Earlier this week, my iPolitics virtual neighbour Susan Delacourt floated what may one of the most interesting observations to emerge since the initial uproar over the explanation Justin Trudeau gave to Rolling Stone on why he picked Patrick Brazeau to serve as a “good foil” when the two went mano-a-mano in an Ottawa boxing ring in 2012.

It’s well worth reading Susan’s musings in full if you haven’t already – no rush, this offering can wait until you’re done. But for what it’s worth, here are the two points that I felt were worth highlighting.

First, she points out that Trudeau’s account of how the fight came about seems to have shifted considerably since 2011, when he told her that Brazeau was actually his third choice. He’d originally approached two other Conservative parliamentarians, Peter MacKay, then defence minister, and Rob Anders, a perennial backbencher who nonetheless managed to find his way into the headlines every now and then. Both declined due to the time involved in training for such a match.

That, as Delacourt points out, doesn’t really jibe with the prime minister’s current claim that he deliberately sought out Brazeau – a “scrappy tough-guy senator from an Indigenous community” to create what he described, with somewhat jaw-droppingly casual arrogance, as “the right kind of narrative.”

Compared to the Rolling Stone comments, it also comes across as considerably less – well, obnoxious (my words, not hers). Back then, Delacourt notes, Trudeau “wasn’t using words like ‘narrative’ and ‘counterpoint.’’”

Of course, back in 2012 he hadn’t yet even joined the race to lead what was, at the time, the third party in the House – the first and, thus far, only time in Canadian parliamentary history that the Liberals had been reduced to such a status.

He was just another backbench opposition MP, albeit one who had inherited a household name.

In her closing comments, Delacourt suggests that this latest controversy could serve as “a good check” on Trudeau’s ego as he hits the halfway point between the last and the next election. She’s absolutely right. If he hasn’t already realized that himself, his team might want to get him to understand that.

At the same time, it made me think back to how the rest of us have, in some cases, unconsciously rewritten our own understanding of how Trudeau and his Liberal team actually got from there to here, and how very, very slow most of us were to see it it coming.

In the interests of full disclosure, I’ll start: I recall, during casual what-if chats with journalists and other political obsessives before the writ dropped in August 2015, we could while away hours debating whether the NDP could actually beat out the Conservatives, or whether the Conservatives were simply too good at ground-gaming the hustings.

On one occasion, a Liberal timidly asked if we thought his party had any shot at all. Oh, how we laughed and laughed. We kept on laughing through the marathon-length campaign – that is, when we weren’t collectively declaring, in tones ranging from solemn to gleeful, that once again, Trudeau and/or the Liberals had lost the election on the spot by doing or saying, or failing to do or say something.

He skipped the traditional first-day press conference because he was on a plane to a previously scheduled date with the Vancouver Pride parade; the party’s plan to simultaneously hike (some) income tax rates while unapologetically running billions-deep deficits was pure political lunacy.

He was going to flame out like a dying star at the first leaders’ debate, then the second, then the third. And don’t even get us started on what his stubborn opposition to the burqua ban, pro-pot legalization stance and unapologetic pledge to roll back the rules on stripping citizenship from dual national terrorists would do to the Liberals at the ballot box.

Meanwhile, the red line kept creeping upward in the polls – from a distant third, to second and eventually first as crowds started lining the streets in anticipation of the big red bus rolling in for a rally.

Even then, I have a painfully clear memory of confessing, just days before the vote, that the only prediction I was comfortable making was that the Conservatives probably weren’t going to be able to win another majority, although even that seemed daring.

None of this, by the way, is meant to excuse or rationalize Trudeau’s comments – or to suggest that he doesn’t need to take a mental step back and remember what it was like back before he moved into his current Centre Block suite. Nothing, after all, becomes a leader more than modesty.

But at the same time, we do sometimes forget what a remarkable turn of events it was that he ended up in the prime minister’s seat at all.

He didn’t simply descend onto the political landscape as the obvious, universally acknowledged heir apparent, and stroll to victory without breaking a sweat. He did, in fact, work for it, which we sometimes forget when we’re grumbling about the glowing coverage he gets in the international press.

There’s even now a modest but growing cottage industry in penning “Hey, guys, Trudeau really isn’t that great at all” counterpoint columns for the very same audience.

The prime minister would definitely do well to keep those breathlessly hagiographical headlines in perspective – and, for heaven’s sakes, just stop gloating over that boxing match already. But the rest of us might want to do the same with our reflexive eye-roll when he’s depicted as anything more than a pretty-boy dilettante who lucked into the job based on his family name.