Outside the bubble, Trudeau’s honeymoon has a lot of life left in it
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Adam Radwanski
The Globe and Mail
Published Friday, Nov. 27, 2015
Roughly a month after Justin Trudeau’s Liberals won power, pundits were already tripping over each other to pronounce that harsh realities – the fallout from the Paris terrorist attacks, the state of our country’s finances – meant the political honeymoon was already over.
If it wasn’t over then, maybe it should be now that the new government has conceded it will break its campaign promise to bring 25,000 Syrian refugees to Canada by year’s end.
But by all appearances, outside the Ottawa bubble, the honeymoon is still going strong. And to look at what the Liberals are currently able to achieve through imagery and attitude alone is to get the sense it could very well last longer than most – to the extent that if there is any risk posed to Mr. Trudeau by early perceptions, it is a false sense of security.
Every opinion poll since the Oct. 19 election has shown the Liberals with more support than they got that day. Chalk that up to having a fairly easy time of striking an appealing contrast to Conservative predecessors who had overstayed their welcome.
Mr. Trudeau went abroad to a pair of international summits, in his second week on the job, and endured media criticism for underreacting to what had happened in Paris. But if anything penetrated, for those who disliked Stephen Harper’s presence on the international stage, it was probably the clips of the comparatively dashing and self-assured new PM being fawned over in the Philippines.
He held a first ministers’ meeting, and critics pointed out the confab didn’t really seem to achieve much of substance. But what (if anything) stood out to most people was the Prime Minister bothering to hold a conference with provincial premiers at all – something Mr. Harper hadn’t deigned to do since last decade.
It remains to be seen if Mr. Trudeau and other world leaders will settle on anything of consequence at this coming week’s United Nations climate-change conference in Paris. But he may be able to impress many Canadians just through lofty rhetoric and the embrace of ambitious goals, as he ostensibly commits the country to a cause in which Mr. Harper did little to hide his disinterest.
As for refugees, even some usually cynical commentators have responded to Mr. Trudeau abandoning his self-imposed deadline and scaling back his commitment to government (as opposed to private) sponsorship by praising him for being less stubborn than Mr. Harper.
To the extent the Liberals are facing criticism for their handling of that file, the imagery could again be more politically important. There will soon be daily footage of refugees gratefully arriving on our soil and Canadians pitching in to help them get settled. Maybe that would have happened under the Tories eventually, but many won’t believe that – and the Liberals, Mr. Trudeau in particular, are better at inserting themselves into such stories without coming off as crass.
It is possible to see the pattern continuing even through next spring’s budget. The Liberals may invite criticism by projecting a deficit bigger than the $10-billion one in their platform. They’ll also easily make good on campaign promises such as increasing taxes for the rich and lowering them for the “middle class,” which people who only follow these things casually are more likely to notice.
The gap in how the new government is perceived inside and outside the bubble, in other words, might only grow in the months ahead. Understandably, it’s the latter with which the Liberals will be more concerned. But that doesn’t mean they can afford to get too comfortable.
Theirs is a party for which arrogance has often proven pervasive and toxic. The current crowd of Liberals may have learned its lesson earlier this year, when some pre-election overconfidence contributed to a temporary dive in the polls. But there are occasional hints – the declarations that “Canada is back,” or Mr. Trudeau’s comment this week that he left people who doubted him “in the dust” – that it is still not entirely immune.
With the way the Liberals’ first term has been set up, including a promise to get back to balanced budgets by the end of it, the second half could be considerably tougher than the first: At least a couple of their many rookie ministers will inevitably cause them grief. High expectations may clash with the federal government’s limited capacity to directly impact lives. The Conservatives might be energized by a new leader. The more distance from Mr. Harper’s time in office, the less a stylistic contrast with him will matter.
The longer the Liberals’ honeymoon lasts, the more the accumulated goodwill might help them deal with whatever hits them later. They should be prepared, though, for when that perception gap starts to shrink.
