The Conservative problem is that Trudeau did a pretend striptease at a fundraiser in the first place.
The reason he was out on the catwalk — as opposed to a middle-aged Conservative male in a dark suit usually found reading talking points before Question Period — is that he is what passes as a celebrity in Canada today.
The Conservatives, and New Democrats, are forgetting that when someone is attacked for their “celebrity status,” it usually just fuels their celebrity status.
So when NDP House leader Nathan Cullen says Trudeau “is famous for being famous,” he is actually playing to Trudeau’s strength.
None of Trudeau’s celebrity, derived from a famous name, a public life and a willingness to be unconventional in a very conventional milieu, means he will be a good party leader or a prime minister one day.
But it does mean it’s counterproductive to “attack” him for doing things that draw attention to himself. He has done that better than anything else in his short political career.
We saw this play out, on a much larger tableau, in the United States a mere five years ago.
A frustrated John McCain took direct aim at Barack Obama’s celebrity status during the 2008 presidential campaign in a disastrous ad that has obvious parallels and even less subtlety than the Conservative ad released this week.
This is not to compare Obama and Trudeau. The footage in the McCain commercial showed Obama speaking to a crowd of 200,000 in Berlin, a world away from the leader of Canada’s third party packing a hotel ballroom in downtown Ottawa.
“He’s the biggest celebrity in the world,” the McCain ad stated. “But is he ready to lead?”
It showed Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, flash bulbs and adoring crowds chanting his name.
It went after Obama in much the way that Cullen’s line tries to turn Trudeau into a Kardashian or a Bieber.
The Conservative ad uses stardust to spell Trudeau’s name. “We know Justin Trudeau has a famous last name, but does he have the experience to be prime minister?”
Both the Republicans and Conservatives took aim at what they thought was fanzine coverage of their opponent, and both claimed those who attended rallies were fans, not voters, “fans fawning over the The One,” as McCain’s camp put it.
The Trudeau performance that evening was cringeworthy for the handful of men in attendance at the Canadian Liver Foundation dinner, but we were hardly the target group.
Conservatives say the point wasn’t that he was raising money for charity. Everyone who attended the dinner was doing that, one senior official told me, “but Laureen Harper didn’t get up to pretend to take off her clothes.”
Labour Minister Lisa Raitt was also there and she hit on the salient point that was a subject of discussion that evening — the gender double standard.
She is right when she says the conversation would have been much different had a female politician done a mock striptease in a room full of men.
Indeed, it would likely kill the career of any female politician who ventured into that territory, but Trudeau had gotten away with it because, well, he is Trudeau, a celebrity.
Two decades ago, a political woman did get away with something, because she, too, was seen as unconventional.
Then-justice minister Kim Campbell, destined to be a short-lived prime minister, posed in an iconic photo, bare shouldered behind her Queen’s Counsel robes and suddenly found herself known as the Madonna of the House of Commons.
Years later, at an exhibition that featured the photo, Campbell explained the circumstances, that she had just picked up her robes, to another former prime minister.
“Ah, and what were you doing before you picked them up?” responded Pierre Trudeau, an unconventional reply from an unconventional man.
That is likely the last mock striptease in the younger Trudeau’s career. His d’Artagnan look will likely now be shelved and he should hang up the boxing gloves.
But if he becomes too conventional, he will be playing into the hands of his opponents because Canadians are desperate for a little colour in a federal political palette awash in grey.
Every time he is criticized for being a celebrity, his political stock is sure to rise.
Original Article
Source: thestar.com
Author: Tim Harper
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