Obama: America's Trudeau by Anthony Westell

The public has great expectations of a leader elected on his charisma.
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Tuesday, November 04, 2008
The first time I saw Barak Obama on TV he was beginning to campaign in his first primary, as much a curiosity as a serious candidate. But then I noticed that as he moved through a small crowd, people were reaching out to touch him — just as they had reached out to touch Pierre Trudeau in 1968. I saw two men with undefinable, inexplicable charisma. The more I saw of him the more he reminded me of Trudeau, and the lessons I learned while covering his election campaigns.

Trudeau warned voters to put no trust in politicians' promises because they never knew what the circumstances would be when they took power.

A few days before the 1968 election it was already clear Trudeau was going to win on a landslide, so when he invited me to interview him during breakfast on his campaign plane my first question was what he thought would be his greatest problem. I expected him to mention some current issue, probably the strange new economic phenomenon of rising prices in a stagnant economy that we learnt later to call stagflation,

Instead, he said, "Expectations." The adoring and admiring voters sweeping him to power on a tidal wave of Trudeaumania expected him to work miracles. He knew that love would soon turn to hate, or at least to bitter disappointment, which it did.

Obama, like Trudeau, is an intelligent and thoughtful man, and he probably knows the same fate awaits him — although I have seen little about him attempting to dampen expectations. Trudeau warned voters to put no trust in politicians' promises because they never knew what the circumstances would be when they took power. He cited contemporary examples: in the UK Labour PM Harold Wilson had promised a technological revolution but found himself struggling to save the pound sterling, and in the US President Lyndon Johnson had promised the Great Society but became ever more deeply stuck in the Vietnam War. But, then, who really listened to Trudeau?

Obama takes power as a recession deepens, threatening possibly to become a depression. Government revenues are falling as the public debt grows. Making the best of hard economic times will be Obama's overriding priority, not cutting taxes, fixing medicare, and all the rest of his promises. Inevitably, "scandals" great or small, real or mostly imagined, will be found among the hundreds of new people recruited to his new administration.

Will the public be forgiving? Don't count on it. Even the "liberal" media will be feeling a little guilty about their enthusiasm for Obama. Were they deceived by this smooth-talker? Why were they so easy on him? Just to prove their independence, they will become the hypercritical opposition. It happened to Trudeau, and it will to Obama.

Obama will face the voters again in four years. So did Trudeau, in 1972 — and he came within an inch of losing. That experience turned him from intellectual-in-politics into a hard-nosed pol. Maybe, behind the veneer, Obama is already there.

Anthony Westell emigrated to Canada, from Britain, in 1956 to join The Globe and Mail, becoming a member of the Editorial Board, and then Ottawa Bureau Chief. Joining The Toronto Star as national affairs columnist in 1969, he later moved to Carleton University to teach journalism, becoming director of the school of journalism and Associate Dean of Arts.