The folks at the Associated Press aren't even trying to disguise how pleased they are after Canada's most recent elections swept the Liberal Party into power after almost a decade in the wilderness.
They're claiming that victorious Prime Minister Justin Trudeau seems destined to ignite the second installment of "Trudeaumania," the late-1960s press anointing which accompanied his father Pierre into that same position. It's quite clear that the AP is uninterested in informing readers about how awful Pierre Trudeau's actual record was. They instead want readers to believe that happy, reality-avoiding leftist days are here again.
Three AP writeups compete for the dubious honor as the wire service's worst coverage of the Canadian election results:
- Monday evening's "Son of Late PM Pierre Trudeau Becomes Canada's New PM," by Rob Gillies.
- Tuesday morning's "'TRUDEAUMANIA' HEIR BECOMES CANADA'S NEXT PRIME MINISTER," also by Gillies.
- Tuesday evening's "Canadians elect Justin Trudeau, social media swoons," by Charmaine Noronha.
Gillies' Monday evening report poses as a straight-news story. Hardly, as seen in the bolded text in the following excerpt (bolds are mine throughout this post):
Canadians voted for a sharp change in their government Monday, returning a legendary name for liberals, Trudeau, to the prime minister's office and resoundingly ending Conservative Stephen Harper's near-decade in office.
Justin Trudeau, the son of late Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, became Canada's new prime minister after his Liberal Party won a majority of Parliament's 338 seats. Trudeau's Liberals had been favored to win the most seats, but few expected the final margin of victory.
Trudeau, tall and trim at 43, channels the star power — if not quite the political heft — of his father, who swept to power in 1968 on a wave of support dubbed "Trudeaumania."
Pierre Trudeau, who was prime minister until 1984 with a short interruption, remains one of the few Canadian politicians known in America, his charisma often drawing comparisons to John F. Kennedy.
Justin Trudeau, a former school teacher and member of Parliament since 2008, becomes the second youngest prime minister in Canadian history.
Trudeau has re-energized the Liberal Party since its worst electoral defeat four years ago when they won just 34 seats and finished third behind the traditionally weaker New Democrat Party. Trudeau promises to raise taxes on the rich and run deficits for three years to boost government spending. His late father, who took office in 1968 and led Canada for most of the next 16 years, is a storied name in Canadian history, responsible for the country's version of the bill of rights.
... The Trudeau victory will ease tensions with the U.S.
Gillies never identified what Trudeau, who wants to raise taxes but also to spend even more than the tax increases will supposedly garner, specifically plans to do. It's as if readers are just supposed to know that raising taxes for the sake of raising taxes and running deficits for the sake of running deficits is what politicians who care instinctively do, and that those actions are obviously virtuous. No wonder Trudeau's victory "will ease tensions with the U.S." government headed by Barack Obama, who also taxes and spends because he can, usually for no visibly efficacious reason.
Gillies' Tuesday morning effort ramped up the hero-worship machine:
Justin Trudeau has fulfilled the great expectations he was born into, following in the footsteps of his storied father to become Canada's next prime minister.
Now, he has the chance to restore the late Pierre Trudeau's Liberal legacy, which has been under siege during 10 years of Conservative rule under Stephen Harper.
... Harper fought hard to reverse the image of a Liberal Canada, cutting corporate and sales taxes and removing Canada from a climate change agreement. The younger Trudeau wants to put Canada back on the course his father set, pledging to hike taxes on the rich and run deficits for three years to boost government spending and shore up a shaky economy.
... A 43-year-old former high school teacher, nightclub bouncer and snowboarding instructor who until recently sported long hair, Trudeau first captured national attention in 2000 with a moving eulogy at his father's state funeral. He challenged the country to cement Pierre Trudeau's vision of a united and multicultural Canada, moving many people to tears.
Okay, so raising taxes and running deficits is supposed to "shore up a shaky economy." That's classic Keynesianism. It works in theory; it almost never works in practice. It's also worth questioning how "shaky" Canada's economy really is, given that as of the end of September, "After a cumulative GDP decline of 0.9 per cent over the first five months of 2015, the economy has now rebounded by nearly 0.8 per cent over the past two months of data." In other words, Canada's current trajectory appears to be upward. That's not so clearly the case in the U.S. at all.
Let's also note for the record that while Canada's economy may be shaky now, its average annual economic growth of 1.77 percent and 2.56 percent during the past 9 and 5 calendar years, respectively, outshines comparable U.S. figures of 1.38 percent and 2.2 percent. These seemingly small differences turn out to be quite significant over time. A household in Canada with an income of $50,000 (US) at the beginning of 2006 now has a real income of about $58,000. In the U.S. a household starting with that same income would now be at $56,200, or about $1,800 lower. $150 per month is not chump change.
Since Gillies brought up multiculturalism, let's get to Pierre Trudeau's legacy, which is best summarized as follows at this more comprehensive treatment of his time in charge:
... support of Soviet tyranny ... taste for command economics ... deep fissures created by his multiculturalism.
Those aren't points of pride.
The hero worship went into overdrive in Charmaine Nornoha's Tuesday evening coverage:
The country that unleashed Bieberfever has social media swooning over a new Justin.
He's an avid boxer with the physique to show for it. He snowboards. And he's the new prime minister of Canada.
Forget about his views on climate change or the crisis in Syria. Some commentators had a more pressing question about the 6-foot-2-inch (2.3-meter) former school teacher who defeated Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper in Monday's elections.
"Is Justin Trudeau the sexiest politician in the world?" read the title of the U.K.-based Mirror newspaper.
For sure, according to the Australian news website news.com.au. "The votes are in and Canada has come out of its election with a super hot new leader," it wrote.
Added Australian news anchor James McHale in a tweet: "In Canada Justin Trudeau's Liberals elected on a platform of sorry I lost my train of thought he's just so handsome."
A 2012 photograph swiftly circulated on the Internet showing a shirtless Trudeau, sporting a mane of shaggy dark hair, flexing his arms after a boxing match with Senator Patrick Brazeau, who was later suspended from Parliament after his arrest in a domestic violence incident. The Trudeau picture immediately drew comparisons with Russian President Vladimir Putin, another world leader with a habit of posing shirtless.
Good heavens. The AP would never dream of describing conservative men or women as "sexy," and would never dream of quoting anything else reported in the despised UK Mirror tabloid.
After almost a decade of relative quiet during Steven Harper's stewardship, I suppose we can expect an exponential increase in the coverage of events north of the border. It would appear, regardless of how genuinely successful or unsuccessful Justin Trudeau is, he will get endlessly positive press — at least from the AP.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
