Take Him Seriously

Pierre Poilievre is a clown. Nonetheless, Susan Riley writes, it's time to take him seriously:

Random journalists, subject-matter experts, and others, try to counter Poilievre’s facetious boilerplate—“lets give Canadians back their freedom, so they can take back control of their lives!”—and a lot of people are simply turned off by his smug and snarky tone. But official Liberal sources—party apparatchiks, cabinet ministers, with three times Poilievre’s education, access to non-fake facts and a cadre of professional speechwriters? Mostly absent. Even Jean Charest, who is expected to be Poilievre’s main challenger in the current race to head the Conservative party, has barely dipped his toe into the ongoing, online leadership campaign.

Indeed, like some Liberals and media, Charest makes a huge error in adopting an air of knowing superiority towards his merciless rival. Sniffed Charest recently, asked about a Poilievre comment: “I’m not going to spend a lot of time responding to my critics … [the comment] says more about them than it says about me.”

Mr. Trudeau doesn't take Poilievre seriously:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, too, often tries to pretend Poilievre isn’t there when he provides answers in Question Period that are totally unrelated to Poilievre’s torqued questions—and always in Trudeau’s patented robotic drone. Too many Ottawa insiders wrongly believe that Poilievre is too extreme, too cartoonish, to be taken seriously.

This has to stop. Poilievre is not simply a buffoon, although there are buffoonish aspects to his political style. He is a slippery operator, hitting upon issues of immediate concern to Canadians—rising gas and food prices, the war in Ukraine, China’s thuggishness—then blaming Justin Trudeau for all of it and more. If the obsessive focus on Trudeau may strike non-partisans as risible, the problems register as real.

Poilievre is also capable of adapting his principles—or, at least, cooling his rhetoric— according to prevailing opinion. Hence, he has dropped his original opposition to same-sex marriage, advertises himself (quietly) as pro-choice and is often nowhere to be seen when a prominent Conservative premier does, or says, something spectacularly unpopular. And, on Ukraine, for instance, Poilievre’s position is almost identical to Trudeau’s, except that he wants Russia’s ambassador kicked out of Ottawa pronto.

And Poilievre knows the value of pictures:

Poilievre’s social media feed also includes pictures of his photogenic family—wife Anaida, and two children under five, Cruz and Valentina—and even his diminutive mother, Marlene, a Conservative volunteer in a Calgary riding held by Conservative MP Stephanie Kusie. Another photo shows Poilievre, flying to the so-called “Regina Freedom Rally” of Saskatchewan supporters, reading (or pretending to read) Jody Wilson-Raybould’s Indian in the Cabinet.

These curated images are meant to soften Poilievre’s razor-sharp edges, as is his deliberately cheeky sloganeering. “Legalize smiling,” reads the caption on one video clip, in which Poilievre demands the federal government end “all mandates and restrictions” related to COVID-19. The pandemic is gone, is the underlying message, if you really want it to be.

Magical thinking from a dangerous man.

Image: SaltWire