"Just Watch Me/Don't Just Watch Me"

His famously outspoken father said "just watch me" when he unleashed the War Measures Act. Canada also watched Pierre Trudeau when he pirouetted at Buckingham Palace when Queen Elizabeth's attention was elsewhere. Canadian newspapers had a field day with "fuddle duddle" and hoisting a derisive finger to his detractors. PET was proudly proclaimed by his admirers to be Canada's impishly-inclined philosopher-king.

He ruled like royalty, and nothing held him back. And now his son aspires to the throne his father once monopolized. But, of course, Justin Trudeau is also Margaret Sinclair's (Trudeau-Kemper) son. And she was a flower child of a generation that celebrated their closeness to nature. She was fey and she was enchantingly fresh, a child of nature who fascinated and persuaded a lifetime bachelor to settle into marriage.

And Justin Trudeau was their miracle child, their first-born Christmas Day baby. Born with a bauble in his mouth, and a cerebral process that appears to have borrowed more heavily from his mother's ditzy genetic endowment than his father's. And he is poised to make his own mark in Canadian political history.

Without the purported intellectual brilliance of his father, leaning heavily on the zeitgeist of our times: celebrity worship.

Why Justin Trudeau should be viewed as a celebrity figure is a question that wiser heads than those who now comment disparagingly upon his shortcomings are able to surface. When his inane, vacuous pronouncements are brought back to public light, he insists it is representative of his authenticity, as an unscripted and genuine individualist.

His one stab at a conventional occupation was as a drama coach with a private boys' school. A perfect fit for a born drama queen. Not my description, but Terry Glavin's. If it fits, though, it should be worn comfortably enough, and it appears to. Justin Trudeau is quick to admit his name has opened doors - and quicker to point out that his persona keeps them open. The question remains: why?

"Even for young people who don't remember my father, the name 'Trudeau' has a certain glamour to it in Canadian politics. And to certain people I'm an actual celebrity in Canada." True, yes true. "The biggest test is an organizational one. That's the test. Can I get people out into politics? Can I get people to believe in it?"

Evidently so. This is the fellow who is courting the great Canadian middle class. And they are responding. Even if he has revealed his income and inheritance, and ratifies the observation of his critics that he is not of the middle class, so how can he empathize? "The most important thing for me is to put what I've received in the service of people who haven't been as lucky as I have to random chance and opportunities that I've received."

Nobly put, and pedestrian enough as a political declaration to pass as authentic to Justin Trudeau. "People will look at me however they like. If they're just looking at me, though, they're not getting the whole story." One can beg to differ, and to lament that the whole story is right there, evident to anyone with a modicum of discriminating cerebral function.

Justin Trudeau made headlines the moment he was born on Christmas Day, 1971, and even 41 years later, an arguably disproportionate amount of attention continues to be paid to the eldest son of former prime minister Pierre Trudeau as he makes a bid for the federal Liberal leadership.  Photograph by: John Woods/The Canadian Press/Files , Postmedia News

 

And, one can only conclude that given peoples' propensity to admire veneer, his seems palatable enough without substance of course, but passable to those who don't recognize substance when, in the guise of several competitors for the leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada, it is presented in living colour. And woe betide those who disparage the leadership acumen and intelligence of the man.

"Don't just watch me", Justin Trudeau says, counter-phrasing his father's promise.