Politicians don't really need to be good at policy. They have people to do that. They just need to be charismatic - able to capture the imagination of a constituency, and able to persuade other politicians to support their platform.

Of course it'd be nice if our politicians were well-educated in the details of the policies they are championing, and if they could independently reason about the pros and cons, but realistically that's not what they're there for. They're like the sales guys at work - they might have some personal interest in techy details, but it's not what they're hired to do or what they excel at. They're hired to make the sales, not the product.

I think the party strategists who picked a pretty face and a familiar name to represent the party did a decent job. Trudeau continues to have the confidence of most of his party, which is why he's still in the leadership position. He's clearly inoffensive enough that he can maintain support inside the party while also not igniting enough of a backlash amongst the voting public to indisputably defeat his party in 2021. He might be a milquetoast character representing an ideologically unadventurous party, but perhaps that's all he's meant to be?

Honestly right now it feels like the Liberal Party is completely asleep at the wheel and there's a total absence of leadership at the moment and lots of ministerial files seem completely unmanaged or poorly managed.

They were able to ride out the pandemic with some overall reasonable policies, and most of the stuff that annoyed people fell on the provinces.

But they're clearly having a hard time transitioning now, and the Singh giving them a blank check has made them extra complacent. The stuff at the airports on its own is inexcusable. ArriveCAN needs to go. They need to respond boldly to this Rogers fiasco from Friday. They feel entirely flat footed to me.

The expiration date is all over Trudeau and he needs to do the right thing and GTFO. And he needs to do it in a way that doesn't stiff Freeland and leave her in a Kim Campbell or Kathleen Wynne or Paul Martin type position.

He needs to announce his resignation ASAP and call a leadership convention even if it's a coronation for Freeland.

Singh I think has cost the NDP pretty much almost all their seats in the next election by propping Trudeau up right now. I have always voted NDP but I don't know what I'll do next time around.

I say this as a left wing voter who doesn't want to see the Conservatives in charge. But every day they hold on they're just giving the Conservatives more momentum, even without a leader.

I think when strategists look back they'll see Trudeau as a mistake. It got them power, but he was no Chretien or Trudeau Sr. He has been weak on policy and on leadership. And it will cost them in the long run. They blew their 3 gov'ts by basically getting almost nothing actually done on all their files they were so boldly proclaiming. It reminds me a lot of McGuinty's term: at the end most of the problems created by Mike Harris still hadn't been reversed. I feel the same way about this gov't and the Harper years.

CO2 Emissions? Up. A lot. Indigenous reconciliation? Nope. Clean water to all reserves? Nope. And what they have accomplished (small carbon taxes, subsidized daycare) seems very vulnerable to immediate reversal on day one of a conservative gov't.

I can tell you're very passionate about these issues. I think you're falling into a trap, however, that has basically consumed the U.S. and all but ensured its fall from grace. I live in the U.S., but spend a large amount of time in Canada (3 months of the year). Canada is a great country compared to the U.S. Income inequality is much lower than in the U.S., you have decent health care, a sizable "blue collar" industry, the social fabric is strong, the people are nice, the country is stable, the nature is beautiful, etc. etc. etc.

While Canada certainly has problems, I think it's important to remember that while things can certainly be better, that doesn't mean things are bad. The Rogers incident, for instance. It would be better if the incident didn't happen, but is really not worth being angry over. In the U.S., people seem to have forgotten this and began to get angry over why things weren't "better" even though things were really good. This divided the country, allowed a large percentage of the population to be controlled by outrage, and the aftermath is playing out right before our eyes. Before getting angry, try to identify all the things you have to be grateful for.

I don't want Canada to be mediocre; but it is. It has amazing potential as the multicultural, less dysfunctional, more socially compassionate alternative North American state.

But we have -- since before our confederation -- been dominated by insular and mediocre monopoly interests. From the Northwest and Hudson's Bay Company to Rogers and Bell. From the Family Compact to the insular board rooms of Calgary's oil sector or Bay Street. A set of local self-connected classes that circle around the same elite private schools and family parties.

Yes, our health care system has advantages over the US. But it's a system heavily rationed and under crisis because of waves of abuse and a lack of will to reform. I've been waiting since February for an MRI for a knee injury I got skiing, and I only haven't ducked south to Buffalo to get it done in the US because I didn't have money coming in until recently.

That's a minor inconvenience though compared to the state of our emergency rooms right now.

I'm passionate about these issues because I think Canada can be way better, especially if the point of comparison is not the US as a whole; but individual states or various western European countries (esp Scandinavia)

The issue is that things are getting worse and politics are decaying. Eventually this will lead to the same thing as what happened in the US. Being a milquetoast centrist and forcing yourself not to care won't help prevent that when things are actually getting worse either in actuality or in perception.

I don’t think jumping onto the outrage bandwagons will prevent it either — and in fact only deepens the problem by making yourself more susceptible to manipulation.

I think most people would be better served to recognize that their sphere of influence is a lot more local than their social media voices would lead them to believe. Being a positive influence for your family, friends and coworkers has far more consequential effects than some cheap tweet that somehow went viral 3 years ago and only added well-stated validation to an issue supported by people who already made up their minds.

Politics might become ground into the dirt, but it’s always been strong relationships that hold together the social fabric and prevent radicalization.

Politicians need to pick skilled policymakers. This can be done either by being good at policy themselves so that they can identify this skill in others, or by having above average people skills so they can identify it that way.

Trudeau's policy picks were to check boxes on unwritten gender and race quotas. They are unlikely to have been the best people for the positions, because that wasn't the criteria being applied. Some people might take umbrage at me calling it out like that, but it sure looks like that's what actually happened. It was affirmative action to score political points.

I don't like or agree with affirmative action as a policy. It's slapping a bandaid on the problem without addressing root causes. It's demeaning to the people selected, and it's discrimination on constitutionally protected grounds of gender, race, sexual identity, etc.

Frankly most of Trudeau's initial cabinet picks were just Chretien era loyalists.

People tend to value skills they themselves possess. If you have a leader with good technical skills then he will probably pick people with good technical skills. So socially competent leaders look for socially competent underlings, leaders who got there via nepotism probably applies nepotism as well when choosing etc.

> It's a disturbing trend and indicative of failing health / vibrancy of political systems.

If this is an indicator, how long has the U.S. political system been failing? John Adams was the second President starting in 1797. His son became the sixth President in 1825.

It surely goes in cycles in the US.

Also arguably the US's republican model has had some of the weakest "democratic" aspects. Its popular veneration of the President as a martial pseudo-king "Command in Chief" (very weird to watch from up here in Canada, BTW, esp during the Bush post-9/11 years), its blatant blurring of church & state, its obsession with its military, its overt and obsequious patriotism and national chauvinism, its expanding federal powers, its imperial ambitions (both internal to the Americas and then even further abroad after WWII), its history with slavery and racial discrimination, etc.

It's a contradictory country. On one hand having some of the most radical and egalitarian motive forces, and being earlier to the democratic impulse than most of the west. On the other hand having ossified authoritarian impulses built deep into its system.

I think you'll find more healthy democracies in western Europe and Canada, though they don't have the same radical liberal (small, classical l) ideological underpinnings.

> It surely goes in cycles in the US.

Adams, Harrison, Roosevelt, Kennedy, Bush, Clinton. That spans the entire history of the country, and doesn't leave much room for cycles. I can't think of any period when inherited wealth and connections weren't extremely helpful in a political career.

I'd say that "ossified authoritarian impulses built deep into [the] system" is a global issue, not a uniquely American one.

A better answer is that contemporaneous class systems elsewhere in the world were so rigid, early in American history, that merely not having formal orders of nobility seemed shockingly egalitarian. Two and a half centuries later we're less eager to pat ourselves on the back for somewhat-better-but-only-somewhat levels of equality. But failure to make enough progress is not the same as regression.

Naming six presidents to "span the entire history of the country" is oversimplifying to say the least.

But to stay on topic, I believe it was Churchill that said democracy was the absolute worst form of government. Except for all the others.

People calling attention to inherited power aren't opposed to democracy, they want to try it for a change.

I disagree regarding Hillary Clinton, I think it's a disservice to her academic and professional accomplishments. She has an impressive academic record at Yale while getting her JD, was a very popular senator in NY, and was widely respected SoS. She is far more qualified than most presidential candidates and probably more qualified than her husband. I know she is divisive and I'm going to be downvoted, but all those accomplishments are factual and I left things out. I wish people would pause and reflect about why they dislike her.

I also disagree with you about Trudeau, almost to the point I would characterize your description of him as false. He started in the HoC 15 years ago, took that to a leadership position in a failing Liberal party and revitalized them. I think it's more problematic that Harper led a lobbying group for several years.. I am curious what you think has been disastrous? (never mind, I see your sibling comment) I think he is actually impressively aware of the political coordination with the American and Canadian right-wings.

If I'm understanding you right, it's more of a problem with machine politics, and I'd agree with you. The solution has always been restrictions on donations, advertising, and otherwise limiting the influence of money on politics but that fight has mostly failed.

I agree Clinton actually has a fairly impressive record. But so did plenty of other people.

My point remains regardless: it is corrosive to democracy to let power consolidate in family power centres. Many kings and emperors of antiquity were very competent. And successful powerful families cultivated competency at ruling through elite education and patronage etc. But it was still a terrible form of government. Not the least because it becomes self-serving over time, but also because of its injustice: all the very competent people passed over because they did not have the right name or connections.

Having a healthy democracy (literally: "people's rule") requires us to explicitly counteract concentration of power in lineage systems, party bureaucracies, and corporate dominance. Of these family lineage is one of the easiest to spot.

Yes, we've always had this. No, it's not a good thing. And we need to actively counteract it, even if it means passing up very competent individuals.

I liked Herbert's books, I don't want to live in the Dune universe :-)

I agree with you on just about everything you said :)

I would probably have a slightly different nuance to my interpretation of the nature of power centers. I think that term limits counteract this pretty well for individual families and politicians. I'm more concerned about influence organizations and the individuals and families that fund them, like Heritage. They have enormous influence, don't disclose funding, and are completely unelected.

Re: term limits. if we're permitting family name marketing and dominance, that's irrelevant. Interests will simply rule through the next person in line in the family.

Also, in the last two centuries of the western Roman Empire there was a new emperor every decade or less. Short terms did nothing to stop the authoritarian and tyrannical (and dysfunctional) nature of that rule.

Sufficiently powerful individuals will make term limits disappear anyways. (See Putin, etc.)

Mulcair was anything but strong. Everyone knew going into the 2015 election that the Orange Wave would recede. Mulcair's whole mission was to salvage enough of the wreck to make it not look downright embarassing. To do this he started softcore pandering to Quebec sovereignism, culminating in an utterly humiliating moment in the debates when he arrogantly grilled Trudeau about the threshold definition for Quebec sovereignty to happen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwtU4KGGYVU

Wanna know how the NDP blew the majority polls early in that election? Yep, it was Mulcair, who was anything but strong.

Politics in its modern form is often a full-time job. To climb the ladder often means one must start early, yet this job is anything but stable. Most regular families can't really afford the risk or downsides. Political dynasties have the advantage of existing connections, as well as inter-generational resources that aren't available in other families. In this video https://youtu.be/XqjQ6gqgi0w?t=41 you can see Trudeau Jr.'s behaviour was clearly groomed for attending public functions. This was a headstart that many others don't have when they go into politics well into adulthood. The same phenomenon is present in Japan, just at a much larger extent. Social connections is an asset without form, and naturally it can get passed down generations like other assets. Why abandon them when they can be used advance your career. Unless we adopt ancient Athenian procedures of ostracism, political dynasties will exist. And ostracism will not happen because it was idiotic and backfired badly.

Justin Trudeau had been a MP for 5 years when he became the Liberal leader. Their party was in crisis mode after a decade of consecutive seat losses. Trudeau was the button behind their "break in case of emergency" glass, and it worked for them because the same effect resonated with the voter base.

Modern politicians in developed elective democratic countries aren't benevolent despots, and no single person's brain has the capacity to process or react to everything going on in the world at this day and age. This means they have lots of advisors to handle most of that processing and decision suggestions. The relief of this burden means a good modern politican doesn't have to be good at policy - they become another type of influencer whose first and foremost focus is charisma. Zelensky is another example.

In Japan, feudalism never really ended, at least not in the hearts and minds of people. They love their „upper caste“ regardless how much it hurts their lives.

You can add Trump to that list as well, though it isn't a genetic inheritance. Chomsky's Requiem for the American Dream lays out in detail how intertwined the Trump family has been in conservative national politics for ages