How Trump Made Justin Trudeau a Global Superstar
After one year, Canada’s charismatic young prime minister was struggling. Then Trump was elected.
By JARED LINDZON July 01, 2017
The last time a Canadian prime minister got this much attention, his last name was Trudeau.
It was the late 1960s, and Pierre Elliott Trudeau, the hip 48-year-old law professor-turned-Liberal Party leader, ignited a fervid, fast-moving era of Canadian history known as “Trudeaumania.” Throngs of adoring teenagers chased the fashionably dressed then-bachelor through the streets of Ottawa. His swinging personal life, including his longtime relationship with Barbra Streisand, was tabloid fodder. John Lennon, fresh off his Montreal “bed-in” with Yoko Ono, declared, “If all politicians were like Mr. Trudeau, there would be world peace.”
It would have been easy to dismiss Trudeau’s rise as a passing fad. But even as Trudeaumania waned, Trudeau the leader stayed, presiding over a controversial 15-year reign during which he carved out a spot for himself on the metaphorical Canadian Mount Rushmore. At home, he established Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms (the nation’s equivalent of the Bill of Rights) and codified bilingualism, recognizing the importance of French Canada even as he worked to obliterate Quebec’s violent guerrilla separatists. Pierre Trudeau put himself—and Canada—on the world stage as an independent nation of its own, rather than simply a British Commonwealth country.
But the attention Trudeau inspired was an exception. “By and large, we don’t get the time of day,” says Bob Reid, a Canadian political commentator and public relations consultant. Since Trudeau left office in 1984, no Canadian politician has enjoyed anything close to the same level of recognition—at least not until recently.
In 2015, when Pierre Trudeau’s eldest son, Justin, led the Liberals to victory and ousted the Conservative government, Canada again erupted in a bout of Trudeaumania. The newly elected prime minister was dashing, and his Disney prince looks and movie-star charisma inspired fawning fandom online, reminiscent of his father’s pre-internet virality.
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http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/07/01/donald-trump-justin-trudeau-world-leader-215323
