For Trudeau, it’s always been ‘all about me’
The prime minister is on a 10day, four-summit, two-continent trip. Imagine how intense the preparation must have been in the Prime Minister’s Office: the travel agents seeking adequate accommodations for something less than $6,000 per night; the social secretary arranging suitable late-night company for a boozy singalong; the wardrobe department loading up the garment bags with Cambodian chic, Indonesian national dress, Thai formal wear and Tunisian hipster.
There’s no doubt that the PMO costume officials were galvanized by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s recent visit to the set of Canada’s Drag Race, a reality show for extravagantly arrayed drag queens. Bespoke haberdashery never knew such possibilities!
Justin Trudeau To Become 1st World Leader To Appear In ‘Drag Race’ Franchise, read one headline. He can verify that claim as he meets with dozens of his colleagues over the next week; one expects it will hold up.
Most foreign travel ought to be relatively easy. The script is agreed to in advance and the lines are not too complicated. But Trudeau demonstrated that even the easiest of all imaginable foreign trips — the funeral of the sovereign — can be fraught with public relations peril if one insists on being always and everywhere the centre of attention.
The traditional understanding of the first minister in the Westminster
parliamentary system is primus inter pares. Trudeau insists instead upon being the prima donna.
Which is why the controversy over the $6,000 a night hotel room in London was so illuminating. Leave aside the explanation, such as it would be, for the extravagance, and the suddenly bashful reluctance to admit who used it.
The more interesting question is why the prime minister was down in the lobby for an apparently drunken singalong of Bohemian Rhapsody, given that he presumably had access to a vast suite of rooms and a butler on standby?
Could it be that no one would have noticed if he had been singing upstairs in his suite? It is quite possible that there was a piano up there; certainly there was a bar. He could have easily hosted the celebrities he brought along.
The press reaction to Trudeau’s bad behaviour on the eve of the funeral — in contrast, say, to Jason Kenney of Alberta, who kept solemn vigil as he waited overnight in line to pay his respects in Westminster Hall — was that it was embarrassing to be caught out. But what if the whole point was to be noticed, to transgress the protocol
strictures that kept everyone else from generating headlines?
Perhaps there was no media aforethought in the prime minister’s comportment. Perhaps he just couldn’t help himself.
From the Queen’s funeral to the drag queens, from the Bollywood excess to the novelty socks, from a fondness for blackface to fighting in boxing matches — Trudeau incorrigibly insists that everyone be watching him.
His celebrity boxing match with Sen. Patrick Brazeau was 10 years ago last spring; in the fall of 2012, he announced his candidacy for Liberal leader. Pummelling an Indigenous man in the ring is rather off-brand for Trudeau’s politics, but prominence always trumps — or “Trumps,” to use that capitalization deliberately — policy for the prime minister. Publicity, obtained by throwing punches or singing around a piano, is always the goal.
Remember that soon after his first election in 2015, a pressing priority was to decide what magazine covers to pose for. Vogue won the day. Indeed, he posed for so many covers that by 2017, he was on the cover of Delta Air Lines’ inflight magazine. No word yet on whether the global junketeers this fall will find his visage gazing out from the Air Cambodia publication before they alight in Jakarta.
Last month, Trudeau celebrated his son’s birthday by bungee-jumping. It is actually possible to do so without video being released. But that’s of course not what happened.
Ten years ago, when Justin Trudeau launched his leadership bid, he evoked the memory of his late brother Michel. Just like in his comments upon the Queen’s death, he chose to focus on himself. He had learned, he said, “to always be faithful to myself.”
Not faithful to God, to his country, to his principles or to his family. Faithful to himself. Whether mourning a young brother or an old Queen, Trudeau’s principal point of reference is always himself. He can’t help himself, even insisting upon inserting himself between Pope Francis and Indigenous leaders this past summer.
The prime minister is abroad. As he would recall from his days teaching high school drama — what could be more fitting? — all the world’s a stage.
IN 2015, A PRESSING PRIORITY WAS TO DECIDE WHAT MAGAZINE COVERS TO POSE FOR.