There’s an old, unattributable
saying: once you’ve bought your first Ford or Chrysler, you’ll probably
stick with Fords or Chryslers because you won’t want to go through the hard
work of studying the market objectively every time you buy a car. Pundits can
be like that: once they’re committed to a candidate, they can relax their
analytical and critical muscles. Here’s the esteemed national columnist Lawrence Martin
bolstering Justin Trudeau’s thin political biography as a credible alternative
to Stephen Harper:
“But
to argue that he (Stephen Harper) was better prepared would be to forget a big
advantage Mr. Trudeau has over everyone in the experience department. You want
political seasoning? How about being raised since birth in the cauldron of
power? How about living all your early life at 24 Sussex Dr., son of a prime
minister?
“For
a course in political immersion, it’s hard to beat. Years of foreign leaders
and premiers and princes and kings traipsing through your living room. Heated
debates at your dining room table. Daily life with Papa PM during the fight for
the country in the 1980 referendum. Constitutional negotiations with the
premiers just down the stairs from your bedroom. Foreign trips to broaden the
perspective. Then, all the counsel and tutoring in his father’s
post-prime-ministerial years.”
The tough question left for
Martin isn’t about policy or vision or name recognition or personal charm, but
whether all that time “at the vortex of power” has provided Justin Trudeau with
those (political) smarts.
Unfortunately, political
smarts and (if we bother to throw in his country’s interests as well as his
Party’s) sound judgment aren’t much nurtured by simply being there—whether
upstairs at 10, or checking in at 20. Indeed, being attached to a leader every
day as a speechwriter, or as a loyal son, or as a loyal staffer, doesn’t count
for much of anything.
Competent political and, dare
we say, prime ministerial decision-making, above all, requires experience in
making decisions.
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