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Trudeau’s team has no doubt observed with interest President Barack Obama’s quite successful effort to circumvent traditional U.S. media by going directly to the mass audience with goofy routines on, for example, the shows of Jimmy Kimmel or Stephen Colbert. From a media manipulation point of view, it’s clever: Among other things, it restrains late-night satirists who might otherwise skewer the president with unreserved venom.

In Trudeau’s case — and here we get to the high-wire act — the package includes the town hall, the yin to his boxing’s yang. In his chat sessions, as we saw again Thursday morning at New York University, the PM uncorks “the full Trudeau” — extemporizing, amping up the charm and gregariousness, and generally making himself appear the antithesis of what most people expect from a politician.

These are events that, in a bygone era, made Conservative and New Democrat tacticians salivate with anticipation, as they pictured the rambunctious youngster tumbling over his own feet and offering up frame after frame of attack-ad B-roll.

But he’s learned from his mistakes. Thursday, riffing on Canada’s role in the world, Trudeau at one point referred to “American imperialism” — then paused for a heartbeat and flipped the sentence around to outsource the term’s attribution, thus easing any potential sting to his hosts. He has learned, in a nutshell, to avoid the self-administered grenade.

But there is still risk in this, and it grows over time: The click-bait game can turn savage in an instant. Boxing photo-ops are all gain, no pain, because sparring sessions are not fights. They are mock combats in which no one loses or is humiliated. The worst that can happen is that U.S. websites tire of running the photos. Every hour-long free-wheeling policy chat, by contrast, is the Brazeau fight without the fists, in which a single serious error can be made to last forever. Stephen Harper, to compare, did it zero times that I can remember.

So far, the PM is winning the game — in no small part because he’s the only Canadian politician willing to play. He may eventually face a challenger: Michelle Rempel? Nathan Cullen? For now, only one thing seems certain: The more Trudeau does this, entertaining though it may be, the greater the odds he’ll trip. It is high-stakes poker, not for the faint of heart.

National Post