What is an apology? What does it mean to receive one or equally importantly to give one? Blah blah blah.

My head hurts just thinking of this in relation to the current state of federal politics.

Contrary to many of my colleagues, I am not waiting impatiently, like self-appointed hall monitors of political morality — oxymoron alert!— for Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to properly apologize to Canadians for making a mess of the SNC-Lavalin affair. Non-spoiler alert, he did make a mess. And he should have known better. And he still has time to say so, in detail.

Ethics Commissioner Mario Dion ruled last week that Trudeau — for the second time in his mandate, by the way — had contravened a section of the Conflict of Interest Act.

Dion concluded Trudeau as PM improperly sought to influence his then-attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould’s decision not to offer SNC-Lavalin, a giant Quebec-based engineering firm, a deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) — in effect a plea bargain — regarding corruption charges dating back to its actions in Libya.

You will recall the chattering classes have been fulminating about this for months, during which Wilson-Raybould, after being punitively transferred by the PMO out of her attorney general post, eventually resigned from cabinet, spilled as many beans as she could about being improperly pressured, was asked to leave the Liberal caucus and is now running for re-election in her Vancouver riding as an Independent. Meanwhile, SNC-Lavalin is still headed for criminal trial.

Whether the PM broke a criminal law — no one yet has proven he did — the evidence shows Trudeau is guilty of being, despite all overt and self-congratulatory protestations to the contrary, yet another arrogant, smug, entitled male politician who decides what HE wants and keeps badgering others until they give in.

Or as now disappeared ... uh ... retired clerk of the Privy Council Michael Wernick famously said of his boss, the PM, to Wilson-Raybould in a tense telephone call secretly recorded by Wilson-Raybould herself when she was attorney general and concerned she was being so unduly pressured that the entire justice system was about to collapse without this act of internal deceit:

“So he is quite determined, quite firm but he wants to know why the DPA route which Parliament provided for isn’t being used. And I think he is gonna find a way to get it done one way or another. So he is in that kinda mood, and I wanted you to be aware of that.”

OK, now I know what I want Trudeau to apologize for: being another politician caught in the act of Hubris in Motion (a.k.a. HIM.)

Yes, unfortunately I am in “that kinda mood.”

What in heaven’s name is wrong with these guys? Are they so tone deaf, so blind to other people’s reality, so bullheadedly focused on their own agendas that they can’t even see the warning signals that the person — in this case, but not always, a woman- being pressured clearly thinks they are going too far?

“I won’t apologize for standing up for Canadian jobs,” Trudeau has said just a tad sanctimoniously in “accepting” the report and “taking full responsibility” for — gee, I don’t even know what, the weather?

Are we supposed to spend the last few precious weeks of August paying attention to this?

And to make matters worse, listening to a Conservative Party leader, supposedly PM in waiting, who sounds like a ventriloquist’s dummy when he steps to the mic and says Trudeau “has been found guilty” as if he’s been through a criminal trial, as ineffectually as anyone has ever used that word, is a world of pain unto itself.

Andrew Scheer is, to put it mildly, not a convincingly strong force for good, or even strategically endowed if he gets handed a political gift like the ethics report and still sounds oddly insincere. Scheer either overreaches or underperforms, I can’t tell which and his policies are even more troublesome than his underwhelming political presence.

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh is the weakest link of all, having said nothing terribly significant for months, so there’s a stroke of luck for Mr. That Kinda Mood as he heads into an October federal election hoping that most voters won’t care about a conflict of interest.

Voters might care if they had a better alternative. Instead we’ve got this trio of men, all of whom have only one thing in common and right now it’s drooping. Of course I am talking about their suitability to lead this wonderful country. At a time when we are still tolerant and progressive, still the envy of the world.

As a male millennial told me: “I don’t really care about the SNC matter, but I will never forgive Trudeau if his actions lead to the election of a party and a PM who doesn’t care enough about climate change.” Yep, that would be too bad. It’s also too bad Green Party Leader Elizabeth May cannot leapfrog over these guys and win. But she cannot.

For voters with progressive values, this seems to be a disaster. It isn’t.

What is a disaster is how we in the media keep talking about “political strategy,” “brand damage,” and “baked in” voter loyalty and not how to tell right from wrong.

Have we reached a point where right and wrong are now exclusively partisan issues?

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Many people are still not clear whether the Trudeau government intervention was wrong — it didn’t change the legal course of action re: SNC, it didn’t let a big corporation off the hook. It derailed some big careers. Perhaps his own.

Did it lessen Canadians’ faith in the justice system? We will find out.

What it did was highlight another flare up of HIM — Hubris in Motion. Maybe only an elected woman leader can find a cure for this potentially politically fatal disease. Or maybe women are incubating their own version of it. In which case, heaven help the voters who deserve better.

Judith Timson is a Toronto-based writer and a freelance contributing columnist for the Star. Follow her on Twitter: @judithtimson

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