Do you realize that Hillary Clinton and Justin Trudeau are the most popular politicians in North America
today?
Two inspirational speakers
with inspiring names ride above scandal, uneven recovery, and apocalyptic
worries about the environment, global governance, and democratic capitalism. They
are more popular than all the other professional politicians who’d like to
change things significantly and, as well, they lead the conservative-minded
incumbents in Ottawa and Washington.
They have plenty more in
common.
Beyond the daily pleasures
and perils of celebrity, they’ve both won regional elections and campaigned to
lead national liberal parties. (Trudeau now leads Canada’s Liberal Party and
Clinton was supposed to win the presidential nomination for the Democrats in
2008.)
Also, neither has ever run a
winning national campaign, a significant national organization, an elected government,
a domestic program, or a domestic department of government. They’ve never raised
a tax, cut a loophole, shrunk a program, passed a program, selected a Cabinet,
nominated a judge, chosen one good cause over another, or negotiated with a
public sector union.
Still, their polling numbers
sweep the field. Their names conjure memories of better times; and they do that old
trick of appearing to do politics and modern government better than all the
overwrought ideologues and sordid hacks who don’t call themselves liberals.
They hang with the rich and
their retainers but don’t answer to money. They’re “aspirational” without being
ideological.
They don’t play on the edges
or ever stray outside the orthodoxies of the two oldest political machines in
the West. Today, each carries the dream of power that beats in the hearts of insiders
in both machines.
Yet, they both complain about
cynicism and bet they can win by owning the slogan “It’s time for a change”—that sigh that kills rigorous debate and skirts the hard business of securing a
mandate to do something important.
Bit cranky? Do I have a
problem with dynasties? Sure.
But declining to bet on
Trudeau in the Canadian election of 2015 and Clinton in the US election of 2016
is easy, even a cold calculation. Betting that both will win is far harder.
Big surprises may come along
and save Stephen Harper and elect a Republican President. And, after that
happens, people will say: a second term for Harper was in the cards and a third
term for Democrats wasn’t. However, even if nothing extraordinary happens, we already
know enough about Trudeau and Clinton, their styles, their politics, and their
adversaries to question their chances of keeping ahead for years before anyone
votes.
Saying they’ve got what it
takes today is roughly equivalent to believing that focus groups today can tell
Apple executives what will be selling—and how to sell it—2 years from
now.
The two great inspirational speakers Hillary Clinton and Justin Trudeau
ReplyDeleteare inspiration for the leaders around the world . They are inspirational as they helps the people around them to be more focused and ambitious