Volodomyr Zelenskyy paid a surprise visit to Joe Biden this week. It was really, really important.

For starters, it was the Ukrainian president’s first trip outside his country since Vladimir Putin’s war began in February. And, as 2022 grinds to a close — but as the war grinds on, Zelenskyy, and his Washington trip, reminds us of two important things.

One is about him. By any reasonable standard, Zelenskyy is simply an extraordinary human being and leader. A Russian “special military operation” that everyone expected to take a weekend collided with a wall of Ukrainian might — and Zelenskyy’s firm leadership.

For Russia, and for Putin, the war has been a catastrophe. As the New York Times reported in a special section on Sunday, “This isn’t war. It’s the destruction of the Russian people by their own commanders.”

More than 100,000 Russian troops killed. More than 300,000 wounded. More than 3,000 Russian tanks destroyed or captured. More than 6,000 armoured combat vehicles destroyed or captured. More than 300 Russian aircraft shot down.

The Russian military failure has been astonishing. As the Times reported: “(Russian troops go into battle) with instructions grabbed off the Internet for weapons they barely know how to use. They plod through Ukraine with decade-old maps, or no maps at all. They speak on open cellphone lines, revealing their positions and exposing the incompetence and disarray in their ranks.”

Zelenskyy, meanwhile, may not have won the war yet, but he certainly is not losing it. Strategically, tactically, he has defeated Putin’s three main objectives: One, he has unified and strengthened NATO. Two, he has crushed the physical expansion of the Russian empire. Three, he has foiled Putin’s ambitions to render himself a superpower on the world stage.

And, with his visit to Washington — mainly, as he candidly admits, to obtain more weapons — Zelenskyy reminds us of Winston Churchill’s trip to Washington after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, more than 80 years ago. Like Churchill then, Zelenskyy has now become the leader of the free world.

That is what the Washington trip tells us about him. But what does it say about us, in North America?

Joe Biden ends the year in a strengthened position. In November’s midterm elections, Biden kept the Senate, and he kept his opponents to minor gains in the House of Representatives. But all of that had more to do with the missteps of the Republicans — Trump, abortion, January 6, election denial, etc. — than it did with the Democratic president.

In Canada, meanwhile, Zelenskyy reminds us that our own leadership is sorely lacking.

Justin Trudeau may be ending 2022 in a better mood — thanks to a convincing win in a Mississauga byelection, thanks to his performance at the inquiry into the application of the Emergencies Act — but his main problems remain. He leads a scandal-prone government, one that is out of ideas and out of energy.

And, as much as he lusts after a Parliamentary majority, he is still far from realizing that goal. If an election were held today, he would get reelected, but he would not improve his position.

His main opponent, Conservative Pierre Poilievre, fares no better. His chosen candidate in the aforementioned byelection was crushed by the Liberals — and Poilievre bizarrely did not even bother to campaign there.

Meanwhile, an Angus Reid Institute poll released this week suggests that the new Conservative leader is much more unpopular than any of the three previous Conservative leaders. All of whom, we note, were defeated by Trudeau.

The NDP’s Jagmeet Singh? He barely rates a mention. He has permitted his party to be effectively taken over by Trudeau. He has become irrelevant.

All that, as Zelenskyy alights in Washington this week, reminds us about two important things. One good, one bad.

The good: The world has a leader like Vladimir Zelenskyy.

The bad: None of us here in North America have a leader like him.

Do by-elections, which usually have notoriously low turnout, matter?

We get told general campaigns do, all the time. But what about by-elections? Should we care — and should we care that no one seems to, you know, care about them?

That legendary political muse, Dan Quayle, had the best take on it all. Said the former U.S. vice-president: “A low voter turnout is an indication of fewer people going to the polls.”

Well, yes. Hard to quibble with that one. Good insight, Dan.

Fewer folks went to the polls in this weeks by-election in Mississauga Lakeshore — only around 30%. But, before some political scientist starts writing wordy op-eds about the need for compulsory voting, remember: by-elections are beloved by hacks and flaks, but rarely ever regular folks. And they’re the bosses.

For instance: Toronto Centre had a byelection in October 2020. More than 80,000 people were entitled to vote. Slightly over 16,000 did. York Centre had a byelection in the same month, with about the same result: more than 70,000 were eligible to cast a ballot. Only 11,000 bothered. Democracy survived.

So, before academia gets its tenured knickers in a knot, remember: by-elections don’t ever attract as much attention ruin as general elections do. That’s normal. And it’s unlikely to change.

Mississauga-Lakeshore therefore had the standard byelection turnout, but a notable result. The result tells us a few things, participation rate notwithstanding. Here they are.

One, the Conservative Party got clobbered. The Liberal candidate — a former Kathleen Wynne government minister, and therefore not without blemish — basically massacred his Tory opponent, by thousands of votes. He took 51% to the Conservative’s 37%.

That’s notable, as noted, because that’s a worse showing than what the much-derided Erin O’Toole got when he was running things. In that race, O’Toole’s chosen candidate did better than Pierre Poilievre’s.

Well, Pierre has represented an Ottawa suburb for years, winning in seven elections. But he didn’t in Mississauga-Lakeshore. How come?

His spinners, all coincidentally anonymous, insist it was because the aforementioned riding is all-Liberal, all the time.

Well, no. That’s false. Sure, Liberal Svend Spengemann represented the riding in the Trudeau era — but before that, Mississauga-Lakeshore was federal Conservative territory for a number of years.

And, oh yes, this: provincially, the riding is still Conservative territory. Just a few months ago, in June, a provincial Conservative candidate won there — by many thousands of votes. And four years before that, same result: the Tories won it, by a lot.

What about Team Poilievre’s other excuse — duly reprinted, without attribution in the pages of the Toronto Star, because it serves both their interests — that it’s all Doug Ford’s fault? You know, that the Ontario Premier sank his federal cousins in the by-election because he’s unpopular? Guilt by association and all that.

Except, that one doesn’t wash either. When he’s been running things, in good times and bad, Ford has taken that riding handily. Twice.

Did Ford’s misadventure with the notwithstanding clause, and the general strike it would have caused, hurt Poilievre’s chances?

Again, no. Ford ultimately never used the notwithstanding clause to win a fight with an education union — and there was no general strike, either. And, besides: both those things were controversies many weeks before the by-election even got underway.

So, what was it? Who is to blame for the first real-world test of Pierre Poilievre’s leadership since he became leader?

Well, that would be what Poilievre and his caucus see in the bathroom mirror every morning: themselves. The convoy crap, the crypto-currency craziness, the whackadoodle WEF weirdos. All of that, and more, has persuaded many Canadians that, under Pierre Poilievre, the Conservative Party of Canada has abandoned the political center. And is, you know, chasing the People’s Party vote.

Which, by the by, got 286 votes in Mississauga-Lakeshore.

About which, our muse Dan Quayle might say: “Not winning enough of the popular vote? It means you are not popular.”