Why Scheer is not PM

Christie Blatchford makes an interesting observation: in robotically repeating a nonsensical talking point to avoid answering reporters’ questions on the Kinsella affair in the closing days of the campaign, Scheer was channeling Justin Trudeau. If it were not enough to mostly appropriate the Liberal platform, Scheer seems to have taken Trudeau as a role model.

How insane is this as an electoral strategy, if you seek to replace Trudeau? If people like Justin Trudeau, they are likely to prefer Justin Trudeau to some imitator.

We are swiftly hearing talk of replacing Scheer as leader of the Conservatives.

This seems odd. He improved the party’s performance over last election, after all, and it would have been almost unprecedented to defeat a government in the next election from their first majority.

But I think it is summed up in one simple sentence: “He is not a leader.” He does not have the soul of a leader. He has the soul of a House Speaker. People are beginning to grasp this at an intuitive level. Blatchford might even have used that phrase: “He is not a leader.” He does not understand leadership, and defaults to a weird co-dependency. He will always find a way to lose.

It is as Julius Caesar said of his arch-rival Pompey: had the latter been a leader, there is no way Caesar could have defeated him at Dyrrachium. Napoleon expressed the same when he said “I’d rather have lucky generals than good ones.”

In your gut, you somehow know Scheer will never be Prime Minister. Or if he ever became one, he would quickly throw it away, like Joe Clark did, as though he were holding something with a lit fuse. Any real leader, given the circumstances, would have beaten Justin Trudeau this time.