Andrew MacDougall: How Poilievre can get his balls out of the vise

The current Trump predicament is a chance for the Conservative leader to finally show there’s more to him than an attitude.

Image from Pierre Poilievre’s Twitter account.

By: Andrew MacDougall

If Donald Trump doesn’t think you’re one of his guys, but the millions of people you need to vote for you think you’re closer to Trump than any of the other options on the ballot, can you win an upcoming election?

Welcome to the vise in which Pierre Poilieve now finds his balls caught.

The American president is rattling around the White House shouting “Tariffs!” to anyone who will listen while his increasingly unstable boy Elon Musk tries to feed the federal government into the woodchipper. Trump has his boot on Ukraine’s throat and is making eyes at places like Greenland, the Panama Canal, and Canada. Does that sound more like something Mark Carney would do? Or Poilievre?

The correct answer is that neither man would do any of those things. Because they’re not insane. Or complete assholes. But if you had to pick one …

The good news for Poilievre is that he is genuinely not one of Trump’s guys. Sorry, all of you excited Liberals, just because you say it doesn’t make it true. The Conservative leader is more intelligent, harder-working, and more empathetic than the callous, cruel, and contemptible man now destroying America’s reputation. He’s also more — much more — of a patriot. And now is the time for him to demonstrate it. Because if you had to pick one party whose support has more latent sympathy for MAGA …

And this is the point. In life, you reap what you sow. You can also get caught on the wrong side of a trend. At some point, someone, somewhere will be the last person to buy that Taylor Swift concert tee. Poilievre is not MAGA, but he’s reaping and he’s off-trend. He and his party have sailed closer to the MAGA winds over the years than anyone but Maxime Bernier and, well, he doesn’t count.

Try it this way. When you think MAGA, what do you see? If you picture January 6 insurrectionists, COVID-denialists and a mob who don’t trust expertise or the press, and are happy to flip off anyone who does, then what are the closest Canadian parallels? Many of you are probably now conjuring up images of the Trucker Convoy, vehement opposition to vaccine mandates, and Poilievre flipping off the press while munching on his apple. Poilievre might be painting a very different picture than Trump, but he uses some of the same tones and techniques.

It was one thing to paint by these numbers when the free world was led by a doddering Joe Biden. When everything was broken and an elite governing class was promising more of the same while ordinary people were being priced out of their lives (thanks, in large part, to COVID and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine). People were mad and it was time for those ordinary people to have more of a say.

But now that Trump is back in power and undoing much of the post-Second World War settlement, past decisions like embracing the convoy, making Ukraine a canvas for a fight about a domestic carbon tax, and flipping off the press are being seen in a different light. The Liberals are already running advertising to this effect, and will surely have more planned. It would be political malpractice not to point these things out.

The good news for Poilievre and his team is that Canada’s deep problems remain, and Mark Carney is, in just about every way, “continuity Trudeau.” He’s got the same team, the same policies, the same modus operandi, and the same worldview. In other words, the same things that led us into a world that produces things like Trump. Indeed, if Kamala Harris were in the White House, a Carney-led Liberal Party would be heading for the woodshed.

A Carney-led Liberal party can still be sent to the woodshed. If life is about turning lemons into lemonade, the current Trump predicament is a chance for the Conservative leader to finally show there’s more to him than an attitude. Poilievre didn’t have to work all that hard to dust Trudeau. People hated the bloke by his end and all Poilievre had to do was be someone and something else. Now Poilievre has a chance to show off some different chops.

The Liberals like to point out that Poilievre is a “career politician.” But people don’t want someone unfamiliar with the rhythms of politics taking over at a time when everything is, well, political. Combating Trump isn’t about who can come up with the better spreadsheet or chair a meeting more effectively according to Robert’s Rules of Order. Beating the Trump menace will take political experience, a pugilist’s ability to target vulnerabilities in defences, and an empathy grounded in the lives of the millions of ordinary people who are struggling, i.e. the people who haven’t been wealthy bankers, or central bankers, or people with a list of holdings they don’t want to disclose to their fellow citizens.

And if you had to pick one leader and party who could do that …

Andrew MacDougall is a director at Trafalgar Strategy and former head of communications to Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

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