Politics really is a two-faced business.

Just days after Donald Trump was calling Justin Trudeau “two-faced” for laughing behind his back at last week’s NATO summit, the two leaders were chatting on the phone and pulling together a renewed free-trade deal between their countries and Mexico.

So if Trump is holding a grudge for that now-infamous scene of Trudeau and other world leaders laughing at his expense at Buckingham Palace — and the U.S. president was talking again about it on Twitter on Wednesday — he isn’t making Canada pay any price for it, at least not yet.

On Monday, the same day that Trudeau and Trump were talking on the phone, Alberta Premier Jason Kenney landed in Ottawa to do a two-day blitz of meetings aimed at getting a “fair deal for Alberta.”

The first day of Kenney’s crusade in the capital was a barrage of salesmanship, including a front-page newspaper advertisement and a full-throated speech to an A-list noontime crowd at the Château Laurier.

“We’ve been working for Ottawa for too long; and it’s time for Ottawa to work for us,” said the premier (who incidentally worked in Ottawa for a couple of decades before he had his current job.)

The next day, Kenney sat down with Trudeau himself, and emerged from that encounter talking in cautiously hopeful terms about progress in the federal-Alberta relationship. In language very different from the ad or the speech the day before, for instance, Kenney was not demanding repeal of contentious pipeline legislation. Not only that, the premier sounded fine about it all.

“While the prime minister is not going to repeal the bill, as we would prefer, he did agree to work with us on its application, on the regulations and on the project list,” Kenney said. “So on a number of issues he’s indicated an openness and we appreciate that.”

Call it, perhaps, the two faces of a trip to Ottawa. Kenney, deft politician that he is, split his trip into two parts: marketing the first day and business the next.

In the private sector, these are the same things — marketing is part of doing business. However, in politics, increasingly, the language and tactics of marketing are almost the opposite of getting down to work.

Political marketing doesn’t speak the language of compromise. Political negotiation — whether between provinces or nations — absolutely needs to be held on a middle ground. Some might call that two-faced.

Kenney was not quite as enthusiastic about meeting Trudeau as Doug Ford was three weeks ago, when the Ontario premier emerged from that session talking about the “phenomenal” conversation the two leaders had held.

But Ford was far more candid about the two-faced nature of his relationship with Trudeau when asked before the meeting how two political rivals — who have spent much of the past two years slamming each other on the campaign trail — could suddenly be national-unity allies.

“Politics is politics and I have a pretty thick skin,” Ford said. “I understand what he (Trudeau) was doing. When I had a (phone) conversation with him I told him politics are done and let’s roll up our sleeves and start working together and he agreed.”

Ford was saying candidly what most thoughtful people know — the work of politics is all about being two-faced: one face for the spin and marketing machine and another one for accomplishing things behind the scenes.

Consider what that means, though — it’s an acknowledgment that all that spin and bluster is frankly counterproductive; the opposite of constructive. But it’s part of the job, even if the public hates it too.

Politics has been borrowing lessons from the marketing world for decades now, in a bid to keep the electorate interested in the sometimes dull affairs of state and government. But marketing in the private sector doesn’t enjoy many rewards for being two-faced: businesses are expected to conduct themselves the same way in private and in public.

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It’s why people who leave politics can find the world outside it a bit of a culture shock. In the real world, there aren’t many jobs that require you to trash someone one day and then work with them the next.

But this is exactly what is going on in Trudeau’s world, particularly right now after the election, when politicians of all stripes are trying to be collaborative — even after spending six weeks this fall casting each other as evil and dangerous. Two-faced? Yes, but apparently this was “the message” they received from voters at the ballot box: stop hating each other and get down to work.

No one is going to accuse Trump of deep analysis into the nature of politics. But “two-faced” is a pretty good summary of how it’s working right now, at least for Trudeau.

NATO leaders appeared to discuss President Donald Trump during a reception at Buckingham Palace on Tuesday. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was heard saying that "he was late because he takes a 40-minute press conference off the top."

Susan Delacourt is the Star’s Ottawa bureau chief and a columnist covering national politics. Reach her via email: sdelacourt@thestar.ca or follow her on Twitter: @susandelacourt

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