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Pierre Poilievre is winning with his rallies. Mark Carney is winning with the pollsters.
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Now, those of us in the media like to go on and on about the tremendous, life-altering importance of so-called “defining moments” in debates. But, honestly, those don’t happen very often at all.
I’ve gotten prime ministers and premiers ready for debates, many times. The strategic objective is always simple. It’s two things: have your issues dominate, and look and sound like a leader.
In the Liberal leadership debates, Mark Carney was clobbered both times by Karina Gould, an articulate MP half his age. He had never run for high public office before, or participated in a debate like that, and it showed. He was the proverbial fish out of water.
Being the boring and pedantic technocrat has worked for him when the contrast is with Donald Trump, however. Trump is like a Tasmanian devil on Benzedrine. In that frame, Carney just needs to look like an adult who has a basic understanding of economics and logic.
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I’m not sure that frame will work for him with Pierre Poilievre. The Tory leader has basically never worked in the real world, true. The cut and thrust of House of Commons debates and committees are his entire existence, true. But he’s really, really good at it.
So was Thomas Mulcair: also true. And we all know what happened to him. He’s on the pundits/columnist circuit, which effectively means your life is over. (Trust me.)
In the debates, Poilievre needs to restrain himself. He needs to stop being the Leader of the Opposition and start being the prime minister-in-waiting. He needs to cool it. Can he?
Well, when I saw him speak in Toronto this week, you could clearly see him trying to temper his tone and his language. The Trumpy populist railing against vaccine mandates, the WEF and shadowy globalists was gone. In his place, there was someone who was credibly doing a job interview for the position of prime minister of Canada.
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That’s what he needs to do in the coming debates with Mark Carney. Don’t put anyone to sleep, of course. But also don’t descend into the populist firebrand shouter, either.
That’s just auditioning for the job he already has. If he does that, it will turn people off, and Carney will look like the adult.
Canadian Marshall McLuhan, who basically invented television theory, always said the TV is a cool medium. Poilievre needs to be cool.
If he is too hot, his partisans at his rallies will love it.
But he’ll lose everyone else.
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