Tugging on Superman’s cape
WE, THE GOOD CITIZENS OF METROPOLIS, WON’T ACCEPT ‘ THAT CAN’T BE SOLVED.’
One doesn’t want to be entirely humourless. Justin Trudeau’s decision to go out for Halloween as Superman and parade his act on the staircase descending to the Commons had definite elements of cute. If you like cute. And later on he took his kids t rick- or- t reating around the neighbourhood — i. e., around Rideau Hall, a pretty good neighbourhood. His kids presumably already see their father as Superman. What kid doesn’t see his or her father as Superman? Besides, he rather looked the part, with his hair slicked down and those oversized Clark Kent glasses someone had procured for him. As a former drama teacher, he does shtick well.
I wonder how much discussion there was among the PM’s advisers about whether Superman was a good choice of costume. ( If it was the finance minister, they would have focus- grouped it for a couple hundred thou.) They must have discussed it. They discuss everything. We saw them discussing “Because it’s 2015” the morning of the government’s swearing- in, in that fawning CBC cinemavérité report of what the Corp treated as our version of Inauguration Day.
Did Katie Telford think it was edgily ironic and would go over big with the Libs’ young- professionals core? Did Gerald Butts worr y grumpy conservative colum- nists would try to extend the news cycle on it or that potentially gettable NDP voters struggling to reach the middle class might be offended by the expensive production values? Or that shots and clips of PM-Superman, a gift to opposition ad writers for 2019, would be a serious unforced error?
I vote for its being pretty funny and maybe even a little self- mocking, however unaccustomed Liberals are to self-mockery. Trudeau has been in power for two years now. Anyone who has been PM for two years and still thinks he’s Superman is seriously delusional. ( Carbon taxes and pipeline extensions? No problem! Change centuries of first- past- thepost in a single bound? Easy! And how is that sunny ways thing working out?) The delusion wouldn’t be any greater than we see among other prominent world office-holders (look southward, reader) but it would be bad enough.
The l arger problem is that, whatever the PM may now understand about the seriously limited nature of his powers, we in the public insist on thinking of him as Superman. Not just Justin Trudeau but any PM. Where is the problem we won’t ask a sitting PM to swoop down, flex his muscles over and solve?
Superman Syndrome is mainly our fault, but PMs are now fully complicit in it. The 2015 Liberal platform contained 325 promises. Implementing them all would have been a Superman-sized task ( not to mention, in several instances, a super- sized disaster). It’s true that politicians often kick off various policy initiatives by telling us how it won’t be easy or we’ll all have to work together or results won’t come right away, unlike if it really were Superman taking them on. But that’s just speechwriter’s reflex. The PMs are there, aren’ t they? And they’re tackling the problems. And they’re doing so because we, the good citizens of Metropolis, won’t accept “Too hard,” “Can’t be solved,” or “You really need to fix this for yourselves” as answers instead. If there is a social problem to be solved, we have taught ourselves over the last 50 years, it’s a job for the PM or premier. Now, almost always, the PM or premier agrees.
But even Superman is bound by the physics of space and time. He can’t do everything at once. As John Stuart Mill put it: “Every additional function undertaken by the government is a fresh occupation imposed upon a body already overcharged with duties.” And that was in 1848, when by today’s standards governments were tiny. Mill also wrote, in words truer today than they were then: “A people … who look habitually to their government to command or prompt them in all matters of joint concern — who expect to have everything done for them, except what can be made an affair of mere habit and routine — have their faculties only half developed; their education is defective in one of its most important branches.”
Of course, it could be worse. So m e countries have leaders who do seem to think of themselves as supermen. Or even higher t han supermen. For t he time being, at least, there’s no attempt here to enshrine Prime Minister Justin Pierre James Trudeau Thought in our constitution, as President Xi Jinping Thought has now been enshrined in China’s. ( There’s something to be said for a constitution, like ours, that is hard to change.) Our PM Superman, and we with him, might want to t hink carefully before getting into a freetrade deal with a Chinese leader who does consider his thought constitution-worthy and can oblige his countrymen to agree.