ALL GAIN, NO PAIN: U.S. LOVES TRUDEAU IN THE BOXING RING
To truly grasp Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s media strategy, one must first appreciate this: He does things no other politician will do. The reason no other politician does these things is because they invariably end badly. The risk-reward, as in tightrope walking multiple times between New York City skyscrapers, doesn’t stack up.
We are not speaking here, of course, of pugilism. Boxing, once an arena of extreme political risk for Trudeau, has latterly been reduced by his team to a picture-perfect safe zone. It is the sweet science of creating images that cannot help but delight U.S. media outlets still titillated by the metaphor of a leader physically trading jabs with another fighter in the ring. It’s too splendid a narrative to ignore.
Therefore, there was Canada’s head of government Thursday afternoon at historic Gleason’s Gym in Brooklyn, dutifully doing his bit before the cameras, Haida raven tattoo prominently in evidence. For worldweary Canadian journalists it was all “been there, done that,” we having seen the show numerous times since that first time on March 29, 2012, when Trudeau shocked everyone but himself by beating up Sen. Patrick Brazeau.
In the U.S., however, Trudeau the Fighter is still a phenomenon. American friends of mine tell me he is much in the news, at least in the northeast; his yoga postures, his panache and style, his youth and looks of course, his Kennedy-esque vibe, and of course the added zing of a blood sport. I shot a brief ringside video of Trudeau fighting Brazeau in the final round, as the crowd bayed for more. TMZ has twice sought (and received) the rights to air that clip. Their audience seems to like it.
But this is more than mere attention-seeking, the Trudeau version of Stephen Harper cuddling with pandas. Underlying it is a calculation that the PM’s growing global celebrity (he was named Thursday one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people and Wednesday was featured by GQ Magazine in a glossy online-only “cover”) can pry aside Americans’ traditional indifference to all things Canadian that do not include hockey, comedy or doughnuts.
In a nutshell: If more Americans get to know and like Canada’s leader, the thinking goes, perhaps more American politicians — including those in Congress and in the next White House — will be more kindly disposed to this country when, say, softwood lumber tariffs hit the news again.
It could be who pays for which new cross-border bridge, or battling protectionism in the next mad cow disease outbreak, or harmonizing standards on reducing vehicle emissions, or, even, the Keystone XL pipeline, which, though shelved due to Obama administration intransigence and indifference, has not yet been declared entirely dead.
Trudeau’s team has no doubt observed with interest President Barack Obama’s quite successful effort to circumvent traditional U.S. media by going directly to the mass audience with goofy routines on, for example, the shows of Jimmy Kimmel or Stephen Colbert. From a media manipulation point of view, it’s clever: Among other things, it restrains late-night satirists who might otherwise skewer the president with unrestrained venom.
In Trudeau’s case — and here we get to the high-wire act — the package includes the town hall, the yin to his boxing’s yang. In his chat sessions, as we saw again Thursday morning at New York University, the PM uncorks “the full Trudeau” — extemporizing, amping up the charm and gregariousness, and generally making himself appear the antithesis of what most people expect from a politician.
These are events that, in a bygone era, made Conservative and New Democrat tacticians salivate with anticipation, as they pictured the rambunctious youngster tumbling over his own feet and offering up frame after frame of attack-ad B-roll.
But he’s learned from his mistakes. Thursday, riffing on Canada’s role in the world, Trudeau at one point referred to “American imperialism” — then paused for a heartbeat and flipped the sentence around to outsource the term’s attribution, thus easing any potential sting to his hosts. He has learned, in a nutshell, to avoid the selfadministered grenade.
But there is still risk in this, and it grows over time: The click-bait game can turn savage in an instant. Boxing photo ops are all gain, no pain, because sparring sessions are not fights. They are mock combats in which no one loses or is humiliated. The worst that can happen is that U.S. websites tire of running the photos. Every hour-long freewheeling policy chat, by contrast, is the Brazeau fight without the fists, in which a single serious error can be made to last forever. Stephen Harper, to compare, did it zero times that I can remember.
So far, the PM is winning the game — in no small part because he’s the only Canadian politician willing to play. He may eventually face a challenger: Michelle Rempel? Nathan Cullen? For now, only one thing seems certain: The more Trudeau does this, entertaining though it may be, the greater the odds he’ll trip. It is high-stakes poker, not for the faint of heart.
THERE IS STILL RISK IN THIS, AND IT GROWS OVER TIME: THE CLICK-BAIT GAME CAN TURN SAVAGE IN AN INSTANT. — COLUMNIST MICHAEL DEN TANDT