CrosswordNewsletters
DAILY BEAST
ALL
  • Cheat Sheet
  • Politics
  • Crime
  • Entertainment
  • Media
  • Innovation
  • Opinion
  • World
  • U.S. News
  • Scouted
  • Travel
CHEAT SHEET
    POLITICS
    • Fever Dreams
    • Biden World
    • Elections
    • Opinion
    • National Security
    • Congress
    • Pay Dirt
    • The New Abnormal
    • Right Richter
    • Trumpland
    MEDIA
    • Confider
    • Daytime Talk
    • Late-Night
    • Fox News
    U.S. NEWS
    • Identities
    • Crime
    • Race
    • LGBT
    • Extremism
    • Coronavirus
    WORLD
    • Russia
    • Europe
    • China
    • Middle East
    INNOVATION
    • Science
    TRAVEL
      ENTERTAINMENT
      • TV
      • Movies
      • Music
      • Comedy
      • Sports
      • Sex
      • TDBs Obsessed
      • Awards Shows
      • The Last Laugh
      FOOD & BEVERAGE
        CULTURE
        • Power Trip
        • Fashion
        • Books
        • Royalist
        TECH
        • Disinformation
        SCOUTED
        • Clothing
        • Technology
        • Beauty
        • Home
        • Pets
        • Kitchen
        • Fitness
        • I'm Looking For
        COUPONS
        • Adidas Promo Codes
        • DoorDash Promo Codes
        • H&M Coupons
        • Hotwire Promo Codes
        • Wine.com Discounts
        • Vitacost Coupons
        • Spanx Promo Codes
        • StubHub Promo Codes
        BEST PICKS
        • Best VPNs
        • Best Gaming PCs
        • Best Air Fryers
        Products
        NewslettersPodcastsCrosswordsSubscription
        FOLLOW US
        GOT A TIP?

        SEARCH

        HOMEPAGE

        Justin! Why Trudeau's Heir Isn't Ready

        Trudeau

        David Frum

        Updated Apr. 21, 2017 10:44AM ET / Published Apr. 20, 2013 12:00PM ET 

        Friend Andrew Coyne speaks up on behalf of Justin Trudeau's post-Boston Marathon remarks to Peter Mansbridge. Coyne: "I don’t say he offered much deep thinking on the subject: much else that came out of his mouth was vague, incoherent or both. But I didn’t hear much that was terribly objectionable, either."

        OK, let's review why these remarks resonated so badly.

        1) Remember, Trudeau was interviewed bare hours after the bombing. As he himself acknowledged: "Now we don't know now whether it was, you know, terrorism or a single crazy or, you know, a domestic issue or a foreign issue, I mean, all of those questions."

        That's a good moment for a responsible leader to stop talking. If you don't know what happened, don't opine - much less commit yourself to any specific course of action.

        2) Ignoring his own caveat, Trudeau then rushed ahead to reach his own unfounded conclusion. "But there is no question that this happened because there is someone who feels completely excluded, completely at war with innocents, at war with a society."

        Yet in fact many terrorists are thickly embedded in social networks. Marc Sagerman, a former CIA psychiatrist, studied 172 individual jihadist cases and found that the single strongest predictor of the decision to join an Islamic terrorist group was having a friend or relative join first. At the time of his interview, of course, Trudeau did not know whether the killer(s) was or were jihadists. But he didn't know they weren't either. So it was a bad time to say "there was no question" about a conclusion about which there were sure to be plenty of questions.

        3) Friend Andrew rightly condemns those who after 9/11 used the language of "root causes" to enlist the atrocity for their own political ends, be it to condemn Israel or call for more foreign aid. Justin Trudeau was doing just the same thing. In his speech announcing his leadership bid, Trudeau had identified "social exclusion" as one of the social ills against which he was campaigning.

        Confronted with a question about a mass murder, Trudeau rummaged through his inventory of old speeches, and produced his pet issue as the "root cause" of an event about which in fact he knew precisely zero.

        4) Trudeau spoke in the passive voice, about people who "feel excluded." It's possible to feel excluded for no good reason at all. Yet the implication lingers, it is that if people "feel excluded," somebody is excluding them. It's easy to draw the inference from Trudeau's words that he thinks the real culprit in cases of terrorism is this unknown excluder, not the unfortunate victim of exclusion who merely detonated the bomb that was somehow prepared for him by vaguely oppressive social forces.

        In Justin Trudeau's comments on the Boston attack, we see a worrying formula: first, emphatic certainty ("there is no question"), expressed (as Andrew notes) vaguely and incoherently, all in service of an idea that is objectively wrong. Overconfident and mistaken: that is not the stuff of which successful prime ministers are made.

        READ THIS LIST

        DAILY BEAST
        • Cheat Sheet
        • Politics
        • Crime
        • Entertainment
        • Media
        • World
        • Innovation
        • U.S. News
        • Scouted
        • Travel
        • Subscription
        • Crossword
        • Newsletters
        • Podcasts
        • About
        • Contact
        • Tips
        • Jobs
        • Advertise
        • Help
        • Privacy
        • Code of Ethics & Standards
        • Diversity
        • Terms & Conditions
        • Copyright & Trademark
        • Sitemap
        • Best Picks
        • Coupons:
        • Coupons:
        • Walmart Promo Codes
        • HP Coupon Codes
        • Chewy Promo Codes
        • Ulta Coupons
        • NordVPN Coupons
        • JCPenny Coupons
        • Vistaprint Coupons
        • Samsung Promo Coupons
        • Home Depot Coupons
        • Office Depot Coupons
        • eBay Coupons
        • Ashley Furniture Promo Codes
        © 2022 The Daily Beast Company LLC