For two reasons this is not the least bit surprising. The first reason is the ongoing and eye-popping poll results (hypothetical polls, mind you) that see Sir Galahad’s Liberals making mincemeat of the Harpercons.
The second is that while other party leaders have dabbled in the attack-ad trade, Stephen Harper is the master of the smear campaign. As his former top strategist Tom Flanagan has written, he is first prime minister to make attack ads a staple of our political process in the pre-writ periods.
But while there are no surprises on the Tory side, how about the lame strategy Trudeau and company appear to have in mind? A week or so ago, Trudeau promised not to go negative. How brilliant is that when pitted against Stephen Harper? What’s he going to do? Just stand there like a choir boy while the Conservative attack machine fills him full of holes? That’s a death-wish formula, the one brought to the party by Stephane Dion and Michael Ignatieff.
In fairness, neither of those leaders had the money to mount a counterattack. Team Trudeau does. But the word from their camp is that their ad campaign will dwell of the virtues of their own guy without direct hits on PM Harper. The Conservative ads will tell the country in no uncertain terms that Justin is an untested greenhorn not ready to govern. They likely will feature clips of fellow Liberals like Marc Garneau going after him on that point in the Grit leadership debates.
While Trudeau is vulnerable on the question, it is worth noting that he was raised in the cauldron of politics as the son of a prime minister. That, combined with his years as an MP, give him at least as good a preparation as Harper had when, in 2002, he became leader of the Canadian Alliance party.
The Tories will try to put Trudeau on the defensive. That’s the way you win in politics. The effective response is to put the prime minister on the defensive. To do that, Trudeau has to hit back in kind, or even harder. Not wanting to go negative is noble. But sometimes you don’t have a choice.
Trudeau is 41 but comes across as younger. To show Canadians he is, in fact, ready to govern he has to show he has the muscle to stand up to the big guy.
The new generation of Canadians he is targeting want to see a different approach to politics. On the charge of not being ready to govern, Trudeau can flip it around, show a little of his old man’s sarcasm and wit. With a glint in his eye, he could well say, “Not ready to govern. Yes, I confess, prime minister. I confess I’m not ready to govern as a muzzler-in-chief, as someone who gags his MPs, who hides costing on major projects like fighter jets, who faces a robocalls scandal, who was found in contempt of Parliament, who has shredded our democratic system. Sorry, but I’m not ready to govern like that.”
On the economy he just been handed ammunition from a Conference Board of Canada report which says Canada’s ranking is only good because of crises in other countries. The country, it says, is falling behind on economic indicators such as productivity and attracting global investment. The Conservative boast, repeated ad infinitum, has been that we have been outperforming the long-suffering U.S. economy. But according to this report, on a wide number of indices — including standard of living — we have now fallen behind the U.S.
The great question in Canadian politics is how real the Trudeau surge is and whether it can be maintained. Another question is whether the steep fall in the Conservative numbers — they have dropped about 20 per cent since the last election — is due to the Trudeau bubble alone or to the public losing faith in the Harper ways.
The temptation is to say that Sir Galahad is a flash in the pan, that the Grit support will collapse as fast as it has arrived. But’s it’s been about half a year since Trudeau started registering the amazingly good numbers.
Polls, of course, are only snapshots. The real shots — those from the Tory howitzers — are yet to come. If Trudeau doesn’t have a better plan of counterattack than his predecessors, look out.
Original Article
Source: ipolitics.ca
Author: Lawrence Martin
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