A Wild Ride

From now until the election, not just Americans -- but all of us -- are in for a wild ride. Michael Harris writes:

The traditional cliché is that all politics is local. For now, no politics is local. What happens over the next four months in the United States will affect everyone, which is why the eyes of the world are on Donald Trump and Kamala Harris.  

NATO, China, Europe, Canada, and Ukraine, and an array of others all have a massive stake in the outcome. Will Americans choose the former prosecutor, or the convicted felon; the first Black, female commander-in-chief, or the 78-year-old twice impeached ex-president who talked about shooting migrants in the legs at the border, and deporting millions of them now living in the United States. 

Two very interested bystanders in this most unusual presidential election are the Canadian federal leaders who may soon be squaring off against each other to decide who will be prime minister: Justin Trudeau and Pierre Poilievre.  

What happens in the United States may foreshadow what happens here:

In the end, not even the president of the United States could suspend—let alone repeal—the laws of the great game. You can’t play poker without chips, and you can’t run a campaign without money.

Although Trudeau is not encroaching on his dotage, there is still a lesson here for him. Biden couldn’t ultimately ignore inconvenient polls, and neither can Trudeau. 

For months and months now, Trudeau has been several postal codes behind Poilievre and the Conservatives in the polls. A majority of Canadians don’t want him leading the Liberal Party into the next election expected in 2025.  

Trudeau’s answer so far has been to double down on his insistence that he will contest the next election as head of the party. He assures his nervous caucus that things will gradually get better by the time Canadians choose their next prime minister: interest rates, inflation, and lower housing costs.  

And they will, incrementally. The Bank of Canada, for example, just dropped the interest rate to 4.5 per cent.  

The problem with that approach is that it didn’t much matter in Biden’s case. The U.S. has had a robust economic recovery from COVID. It also brought down the inflation rate significantly, and is gradually lowering interest rates. But none of that had any affect because that’s not how voters were experiencing it. They aren’t grateful for a reduction in the rate at which their expenses are increasing. They are remembering what groceries used to cost in pre-COVID days.

There is another problem with the PM ignoring polls showing his deep unpopularity, and a massive and consistent Conservative lead as the party of choice. If that doesn’t bother the PM, you can bet it bothers every Liberal MP looking to stay in his or her job.

A restless caucus could easily become a rebellious one if the leader and the polls remain in the ditch. If the conviction sets in that Trudeau is about to lead the party lemming-like over the cliff in 2025, his own team may turn on him as the Democrats did on Biden.

That’s because the Liberal caucus has seen in the U.S. the power of down-ballot candidates to remove an unpopular leader when he becomes a drag on their own reelection prospects. For now, it is up to Trudeau to decide whether it’s “damn the polls, and full speed ahead,” or the Biden option. But it may not be up to him much longer.

Stay tuned.

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Why Stay?

A lot of people are suggesting that Justin Trudeau should go. Martin Regg Cohn writes that Justin should talk to Kathleen Wynne:

Kathleen Wynne has been there, done that — and didn’t go.

After a bitter byelection defeat for the federal Liberals in Toronto–St. Paul’s riding this week, Wynne has been asking herself the same question anew. As premier, she stayed to fight another campaign in 2018, paying a high price in the election defeat that followed.

History also suggests that changing leaders is no panacea for unpopular premiers or prime ministers. After Wynne left, the Ontario Liberals under Steven Del Duca lost badly again to Doug Ford; after Brian Mulroney quit as PM in 1993, his successor Kim Campbell was wiped out; same with Pierre Trudeau’s successor, John Turner, in 1984.

Consider what Wynne is saying:

“I think what’s going to happen now is there’s going to be a lot of internal soul-searching,” Wynne told me. Over the next few weeks, MPs will be “trying to figure out now how to have the tough conversation with him,” because “he’s going to have to make a decision.”

Wynne predicts Liberal MPs across the country will be going door to door this summer hearing their constituents say, “We love you, we hate your leader.”

That’s what happened to Wynne in her last years, and it’s the fate befalling Trudeau now.

“I lived through that and it’s tough.”

MPs have to decide whether they can stand it. And the PM must determine if he can withstand it.

Wynne thought her situation would improve -- and so did Cohn:

Back then, I thought if Wynne could reintroduce herself to voters and somehow rehabilitate her image, she had a better chance to eke out a narrow victory in 2018 than any of the other pretenders to the throne. But as readers know, I’m always wrong — and as it turned out, the downside risk of an unloved leader was a massive loss on voting day.

Similarly, Trudeau may be the best bet for a longshot Liberal minority victory in the federal election due in late 2025. But by virtue of the personal hostility he engenders — akin to Wynne — he could very well be the worst bet if things don’t go their way, leading to even bigger losses.

It's not a simple decision. Stay tuned.

Image: CTV News

Why Is He Sticking Around?

Justin Trudeau is in trouble. Lots of people wonder why he's sticking around. Michael Harris writes that two new books deal with that question:

Whatever the answer may be, two [books] have just been [published] — a full-length book by Stephen Maher, and a slim volume by Paul Wells. Both ultimately paint the picture of a leader who is washed up.

Maher’s book, The Prince: The Turbulent Reign of Justin Trudeau, is already a No. 1 bestseller on Amazon in the Kindle edition. And the Wells 96-page essay, Justin Trudeau on the Ropes: Governing in Troubled Times, has been reviewed as a skilfully written psychological assessment of one of Canada’s longest-serving prime ministers. Neither work will put many smiles on faces in the Prime Minister’s Office.

Wells also portrays the PM as a man who doesn’t deal well with opposition. It’s his way, or the doorway.

“For all his pedigree and physical grace the work of politics has never come easily to him,” Wells writes, adding that “his judgment is often terrible. He has not surrounded himself with great talent; in fact, he has discovered a real gift for chasing talent away.”

Considering what happened to Jody Wilson-Raybould, Jane Philpott and Gerald Butts, Wells has a point.

The Maher book is much bigger and more extensive:

Maher’s book, at 385 pages, is the first full-length biography of Justin Trudeau, the interest it has already sparked is not surprising. Based on 200 interviews, including one with the PM himself, The Prince offers a trove of inside information that one would expect from the talented journalist who was part of the team that broke the robocalls scandal surrounding the 2011 election.

While Maher was writing the book, I visited with him in his home, a converted boathouse on the back harbour of Lunenburg, Nova Scotia.

Over beer, we talked shop about the challenges of taking on a big book about a Canadian prime minister. I had one piece of advice for him about the complex business of getting a book from concept through to publication, a process in which an author is pushed and pulled in many directions: “Stick to your guns.”

I was struck that day by Maher’s sense of fairness in his assessment of the prime minister. He was not interested in writing a “hate Trudeau” book, although by doing so, it would be easy to cash in on the PM’s plummeting popularity.

When Maher began his work on The Prince, he thought the current PM was a more consequential figure than either Jean Chrétien or Stephen Harper, a high-impact leader who changed the country more than his predecessors.

It was the author’s opinion that history would look kindly on Justin Trudeau. Although that impression changed as his research progressed over 18 months, Maher’s book has been received as a fine example of a traditional journalistic deep dive: exhaustively researched, fair and balanced.

Maher's opinion of Trudeau is now more nuanced. There are two Trudeaus -- the Prince and the Entitled Snob:

Which Trudeau is the real one? The earlier version full of hope and hype, and some big-ticket accomplishments; or the Prince, who can’t get over his own sense of entitlement, even as his tired government seems to have lost its way?

Whether we will ever know the answer to that question depends on what the PM decides to do: walk off undefeated into the lucrative sunset of the speaker’s tour and the corporate boardroom, or stand his ground and fight, despite dismal polls and relentless journalistic epitaphs.

Writing in the Globe and Mail, Maher shared a momentous quote on how the PM himself sees his political future. They are fighting words.

“I just see it as such a fundamental choice in what kind of country we are, who we are as Canadians,” Trudeau told Maher. “That, for me, is what I got into politics for: to have big fights like this about who we are as a country and where we’re going.”

Stay tuned.

Knowing When It's Time To Go

In professional sports, in politics, and in life in general, it's wise to know when to go. Michael Harris writes that some Canadian politicians knew when to leave the stage. Many others didn't:

Tom Brady made that point five years ago when he told an interviewer that the only thing he was afraid of was the end of his playing career in the National Football League. The greatest quarterback of all time had trouble saying goodbye. How much trouble? He retired twice, once last year in a flood of emotion, and again last week without the histrionics. 

Conservative Richard Hatfield was the longest-serving premier in New Brunswick history, winning four provincial elections and holding that post from 1970 to 1987. Despite mounting controversies and scandals, including drug charges against the premier laid by the RCMP, and allegations that he had offered marijuana and cocaine to four students, Hatfield refused to resign. Instead, he decided to contest the 1987 provincial election only to see his party demolished.

The man who succeeded Hatfield, Frank McKenna, handled his exit from politics very differently. This very popular politician wiped out the Conservatives in the New Brunswick provincial election of 1987, winning every seat in the legislature. He promised he would leave that post if he was still in office after a decade. And exactly 10 years after his rout of the scandal-plagued Conservatives, McKenna retired from politics, exactly as he’d promised. 

This brings us to Justin Trudeau. Harris believes Trudeau is at the end of a pretty good run:

Justin Trudeau, like Tom Brady, has had a story-book political career. He is five-for-five in running for a seat in the House of Commons, representing the Quebec riding of Papineau. As Liberal leader, he has won three out of three federal elections, and has served seven years and 90 days as prime minister. 

But if the polls have it right, running for a fourth time to remain prime minister may be a bridge too far. Recent surveys show the Liberals trailing the Conservatives by seven points, and suggest a majority of Canadians would like Trudeau to step down and hand the ball to a new leader. Pollster Nik Nanos says that it is a troubling sign for Trudeau that 43 per cent of Canadians think the country is headed in the wrong direction, compared to 40 per cent who believe it is moving in the right direction. Over the last 16 years, only twice has the “wrong” number been numerically higher than the “right” number: the last two years of Harper’s doomed government in 2013 and 2014. 

It's not easy to retire. But it helps to know when you should retire. I wonder if Justin reads what Harris writes.

Image: The Toronto Star