How long does the guy have to be in office before the Star's ed board concludes that what we've all seen is basically what we're going to get?

It’s hard to know where to start with the Toronto Star’s baffling editorial in Saturday’s edition. In print, it had the headline, “Time to lead, prime minister.” The online headline version was more blunt : “Justin Trudeau needs to show he has the qualities to lead.”

“Huh,” I thought when my eyes first came upon that headline. “Some editorialist is sure gonna be angry when they see what lame headline some page editor slapped on their editorial!” Because surely, after almost four years with Trudeau as prime minister, the Star’s crack team of editorial writers isn’t still thoughtfully pondering the man and his record, comparing the highs to the lows, before concluding that somehow, they don’t have quite enough information to make up their minds? There’s no way the Star’s editorial board would essentially argue that it’s just too soon to tell what kind of prime minister Trudeau would be, as he approaches the end of his first mandate? It had to be a bad headline.

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It was not, in fact, a bad headline.

The editorial itself is mostly unobjectionable. The editorialists note that the Liberals are heading into the fall election with the benefit of a strong economy, and also note that polls show the Liberals are “barely running even” with the Conservatives. (That’s arguably too generous — both the CBC’s Canada Poll Tracker and 338Canada.com poll aggregators show the Liberals well behind the Conservatives, in both popular vote projections and estimated seat counts. Still, the Liberals remain in a competitive second position.) The Star’s editorialists note, correctly, that the problem for the Liberals is their leader. Justin Trudeau’s personal popularity has utterly collapsed. They even get why Trudeau’s popularity has tanked more or less right, at least in my view: a series of very public and very avoidable major errors in judgment, including the entire SNC-Lavalin fiasco, comments the PM made during the Mark Norman affair and, most recently, his strangely discombobulated response to accusations that Canada is engaged in an ongoing genocide of Indigenous people.

The Star's editorialists note, correctly, that the problem for the Liberals is their leader

“The hard truth is that the prime minister himself has dragged his party down,” the Star’s editorialists said. “His leadership has seemed unsteady, and his judgment uncertain. At this point some are posing the question: is he up to the job, and does he deserve re-election in October?”

Up to this point, it’s a basically fine editorial. But it gets very weird at the ending.

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After noting, again, that the Liberals have a decent record to run on as they head toward re-election, the Star’s editorial declares, “The missing piece is the sense that the guy at the top has the maturity and the good sense to lead the government to the next level. It’s time the prime minister demonstrated that he has those qualities.”

Photo by REUTERS/Jorge Silva

What? Really?

You should all feel free to think whatever you will about Justin Trudeau and his record — love, hate, indifference, whatever. But it is really, really weird for the Star’s editorialists to say that the prime minister needs to stand up and demonstrate that he has those key qualities after he’s already been in office almost four years. How long does the guy have to be in office before the Star’s ed board concludes that what we’ve all seen is basically what we’re going to get?

Three-and-a-half-plus-years into a mandate is not the time to start wondering if someone is cut out for the job. If a week is an eternity in politics, how long is almost four years? What, precisely, can the Star realistically expect to see now that they haven’t already?

I’ve written enough editorials in my time to know that the Star’s editorial was about as strong a rebuke of Trudeau as the writers there felt they could pen without looking like idiots a few months down the road, when they eventually endorse him (as they are likely to do). If nothing else, they’ve left their options open. If they unloaded a full salvo into Trudeau that would tie their hands somewhat in the fall, and they know that. So by rapping his knuckles while simultaneously saying that he can do better, they’re giving themselves the cover they’ll later need to declare him the better choice than Andrew Scheer. Editorials are a unique kind of writing. They have their own rules and conventions. I’m familiar enough with them to get what the Star was trying to do.

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But there are two problems here: they didn’t do a particularly good job of it, which is why they look silly musing about whether the guy who’s had the job for almost four years is cut out for it. If you haven’t made up your mind by now, folks, that’s not the prime minister, that’s you. And second, it’s remarkable that they felt the need to pen the editorial at all. I admit to bafflement. The timing is strange — there’s months to go before the election. Perhaps they just needed something with some shelf-life to get them through the long weekend.

Or perhaps the Star’s editorial writers are simply profoundly disappointed in the man they endorsed almost four years ago. If so, their odd, twisted editorial might be their way of saying so. They’ll almost certainly endorse him again. But they can still carefully express their displeasure in the meantime.

National Post