Trudeau, Harper, image, substance
Here’s a Brit-born writer living in Toronto:
Some great writing, therein, and I’m pissed off he anticipated my next Hill Times column, which reads in part:
“So too Justin Trudeau, who the camera loves and – to his critics – loves the camera right back. Trudeau knows, perhaps, that leaders are measured by the impressions they create, not the policies they promulgate.
There’s a risk in all of this, naturally. If, six months from now, Trudeau is indeed branded as Prime Minister Selfie – if his administration is simply regarded as a four-year-long photo op, punctuated only by state dinners and the occasional foreign trip – he’ll be in trouble. He needs to be more than the callow and shallow caricature his opponents suggest he is.”
Conservatives forget they had their own image-conscious deity, however: Ronald Reagan.
And he was popular for a long, long time, as I recall. And lots of conservatives would’ve lined up for selfies with him, too.