If they were a married couple, friends would laugh, “Opposites attract!” If they were siblings, their parents would sigh with wonder, “Couldn’t be more yin/yang . . . ” One is sexy, open, emotional and prone to verbal clangers. The other is cool, tough, professional and rarely pushed off message.

Thomas Joseph Mulcair and Justin Pierre James Trudeau are vying for the increasingly likely prospect that one of them will be chosen as Canada’s next prime minister. The contrasting choice they present to Canadians could not be sharper. Each would present a roughly similar progressive agenda, as an alternative to the Harperites darkening hard-edged political agenda, but the government they would lead would be very different in style and demeanour.

Liberals and New Democrats like to obsess over their policy differences. Today’s federal voters could be excused for seeing their choice as an orange/red/green vision for Canada, set against the Harper government’s increasingly tone-deaf paternalistic obduracy.

The two opposition leaders are fascinating to watch in tandem. In question period, for the past few weeks, the contrasts have been increasingly sharp.

Mulcair is Perry Mason or senator Sam Ervin, the slow relentless prosecutor, playing out his noose to one hapless minister after another. Then equally patiently pulling it tight as the Tory backbench looks first irritable then frightened, then merely disconsolate.

His less seasoned competitor has none of Mulcair’s gravitas or “bottom,” the quality the British ascribe to their heavy-hitting politicians. But Trudeau has a far nicer smile, a more joyful bounce to his step, and a sense of youthful passion to his attack. He clearly offends the Tories more — and frightens them less — as they heckle and boo adolescently.

To watch the two men work a room is equally a study in contrasts.

Like a Bill Clinton or a Christy Clark, Trudeau is a big hugger, a two-hands-squeezed, laughing and smiling rope-line pro. He genuinely does have that clichéd “rock star” appeal and an ability to feed off the emotion of a crowd. There is a reciprocal energy similar to a young athlete or musician greeting fans. Once on stage, however, things still slide for the new leader. He hasn’t met a GenX cliché he wouldn’t embrace or a shallow policy aphorism he won’t torque to the often puzzled reaction of the crowd. He could be a very good speaker, given his audience skills. He needs better writers and more rehearsal time.

Mulcair has so many more years on his tires — he was giving professional political speeches when young Trudeau was in elementary school — that he sometimes allows his ennui at yet one more lunch address creep into his delivery. He can appear to be “phoning it in” as he races through a text with less conviction than his words can convey. His gravitas usually carries him, but sometimes you can see audience members whispering worriedly to each other. When he is on form, he is an intellectually powerful orator at the level of his mentor Claude Ryan or, ironically, Pierre Trudeau.

It is too early to tell how well Trudeau will manage the vicissitudes of leading an opposition caucus still many long months from even a hope of regaining power. There are already some whispers about the difference between Bob Rae’s mastery of the care and feeding of grumpy colleagues. Old pros don’t want to be hugged by their leader in response to earnest strategic advice. But Trudeau is clearly a good listener and an eager learner, Muclair not so much.

Mulcair’s caucus skill is powerfully on view every day. No NDP leader has ever had more control over a federal caucus in the party’s 80-year history. His achievement of buttoned-down harmony with a bucketful of young, ambitious and potentially ill-disciplined Quebec MPs is only slightly more remarkable than his taming of the self-indulgent egos of the old-timers he inherited. As prime minister one might expect more of Stephen Harper in caucus management. Some Liberals are quietly sneering that Trudeau’s approach will be less papa’s than Paul Martin’s.

And then, as the months pass, and if the Harper numbers continue to weaken, there will be this delicious Ottawa guessing game on post-election dreams: Could Mulcair as leader of the Opposition needing the Liberal caucus to unseat the Harper machine win Trudeau’s agreement to serve as his deputy? And, perhaps — even more challenging for both men — could Mulcair agree once again to be number two, as the price of power?

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One hopeful Liberal framed voters’ 2015 choice as “two angry old men versus a passionate vision of a new generation.” Perhaps, but our usually pragmatic progressive voters may well conclude that they want a return to their vision of Canada secured by a smart, if hard-edged, street fighter capable of guaranteeing its delivery, just as their Conservative cousins did in 2006.

Robin V. Sears is a principal at the Earnscliffe Strategy Group. He also served as chief of staff to Bob Rae and as national director of the NDP.

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