Barack Obama
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By ANTHONY WESTALL*
The Globe and Mail
Posted AT 8:16 AM EST ON 03/01/07
Watching the crowds swarm around U.S. Senator Barack Obama, applaud his every word and compete to shake his hand when he visited New Hampshire recently, an experienced American journalist reported: "I've never seen anything like it."
I have, and in somewhat similar circumstances. It was in 1968 at the birth of what we came to call Trudeaumania. With only three years in national politics, Pierre Trudeau became a candidate for the Liberal Party leadership, caught the imagination of Canadians, and became prime minister, leaving in the dust senior cabinet ministers with, by any normal reckoning, far better qualifications.
With only two years experience in Washington, the Illinois senator has suddenly become a top candidate for the Democratic nomination for the presidency, challenging such senior Democrats as Senator Hillary Clinton of New York.
American pundits are staggered, but Canadian experience may give us an insight denied to them.
After years of bitterly partisan politics and scandal, Canadians in 1968 were looking for a new style of politician. U.S. voters now seem to be in a similar mood. In November's midterm elections, they voted no-confidence in President George W. Bush and his Republican Party. But there also appeared to be no great enthusiasm for conventional Democrats.
Mr. Trudeau seemed to be a new man with new ideas, untarnished by the past, and so does Mr. Obama.
There are differences, of course. To mention only one, Mr. Trudeau was a roving bachelor — which may have appealed to women — while Mr. Obama is a family man. But there are also similarities. Both men are originals, and slightly exotic. Mr. Trudeau was born of French-Canadian and Quebec Scots parents, and had backpacked around the world, acquiring a cosmopolitan air that some conservatives found suspicious. Mr. Obama's mother was a white American and his father Kenyan, and he was raised mostly by grandparents in Hawaii. Both he and Mr. Trudeau studied at Harvard, among other schools.
Mr. Trudeau seemed to rise above party, and offered only a Just Society — a slogan into which supporters could read whatever they wished. "Come work with me," he invited, and, in 1968, he refused to engage his Conservative and NDP opponents.
Mr. Obama has a strong liberal voting record in the Senate, but, outside Washington, he does not talk party politics, seeming to offer a bipartisan approach to his country's problems. The title of his new book, The Audacity of Hope, is almost Trudeauesque in its bland promise, but it is at the top of The New York Times's non-fiction bestseller list.
Skeptics in the U.S. are already pointing out that Mr. Obama has not been tested by even one negative advertising attack, and it's possible that he will wither when the campaign for the nomination heats up. But people don't like to see their hero, their hope for a better type of politician, abused, and attacks against Mr. Obama could even strengthen his campaign. Mr. Trudeau easily survived rumours that he was gay — after all, he did wear sandals in the House of Commons — and whispers that he was really a Communist.
It's early, early days in the campaigns leading to the presidential election in 2008, and the likelihood of a virtual novice surviving the brutal process to win must seem very slim to the professionals. But those of us who were in Ottawa in 1968 know what unlikely things can happen when voters decide it's time for a change.
*Anthony Westell was The Globe and Mail's Ottawa bureau chief from 1964 to 1969.
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