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What’s the difference between Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Manny Pacquiao and Justin Trudeau vs. Thomas Mulcair?

Every boxing fan wants to see the first pair settle matters in the ring this May 2 in Las Vegas. Conversely, no progressive politico relishes a fight between Trudeau and Mulcair. That’s because it just might leave Stephen Harper wearing the championship belt again.

Trudeau must be realizing by now that Mulcair is no Patrick Brazeau when it comes to inside fighting.

With a June federal election still a reasonable possibility, the sparring between the two men now requires headgear. In the early going, when it was all Trudeau, Mulcair proved he could take a punch. More recently, the NDP leader has been piling up the jabs using the ring savvy developed over decades in public life at the highest levels. Mulcair is now ahead on points — or at least he is on this judge’s card.

He hasn’t had much help. For years, the mainstream media has been trying to find the right cliché with which to give Mulcair a ceremonial funeral. There was the issue of his looks compared to the telegenic Trudeau. He has a beard — you know, the thing that appears when you don’t shave.

His caucus from Quebec looks more like a high-school graduating class than a government-in-waiting. There have been embarrassing defections. There have been no by-election victories. There was an arguable ethical meltdown or two on Mulcair’s watch, though the federal court has yet to decide on that one.

Mulcair’s biggest sin? He’s not Jack Layton.

So what is he? The Tories and the corporate media came up with the answer — he is Angry Tom.

When Mulcair has a good day, the pundits said he is “back from the political dead”. But he is soon returned to the netherworld because the show that he stars in has fewer viewers than the Channel Guide on your cable package.

Mulcair’s talent was hidden under the bushel basket of Question Period. The country didn’t know him. As for his media photos, he usually looks like he’s teaching a Doberman how to snarl. After all, he’s Angry Tom, right?

Trudeau, meanwhile, was building up a light sweat skipping rope — and skipping time in the House of Commons. He has been in training for the main event: the election. Understood.

Trudeau’s lead in the polls has steadily dwindled … What happened? Too much instruction from his corner, too little of his natural talent left alone to shine. He dropped his gloves a little, began opening himself up, started making mistakes. Trudeau’s lead in the polls has steadily dwindled … What happened? Too much instruction from his corner, too little of his natural talent left alone to shine. He dropped his gloves a little, began opening himself up, started making mistakes.

He is a man on the run, travelling, pressing the flesh and displaying his personal charisma on main streets across this land. He decommissioned his Twitter finger, hit the gym and turned on the charm on the meet-and-greet circuit.

I saw Trudeau enter a bar on one of those trips; he might as well have been Brad Pitt. Every single person in the room wanted their picture taken with him, both men and women. He gave autographs and folksy speeches and ordinary Canadians gave money … a lot of money. They liked this kid, and it’s obvious he liked them too.

His stamina, star power and that famous name had the Grits poised on the brink of a remarkable political comeback for nearly a year. With a 10-point lead over the Conservatives at one point, Trudeau looked as though he was a media Moses who could lead the Liberals out of the wilderness all the way back to power. And maybe he still can.

If he did, it would be an epical event. It would mean knocking off both the government and the Official Opposition. That’s not the usual path to power. If Canadians allow him to do it, it would be the deepest political swoon the country had taken since girls were stealing Trudeau senior’s scarf.

Then Trudeau seemed to lose his mojo. It began the way it often does when you play protecting-a-lead. In boxing, it means the guy who is ahead on points gets on his “bicycle” and stays away from the one way he can lose — the dreaded knock-out punch. You stop competing. Rather than adding to your lead by doing what you did to get it in the first place, you try to limit the other guy’s comeback. You start trying to avoid mistakes. That’s exactly the point when your opponent’s adrenalin starts pumping and the big punch often lands.

Trudeau’s lead in the polls has steadily dwindled to the point where he’s virtually tied with the Harper Conservatives. Still first overall, but tied. Within the margin of error, that is where we are today — a dead heat.

What happened? Too much instruction from his corner, too little of his natural talent left alone to shine. He dropped his gloves a little, began opening himself up, started making mistakes.

In a stunning move, Trudeau dumped all senators from the Liberal caucus. Depending on what Michael Ferguson’s Senate audit uncovers, that might end up looking shrewd.

But Trudeau may regret his novel approach to Senate reform in the election campaign, where senators usually play key financial and organizational roles. And if he does get elected, he’ll need senators in the Upper Chamber for legislative purposes. Right now, he doesn’t have any.

Then Trudeau played investigator, judge and jury in a murky sex scandal that had no official complainants but lots of alleged victims making anonymous statements. Trudeau kicked Scott Andrews and Massimo Pacetti out of the caucus and the party.

Putting aside the issue of guilt or innocence, the MPs were punted without due process — just as Harper orchestrated the suspension of senators Wallin, Duffy and Brazeau without a hearing.

On the policy side, Trudeau has been criticized for being Harper Light. He agrees with the government on the Keystone Pipeline and also backed the sale of Nexen, a Canadian resource company, to a state-owned entity of the Chinese government. Nor could environmentalists have been very pleased when he said it made no sense to leave all that tar-sands oil in the ground.

So when the Big Blunder came down, it started to bite. Justin Trudeau lent his party’s support to Bill C-51, a bill that former prime ministers, Supreme Court justices, the Canadian Bar Association and hundreds of experts have denounced as dangerous, unnecessary and unconstitutional unless it gets key amendments with respect to more oversight.

Having lost the petro-state in the collapse of oil prices, Harper is trying to substitute fear and the police state — so far with fair to middling success. Trudeau has jumped on the fear bandwagon, despite the fact that C-51 will allow Canada’s largely unaccountable spy agency, CSIS, to carry out its operations while ignoring the Charter of Rights. The charter was his father’s crowning political achievement. Pierre Trudeau would never have supported the criminalization of dissent.

And neither does Mulcair. Bit by bit, he is cutting off the ring on Trudeau, backing him into a corner where he can work him over on the ropes. Mulcair has adamantly opposed the anti-terrorism bill and stayed true to his principles. He may be on the wrong side of the polls for now, but Mulcair will be on the right side of history and this country’s values when Canada’s Niqab Fever breaks and its temperature returns to normal.

For Mulcair, the real enemy is, and always has been, Harper. And perhaps Mulcair’s most winning point is that he has demonstrated that he will never let political ego make him forget that the main mission is defeating the Harper government.

Despite the fact that he is the leader of the Opposition, and that the Liberals have less than a third of the NDP’s seat count in Parliament, Mulcair has opened the door to a coalition that would guarantee that Harper’s last day on the job will be sometime this year. So far Trudeau has eschewed such an arrangement — even though if the parties themselves don’t do the strategic thing to put Harper out, voters will.

Above all else, Canadians are longing for authentic leadership. Only two politicians in Canada are providing it: Green Party Leader Elizabeth May and Mulcair.

If Bill C-51 was Trudeau’s Big Blunder, his fatal step could be supporting Harper on the expansion of Canada’s military mission in Iraq. Remember, he opposed the initial deployment — and with good reason. Just as he did to overcome the whirlwind of Brazeau in the ring, it’s time for Trudeau to start channelling his father.

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Michael Harris is a writer, journalist, and documentary filmmaker. He was awarded a Doctor of Laws for his “unceasing pursuit of justice for the less fortunate among us.” His nine books include Justice Denied, Unholy Orders, Rare ambition, Lament for an Ocean, and Con Game. His work has sparked four commissions of inquiry, and three of his books have been made into movies. His new book on the Harper majority government, Party of One, is a number one best-seller.

Readers can reach the author at [email protected]. Click here to view other columns by Michael Harris.

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