TRICKY PRESIDENTS
Two Trudeaus, two U.S. scandals, two headaches.
Justin Trudeau was not even 3 years old when U.S. president Richard Nixon resigned over Watergate in 1974.
So this isn’t a prime minister who learned at his father’s knee how to deal with American presidents under siege and scandal.
Just as well, perhaps. If you go looking through the historical records for how Pierre Trudeau handled Nixon and Watergate, a somewhat surprising conversation turns up. In May 1973, Trudeau telephoned Nixon to offer some moral support and sympathy.
“I wanted to phone you to tell you how distressed I was about all of this noise that is going on around the Watergate thing,” Pierre Trudeau says to Nixon.
“As far as I’m concerned, the people here that I know, and certainly myself, have great confidence and respect, and amongst politicians we realize how an issue like this can be seized upon and distorted.”
Nixon then went on to talk about how friends sometimes do regrettable things for friends in politics and while things were tough, he expected to survive.
The tape only turned up a few years ago. It’s a fascinating glimpse into how politicians, even those who don’t like each other (such as Nixon and Pierre Trudeau) can find common cause when necessary. In this case, it was the old no-one-really-understandsus form of political solidarity.
Funny how things turn out. Pierre Trudeau would stay in politics for more than a decade after that telephone call, while Nixon would be gone within 14 months. More than 40 years later, however, a different Prime Minister Trudeau is forced to contend with a U.S. president also in the midst of a legal storm threatening his presidency — one that could turn out to be far more serious than Watergate.
Chances are that Justin Trudeau isn’t placing any calls of sympathy or support to Donald Trump this week. Quite the opposite, in fact. This week, Canada’s foreign affairs minister, Chrystia Freeland, delivered what could only be seen as an anti-Trump manifesto in the Commons, while Trudeau dined in Montreal with Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, later that same day.
But Trudeau does seem to be settling into a familiar politicians club — the one in which leaders trade tales of being misunderstood and unfairly maligned (usually by the media.) That hit me last week as I watched Trudeau making his second appearance as prime minister at the annual press gallery dinner. It wasn’t hard to see that the novelty of having a mediafriendly prime minister at the dinner has worn off, and maybe a little bit of the media-friendliness, too.
“What a nice gathering of every single person who spends their days absolutely roasting me,” Trudeau said in greeting the crowd. “I decided to come back this year because apparently I hate myself.”
Trudeau has been keen to portray himself as a prime minister who is more open to the media than Stephen Harper was — more open, too, than his father, who was no great fan of the press gallery dinner. Two years after Pierre Trudeau left office, he declined an invitation to the dinner, explaining that he would be in China and that if it was possible to be any farther away from that event, he’d be there.
These days, about 18 months after Justin Trudeau took office, we in the media are often asked whether political-journalistic relations are any better than they were under Harper. Generally, we answer that some improvements are noticeable: Cabinet meetings (and ministers) are more open, the PM does hold regular press conferences and most importantly, journalists are not getting dark threats or calls to their bosses when they are critical of the government. That climate of fear, pervasive in the previous decade, has abated and that’s not insignificant.
But Trudeau, like Harper, has shown a fondness for detouring around the traditional media, with widespread distribution of photos and images on social media, or doing softball interviews that are more entertainment than news. Harper did interviews about hockey on sports networks. This week, Trudeau was on American breakfast television, talking about being a sex symbol.
Trudeau and Harper also seem to share a fondness for saying nothing to political reporters. Harper pulled this off by simply not talking to them at all; Trudeau does it by repeating empty talking points.
Lots of things have changed between the two Trudeau governments in Canada. But this week, it seemed like a couple of things haven’t changed all that much. Once again, there’s a president in trouble in Washington and a prime minister with a growing sense that politicians are a misunderstood species, especially in the media.
Chances are, though, that this Trudeau isn’t dismissing Trump’s current troubles as just “noise” — or if he is, that he isn’t telling him that on the phone. sdelacourt@bell.net