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Photo by Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press

One unappealing consequence is that if we think someone’s policies are bad we assume it’s on purpose. Yes, including those yelling that Trudeau wants to tax us to death, hand our sovereignty to the UN or some other nefarious thing, as if he and Gerald Butts sat around chuckling like Snidely Whiplash over their cunning plans to destroy Canada.

Far from it. Ideas matter, more than anything else. And Trudeau’s “sunny ways” were so convincing because he is absolutely convinced he’s a super guy who always means well. And, crucially, that meaning well works wonders in practice. My friend Gerry Nicholls just argued on Loonie Politics that Trudeau “is a prisoner of his own personality.” I respond that he’s a practitioner of his own ideology.

Not a prisoner. A practitioner. Which is only bad if your ideology doesn’t work. Trudeau sits near the touchy-feely edge of Thomas Sowell’s category of “unconstrained visionaries” whose fundamental manner of thinking emphasizes intentions over methods, aspirations for the future over knowledge of the past, situational ethics over objective morality, and therapeutic hugs over incentives to shape up or ship out.

Trudeau’s ‘sunny ways’ were so convincing because he is absolutely convinced he’s a super guy

Many years ago I found myself watching an episode of Quincy, M.E. (don’t ask) involving some troubled Latin American country (I said don’t ask) whose glorious resolution of plot tension came when contending radical and reactionary figures gazed into one other’s eyes and said something like “I know you want what’s best for our country.” (The internet suggests the Jan. 17, 1980 episode “Diplomatic Immunity.”) I found it goofy. But whatever you think of Quincy, M.E., a surprising number of people think that way about public policy. And elect politicians who do likewise.