Troubled PM turns to the power of the pivot

If the WE Charity scandal demonstrates — yet again — the ways in which Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is utterly incapable of avoiding political landmines related to ethics and conflicts of interest, it has also shown that he is more adroit at another manoeuvre: the pivot.

Like a magician conjuring with sleight-of-hand to a bewitched audience, or a parent desperately jangling keys in front of an angry baby, Trudeau appears at least in the short term to be successfully trying out his new distraction against the ethics affair: the argument that he’s done well on managing the COVID-19 pandemic.

These have not been kind days to the prime minister. His personal popularity, having restored itself during the early months of the coronavirus response to levels not seen in three years, has once again succumbed to gravity.

His momentum numbers are trending in the wrong direction.

In the face of this and under grilling by opposition MPs, we recently heard the new line. That in the “fog of war” of administering an unprecedented economic response to an unprecedented health crisis, what’s a few hundred million dollars between his government and those mere acquaintances, the Kielburger brothers? After all, hadn’t he successfully pushed billions of dollars out the door and into the pockets of Canadians to help them in their time of need? And besides, hasn’t Canada come out of this much, much better than other countries have?

Many would argue the ham-fisted handling of the Canada Student Service Grant and Trudeau’s subsequent blame of just about everyone else involved in it — the public service, his own cabinet — was a key part of the overall handling of the pandemic, and thus speaks to his own performance on an issue.

Canadians themselves may not be prepared to draw that line so directly, just yet. Upcoming data from the Angus Reid Institute will suggest a majority say the prime minister is doing a “good job” handling the coronavirus response, while a minority say the WE affair will have a fatal effect on his government. Indeed, as long as the pandemic remains the national issue most important to them, more people appear prepared to accept the prime minister’s pivot away from conflict-of-interest issues and toward crisis management than appear to reject that move.

Politicians have long used the pivot. Sometimes artfully, sometimes blatantly. Almost always to their advantage. One might reflect on the swivel to issues centring on same-sex and transgender rights that Trudeau used last year to divert lingering anger among left-of-centre voters over the SNC-Lavalin scandal, instead shining an uncomfortable spotlight on Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer.

It also awakens memories of a similarly successful ploy by a similarly vulnerable politician in an election 15 years earlier.

In 2004, having walked his country into a war in Iraq (under pretences so false its deadly effects linger to this day) then-U.S. president George W. Bush pivoted away from discussion about the conflict.

Aware that many of his own socially conservative Republican voters were just as angry as Democrats over the issue, he found a wedge that would divide them and bring his side back, galvanized. That, too, was the issue of same-sex marriage, although he came out against it.

Sometimes, the turning wheel of world events mercifully foists a distraction onto the nation. In dropping a tariff on Canadian aluminum, Donald Trump gives himself something to talk about other than his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic south of the border as his nation plunges deeper and deeper into crisis. The unintended gift is that he gives politicians, and this federal government, something else to talk about as well. Something more likely to pull Canadians back together than drive them apart.

It’s just the kind of pivot the politicians pray for.