in identical Speedos. Obama: “If we don’t act now . . .” Trudeau: “. . . we will all be wearing these.”
Whatever you may think of them as individual politicians, this bromance is achingly sweet. It’s the real reason Obama is feting Trudeau on Thursday night. A state dinner is basically the U.S. president inviting someone to the prom. That’s all it is.
And right now, at this point in history, Obama wants to pin a corsage on Trudeau. He wants the world to know the two are slow-dancing to policy ditties. Who can blame him? Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, published a study this month about bromances. Apparently, the health benefits include reduced stress. Keep that in mind and then think back to how Obama looked before he was elected in 2008. The guy has aged a quarter-century in the past eight years. He doesn’t need the Secret Service. He needs a Walgreens detail: “Mr. President, we have your Grecian Formula. And some Preparation H for under your eyes.”
Obama has spent close to two terms lurching from problem to problem, crisis to crisis. Then all of a sudden, across the border, Trudeau gets elected. This is not just a new leader of a crucial ally. To Obama, Trudeau is a reminder of his younger self, of all that hope and change before it got crushed under realpolitik.
Trudeau is Obama’s time machine back to his own idealism.
In 2005, a few months after they were married, I recall talking to Sophie Grégoire-Trudeau about her new gig at the time, a correspondent on CTV’s eTalk. She planned to use entertainment to raise awareness of serious issues.
At one point, her husband got on the phone.
“There is a sense of responsibility that comes with (fame), a sense of possibility as well,” Trudeau told me 11 years ago. “Of using the power you’ve been granted by arbitrary twists of fate in order to change the world, to make it better.”
This is the message Obama once spread. It was once his raison d’être.
It also happens to be the engine of this bromance.
The only sad thing is the clock is now ticking. America elects a new president in November. The odds of Trudeau landing a second BFF is about equal to the chance Ted Cruz becomes the new head of PETA.
Make no mistake: Hillary Clinton will not be inclined to hang out with a younger Obama. If Bernie Sanders ever has a bromance, it will be with the ghost of FDR. Should Donald Trump become leader of the free world, the best Trudeau can hope for is frenemy status. (That, and maybe an early warning system to let Canadians know when an invading battalion of M1 Abrams tanks rolls across the Alaskan border.)
So enjoy this bromance while you can. Enjoy the respite from political cynicism. This is Joey & Chandler from Friends, Andy & Red from The Shawshank Redemption. At this state dinner, someone will probably scrawl “JT + BO Forever” on a bathroom wall just so the world never forgets.
That’s the nature of any great bromance: it feels like it will never end until it does. vmenon@thestar.ca