Friday, October 8, 2010 

I miss Pierre Trudeau. Trudeau was Prime Minister of Canada, with the exception of nine months, from 1968 to 1984. I didn't get to see much of his political career firsthand, but when I was a student in Montreal in the late 1980s and early 90s, Trudeau—who had been out of politics for several years by then—was nevertheless often in the public eye due to his outspoken opposition to the Meech Lake Accords, a set of amendments offering special rights to the government of Quebec in exchange for Quebec signing onto the recently written (under Trudeau) Canadian constitution (Quebec had refused to sign when Trudeau was PM).


Trademark flower in his lapel, Trudeau was one of a kind

Coming from a country where politicians on both the left and right tend to be semi-articulate dullards, listening to Trudeau was a real treat. Canadians found him mesmerizing too, at least at first. When he became leader of the Liberal Party in 1968 and then Prime Minister, Canada was gripped by "Trudeaumania," people freaking out over his wit, intelligence, and seeming difference from the traditional political class of the country.

Sound familiar?


Trudeau was really big when he first appeared on the political scene

A couple of weeks ago I stumbled across a copy of Trudeau's Memoirs, which I'm now reading. Last night I was going through the section where he describes the elections of 1972. These elections were unlike the ones four years earlier, when Trudeau was a new face and was met by enthusiastic crowds almost everywhere he went. Not having been obliged to fight hard in 1968, Trudeau writes that he found himself unprepared in 1972, and as a result his large majority was reduced to a minority government with just two seats more than the opposition conservatives.


Cool to the end

Here's what Trudeau, who died in 2000, says about the campaign of 1972:

...the approach was too cerebral. Politics can't be conducted at such a rational level, devoid of all emotion. The voters wanted a leader to guide them, and I was giving them a professor. The members of my party wanted to jump into combat, and I was giving them a lecture. The electorate was eager for its regular dose of eloquence, attack, riposte, cheers, and rallies, and there I was giving them calm, lucid propositions in pedagogical tones. That is not how you win elections. That is how we came within a hair's breadth of losing this one.

The moral of the story? Don't be a boring professor if you want people to vote for you and your party.

It would be nice if Obama could learn from Trudeau's example, but my fear is that Obama is not so much our Trudeau as he is our Gorbachev.

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And on that note, I think it's time for a bit of N & P...


Russia and former USSR

Looking for a job? Vladimir Putin is interviewing candidates for the post of Moscow mayor...

...meanwhile, former mayor Yuri Luzhkov is starting a new job as dean of Moscow's International University. I wonder how his first day on the job went.

But Luzkov might not be free for long—not if he keeps mouthing off to the Russian media about President Dmitri Medvedev.

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On the lookout: the Jamestown spooks report on how Moscow sees the upcoming elections in Kyrgyzstan.
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The suspense is killing me: Presidential elections heating up in Belarus!
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Not so fast: Polish police arrest, then release Chechen separatist leader


Europe and the US

Suckers: Congress passes eat-the-poor tax breaks while the rest of us quibble over nonsense.

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Back from the dead: Mark Ames still angry,  looks at the well-financed cult of the libertards

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Echoes of an old fight: NY Times article on opposition to NYC Catholic Church 225 years ago.

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Paul Krugman pushes for more infrastructure spending, shamelessly steals my idea

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Playing on people's fears: Nevada republican scare-monger slanders American Muslims, singles out Dearborn, MI as city operating under "Sharia"
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Detroit Pistons find local owner, beloved NBA squad will remain in Motown

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Turkey & the Balkans

Turkish magazine editor facing 7.5 years for publishing memoirs of PKK fighter, caricature. 
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Friendless: more than 7,000 websites now illegal in Turkey. Will Facebook be next?
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On the brain: Zaman and AKP education appointees still aching for headscarves, while the head of Turkey's higher education boards trying to get around headscarf ban.

I, meanwhile, had been taken in by Kamil Pasha's proclamation of a new era of headscarfiness, but then realized that the announcement was premature. Nevertheless, professors have now apparently been instructed to not kick students out of class based on their clothing or headgear.



Free at last: Turkish students liberated from oppressive headgear restrictions
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Shocked: Aengus Collins finds the AKP's plans of introducing a new constitution next year 'unduly hasty.'

I sure hope this doesn't mean the AKP is thinking about placing its political interests over those of the country.
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Yigal Schleifer investigates the case of the missing tomato seeds

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Remember Bosnia? Muslim, Serbian, and Croatian leaders in Bosnia try to sort things out in the wake of recent elections. 

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Hungary raises possibility of human error in release of radioactive sludge into river.  Government denies, but Greenpeace reports arsenic, mercury in Danube.

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Monument politics: Slavs and Albanians fight over statues in Skopje

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That's all of the N & P for now, folks! See you later!