It’s all up to Trudeau this coming year
Near-heroic status of Liberal chief is his greatest asset and liability
Here’s the shorthand for the next 10 months in Canadian politics, and more broadly for the next few years: It’s all up to Justin Trudeau now.
The rest, including the personal performances of Prime Minister Stephen Harper and NDP leader Tom Mulcair, are supporting plots to this main narrative. We know this because of the polls, which consistently show the Liberals in the mid- to-high thirties in popular support, with the Tories in the low thirties and the New Democrats in the low twenties. Threehundredeight.com currently has the Grits at 36, Conservatives at 32, and the NDP at 20.
Even when the Tories have a good spell, as they have this past quarter, the resulting bounce doesn’t reverse the underlying dynamic, which is in place nationwide, and has been consistent since Trudeau became Liberal leader in April of 2013. The data indicate Canadians are open to giving Trudeau either a minority or a small majority next October. This can change in a heartbeat during the campaign. But the underlying trend is clear. And here’s where it gets interesting: The causes of Trudeau’s popularity have a direct bearing on the challenges he faces in making that trend a reality.
Since before the March 2012 boxing match with Patrick Brazeau, which was Trudeau’s symbolic debut as a potential national leader, his success has often been put down to name recognition, pedigree, looks and charm. He has not outlined policy in any detail. What could be propping him up, insulating him from some of the gaffes he’s made, if not his shiny veneer, fame and simple likability?
Well, plenty, perhaps. There may be more at work here than meets the eye. Trudeau’s popularity could be linked to the very fabric of how human beings perceive political narrative. His brand has been crafted, deliberately it seems to me, to tap into very old archetypes of heroism. These archetypes are everywhere in our culture — in film, literature, myth and politics.
Joseph Campbell called it the mono-myth. It’s also been described as “the hero’s journey.” A young warrior appears, often of secretly noble parentage. He or she is called to adventure, initially refuses the call, but eventually yields to destiny, to take up the mantle and burdens of leadership. George Lucas’s character Luke Skywalker, of course, was built around this meta-story. So were the tales of the Lion King, and numerous other Hollywood fables.
Campbell wasn’t making it up: He based his theories, first articulated in 1949 in his seminal work, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, on recurring patterns in myth and religion. The legend of King Arthur comes to mind. So does the story of Shakespeare’s Prince Hal, an irresponsible party-boy in Henry IV, who evolves into a noble warrior and inspirational leader in Henry V.
Trudeau’s policy deficit has been presented as his greatest problem. It really isn’t. Though the lack of hard platform thus far has caused him some discomfort, the waiting does have one benefit: The Liberals will have the last word. It is safe to assume that, at some point between now and October, Trudeau will unveil a detailed plan to address income inequality and high household debt among the middle class. It is also safe to assume this plan will be framed as more egalitarian than the Conservatives’ income-splitting plan, and more realistic and responsible than the NDP’s ideas. The policy gap, in other words, will be filled.
What’s more intriguing, and potentially dicey for the Liberals, is the relentless pressure on Trudeau to live up to what I have heard jokingly described as his “Skywalker brand.” It’s actually no joke. The framing of a leader in Arthurian terms, as a good-hearted young hero, is inherently risky, because it makes it incumbent on that leader to live that part, and continue living it.
Inhabiting Campbell’s heroic paradigm can mean winning boxing matches. It can mean not becoming tongue-tied in mano-amano debate with tougher, more experienced opponents. But it certainly requires that the “young hero” in question continue to be perceived by ordinary folk as honourable, strong, noble and upright, to a greater extent than is required of other leaders not similarly branded.
Assuming the Skywalker myth, if we can call it that, may have helped confer upon Trudeau a kind of Teflon coating of popular goodwill. But it has also fostered expectations of him that are different from those borne by his opponents, and that any human being — and politicians are all, of course, human beings — would find it difficult to measure up to.
The upshot is that, having been in the public eye all his life, Justin Trudeau now faces 10 months in the full blast of the Klieg lights, with every word and gesture magnified, and friends and enemies alike alive to the possibility of the slightest signal that he is not, after all, what he is purported to be. It will be scrutiny of a kind he has never encountered before.
Small wonder Simba, the future Lion King, runs off into the wilds early in his adventure to eat grubs and live for the moment, singing Hakuna Matata. Postmedia News