Entire Article By PETER WORTHINGTON From the Toronto Sun (Feb., 2009)
It’s fashionable for Americans to say they’ve never before seen such public adulation as there is for Barack Obama. But we Canadians have: Pierre Trudeau.
While it’s true that Obama can do no wrong at the moment (a concern for him and his people who fear expectations are too high), it was similar in Canada when Trudeau became PM in 1968.
There are curious similarities in the two — both charismatic personalities, both achieved the highest office in the respective countries without much public examination or accountability, both were suspect (by some) of far left leanings, both virtually immune from criticism, led by an adoring media which groveled to have its belly scratched.
After a succession of minority governments, Canadians welcomed Trudeau’s majority government — dazzled by his oft-irreverent style, his somersaults off diving boards, his barely concealed contempt for the media, which kept coming back for more.
Obama is half white but is viewed as a black; Trudeau was half English and was viewed as French.
Despite seemingly interminable primaries and the U.S. election campaign, we really didn’t learn much about Obama that he didn’t want us to know. By his mid-40s he’d written two books about himself that were critically acclaimed. When concern emerged about the company he kept, and his associations with a racist pastor, friendship with a middle-aged ex-Weatherman bomber (who was lucky to escape jail), and college Marxists and radicals, most Americans shrugged and moved on.
Trudeau facts
We in Canada knew even less about Trudeau — and didn’t care. Inconvenient evidence was ignored. Heck, our intrepid media were unable to even discover Trudeau’s correct age before he became PM.
When it emerged that he had led a delegation of Canadian Communist Party members to an economic conference in Moscow shortly after the Second World War, staged by Soviet propaganda, people didn’t believe it was sinister. When questioned, Trudeau explained he was scolded in Moscow because he “threw snowballs at Stalin’s stature.” This proved to the Canadian public that Trudeau was a straight arrow.
I was a reporter with the Toronto Telegram, recently returned from living in Moscow, when Trudeau gave this explanation in 1968, and checked meteorological records. The conference took place in April when there was no snow in Moscow. Trudeau had fudged the truth. No one cared.
Obama was excused by Americans for claiming Pastor Jeremy Wright was his religious mentor, despite Wright’s anti-American outbursts (” … I say God damn America”). Ignored was Obama’s deal with an unsavoury real estate figure.
Trudeau’s writings about visiting China and his empathy with Mao Zedong, of whom he said his eyes had seen too much misery, raised few eyebrows, considering the untold millions killed by Mao.
Today, few recall Obama saying that only government could create the jobs needed to restore the American economy, followed by telling Republicans that only the private sector could create jobs to thwart the recession. Contrasting views that raised barely a murmur.
New messiah
Canada, in 1968, hoped Trudeau was the new messiah; Americans in 2009 believe Obama will lead them to a better future.
Forgotten is that in the next election following Trudeau’s majority 1968 victory, his Liberals won the 1972 election by two seats over the Tories. Canada was back to minority government status.
The bloom was off Trudeau, and a lacklustre Tory opposition preserved him until he fell to Joe Clark’s temporary charisma, which faded when Clark couldn’t count and called a vote of confidence election.
Right now, U.S. Republicans are in some disarray, which may be the best thing Obama has going for him, when his various declarations of intent and shifts in U.S. policy fail to materialize or live up to hopes — as eventually they must.
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