Time for Trudeau?

             This could be an interesting time in Canadian politics.

            If the polls hold any water, a former drama teacher could be our new prime minister.  Not that there’s anything wrong with a teacher being prime minister.  Lyndon Johnson was a teacher, and he managed as president of the United States for six years.  It’s just different.  We’re so used to lawyers, businessmen, and, well, economists.

            Trudeau’s training in drama certainly helped him this campaign to invigorate the left.  Unlike Mulcair, he speaks clearly and passionately, and slow enough for the average Canadian to understand what he’s saying.  This may seem trivial, but in politics, messaging matters.  Throughout the campaign, Mulcair was hard-pressed to get a good video clip on the news because his Liberal rival delivered that clear one-liner that hit home with many Canadians.

            Trudeau has proven he can campaign, and proved he can handle a debate.  While we never had a televised debate on the major TV networks (thanks to Harper and Mulcair), the four debates that were held gave his rivals every opportunity to keep Trudeau in third place.  His impassioned arguments and quick thinking, however, defied expectations.

            In person, Trudeau is a charmer who attracts large crowds.  He has the personal touch, which has helped him re-gain that star power he lost over the last six months.  He certainly knows how to woo a crowd, unlike Mulcair and Harper, and never gets tired of taking selfies.

He built his campaign on a platform to galvanize left-of-centre voters.  By promising greater spending without the tax increases, he whetted Canadians’ appetite for a free lunch.  He threw out fiscal restraint for some “good debt,” the same low-interest debt Canadians are so addicted to.  So long as the housing bubble doesn’t pop or interest rates skyrocket, Canadians will support this kind of government policy.

            Most Canadians want a leader who inspires, and Trudeau does have an Obama-like presence.  But just like Obama’s shortcomings quickly became apparent once he was president, Trudeau may also stumble out of the gate.

            Governing is different than campaigning.  Priorities and hard decisions will need to be made.  If you’re not on your game 24/7, things can go awry quickly.  Especially with a minority government, which it appears he will win.

            He will face some immediate challenges, like dealing with the provinces on the issue of climate change.  Getting the premiers to work together on this will be like herding cats.  In many ways, it’s one of those issues that can’t be won except by the most politically astute.

            Harper could avoid it by pretending climate change didn’t exist.  Trudeau, as the new leader of the left, doesn’t have such luxury.

            Perhaps even more important is how he will deal with Mulcair, who will have no choice but to begrudgingly support the new Liberal government.  Mulcair has been called the “Grizzly” for a reason, and Trudeau will have to continually keep an eye on this temporary ally, to be careful to not poke the bear, so to speak.

            If he does win, I’d like to believe Trudeau will learn on the job and become as astute a prime minister as he was a campaigner.  He certainly has the energy and ambition.  Some of the questionable quotes and decisions he's made in the past I'll chock up to rookie mistakes.

            Politics is, after all, all about defying expectations.

Black holes: Not your ordinary life-sucking worry

            Thank goodness for old issues of National Geographic.

            The one on black holes came in particularly useful the other day.  About a month ago, my eight-your-old-prone-to-worrying-about-the-most-interesting-things-before-she-goes-to-bed daughter expressed concern about the sun dying out.  But not just the sun dying out – more the notion that it will turn into a black hole and suck the Earth into it.

            “What’s going to happen to all the people?” she asked.

            “Well,” I told her in my most calming fatherly voice, “That’s only going to happen five billion years from now, so you don’t have to worry.  Go to sleep.”

            “But what exactly happens when planets get sucked into a black hole?  Will it crush the people?”

            Realizing that this was turning into a spiraling worry that sucks all reason out of everything, much like a black hole itself, I reassured her, “Don’t worry, all the people will be gone by then.  They’ll be in heaven.”

            “But what about all the animals?”

            Darn those animals!  I decided to take a hard line tact: “When the sun burns out, all the animals will be dead anyway.”

            She wasn’t very impressed with my response, but it was enough to end the conversation.  I’m not sure if this is a tendency of girls, to worry on end, but I can’t recall being especially concerned as a boy about the end of the universe.  Nor can I remember worrying about dying in any circumstance, as I am much more prone to do today (a function of aging, perhaps?) 

Yes, I remember pondering why we exist.  I also remember arguing with my friend about what the Roughriders season record would be (9-9 was always a safe bet).

But my daughter has obtained a level of responsibility and maturity that I never reached.  And perhaps this is why she is prone to worrying about things that are beyond my sphere of understanding.

Perhaps it’s male simple-mindedness that provides some comfort to daughters who are developmentally beyond their male counterparts.

Of course mothers can offer comfort, too, and usually are much better at the consoling bit.  When our daughter hurts herself, it’s not me she runs to.

But in rare circumstances like these, it takes a father to dig up an old National Geographic he read a year ago on the topic of black holes.  It takes a father to delve so deeply into an article on the physics of gravity that he barely pays attention to his daughter’s math homework. 

“Is this right, Dad?”

“Uh-huh,” I respond, half-glancing at her page while learning about what would theoretically happen if you stood at the edge of a black hole.  (And this is incredibly interesting!  Standing at the cusp of a black hole, for every minute you experience, a thousand years would pass on Earth!  Yes, my friends, gravity influences time… unbelievable!)

But the real reason I was reading was to confirm that our sun is in fact too small a star to ever become a black hole.  Yes, it’s a puny little star compared to most of the giants out there.  And even if it did, apparently it wouldn’t suck the Earth into it (who discovers this stuff, anyway?)  Only if the Earth’s orbit somehow changed so it was on a collision course with the black hole would it be reduced to the size of a marble.

To my relief, my daughter found this quite reassuring. 

            I know this because a few days later she whispered into my ear at church, “I’m really glad the sun won’t turn into a black hole.”

            “Me, too,” I whispered back.  And I really meant it.