October 20, 2015

"After a childhood spent in the public gaze, Mr. Trudeau... work[ed] as a snowboard instructor and nightclub bouncer before becoming a high school teacher in Vancouver, British Columbia."

It's the new Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, whose father was prime minister when he was a little kid.

Snowboarding, nightclub bouncing, and high school teaching — that's one way to distance yourself from the appearance of a family political dynasty. Maybe Jeb! should have done something more like that.

What jobs did Jeb have before entering politics?
In 1974, Bush went to work in an entry-level position in the international division of Texas Commerce Bank, which was founded by the family of James Baker.... Following the 1980 presidential election, Bush and his family moved to Miami-Dade County, Florida. He took a job in real estate with Armando Codina, a 32-year-old Cuban immigrant and self-made millionaire.... During Bush's years in Miami, he was involved in many different entrepreneurial pursuits, including working for a mobile phone company, serving on the board of a Norwegian-owned company that sold fire equipment to the Alaska oil pipeline, becoming a minority owner of the Jacksonville Jaguars, buying a shoe company that sold footwear in Panama, and getting involved in a project selling water pumps in Nigeria....

39 comments:

tim maguire said...

Only in Canada could that patsy be a bouncer.

Rusty said...

Oh! Canada!
You are well and truly fucked!
Free stuff!

mccullough said...

W and Jeb both were owners of professional sports teams. So was Trump.

Fernandinande said...

Snowboard bouncer and nightclub instructor. Dislikes zinc.

Bricap said...

Tim, Don Cherry would like a word with you.

Will Josh Brolin star in this eventual biopic, too?

tim in vermont said...

These things run in waves around the Anglosphere. This is good news for Democrats.

traditionalguy said...

Harper was too pro Israel. The inevitable counter barrage has arrived to destroy Harper's good works.

traditionalguy said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
traditionalguy said...

Jebbie was a legacy of Bush Dynasty where ever he went in life and nothing at all has changed.

walter said...

I wonder if Trudeau ever met Mary Burke

Titus said...

The new PM of Canada is also very hot!

Quaestor said...

These things run in waves around the Anglosphere.

Except when it doesn't. Pierre Trudeau had two stints as premier. Who were the presidents during his first premiership? Nixon and Ford. During his second premiership he was paired with Reagan in the US and Maggie Thatcher in the UK.

Quaestor said...

Come on, Titus. Break the mold! Come out of the cocoon! Tell us something interesting! Or at least amusing! Just once, for the love of God!

walter said...

"The new PM of Canada is also very hot!"

Onboard for O'Malley? They could wrassle. That'd be hawt!

traditionalguy said...

Does he French Kiss his snowboard bunnies?

damikesc said...

Totes serious candidate there. Truly. Canada and its hard-on for Trudeaus.

Scott said...

Forget it Jake, it's Canada.

holdfast said...

Titus - His wife is also seriously hot.

I didn't know Justin, but we had some friends in common. A nice enough guy - blessed with good looks, decent intelligence and money. Cursed with an idiotic pot-head mom (who failed spectacularly at being a drug smuggler) and the loss of his brother at a young age (which put all the political pressure on him). He ran a good campaign, and the Tories ran an inept one. The Tories were frankly burned out - who wins 4 elections in a row? Even Pierre Trudeau didn't do that. What's interesting is that the Tories got indorsements from both major Canadian dailies (the National Post - center-right, fancies itself the WSJ of Canada; and the GLobe and Mail, center-left, fancies itself the NYT of Canada).

For many Canadians the Libs are the "conservative" choice in that they are the "default" or "safe" choice. They get along fine with big business and are responsive to the power centers in Toronto and Montreal. The Libs will incease social spending some, de-fund the military further and abandon Israel, but that really doesn't impact the average Joe Canadian who just wants to get a double-double from Timmie's before going to work.

The Tories benefitted from the fragmentation of the Candian left into centre-left (the Liberals), hard-left (the NDP), French/traitor-left (the Bloc Quebecois) and hippie-left (the Greens). Last night a lof the NDP, BQ and Green supporters switched over to the Libs - and so the traitors and hippies got pummeled, and the NDP greatly reduced.

This is not the worst outcome - a Liberal minority government that had to enter into a coalition with the NDP to form a majority would have been FAR worse.

walter said...

Interesting..as I watch the Bern collective rejoice as if this shows revolution is afoot.

walter said...

But yes..a snowboarding instructor is much cooler than multiple exposures to business. But he scores points for marrying a Latina.

jeff said...

Snowboarding instructor in Canada and almost a snowboarding bunny in Wisconsin, do I detect a trend?

Scott said...

@holdfast: Thanks for the analysis.

dbp said...

I think that in the 2000 primaries I voted for Steve Forbes. Of the two Bush brothers who were governors at the time, I liked Jeb better than George. I like Jeb less now than I did then.

cubanbob said...

Typical North American election. The left fucks things up, the right comes in and fixes things and then the voters who forgot why the kicked the left out to begin with vote for them again because it seems the cool thing to do. Give the Canadians another eight years and the Conservatives will be back again.

Titus said...

His wife is fucking hot.

Titus said...

yea holdfast that was helpful.

I love Canada.

Known Unknown said...

A Canadian friend posted this to Facebook.

holdfast said...

@cubanbob - I totally agree (but then my friends on the left would argue the opposite - that conservatives smash the social safety net in search of tax cuts and helping business, and when it gets smashed too much, the people wisely put the liberals back in charge).

Right now Justin is Teh New Hawtness. But in 2002, when Harper became the leader of the opposition after successfully merging the old Tory party and the new Reform party (something that had been tried before with poor results), he was the bright and shiny young idealist with the cute kids. Of course, he never got the liberal media tongue bath that Trudeau gets, but he did get quite a bit of good press for uniting the right and forcing Reform to mature into a serious party.

A lot of my friends in Canada still respect and even trust Harper (and think he did a mostly good job, especially during the financial crisis), but they really don't like him any more, and that's why the Tories lost a bunch of foermerly safe seats. My opinion is that Harper should have turned over the reigns at least a year ago, and then the Tories could have run with a fresh new leader and some fresh ideas. Nothing lasts forever.

lgv said...

holdfast,

I remember the burnout on Trudeau, too. Just like Harper. The Libs will increase social spending a little, but you really can't cut military spending. There isn't much to cut. It's already 1% of GDP. Maybe they can get the 4 Syrians we spent $50 million training.



Bart Hall (Kansas, USA) said...

I'm a dual Canadian/American citizen but could not vote in the latest election.

Trudeau the younger in charismatic, ideological, and completely inexperienced. But yeah, let's give his party a parliamentary majority because charismatic, ideological, and inexperienced worked out so bloody well in the States recently.

cubanbob said...

@Holdfast the same is true here. Trudeau will muck things up, he is the son and that's that. Oh hell, that pretty much mucks up my Canadian portfolio for years. All the same Canada being much smaller than the US even with loons like Trudeau has an outer limit of fiscal irresponsibility. My fear from a US perspective is once again Canada will be a lot looser in letting certain MENA types in and our border is pretty porous up north as well.

Anonymous said...

I used to think Canadians were sober, serious people, Now it's just Canuckistan.

rcocean said...

I hate the Trudeau family and that includes his drug smuggling mother. His father came off as a smug elitist prick. The USA press was always telling us how "Smart" and "Charismatic" he was - but I never found evidence of either quality in Pierre.

I guess you have to be a Canadian. BTW, the NDP who usually get 15-20% vote are real honest to God Socialists. They'd consider Bernie a right-winger. They make the Liberals look reasonable.

rcocean said...

Canadian prosperity is tied to Commodity prices, especially Oil. Once, the price of Oil goes back up, so will the Canadian Dollar.

Douglas B. Levene said...

Key lesson for American pols: Millenials will vote for the guy with a hard body and tats. All the rest is distraction.

Phil 314 said...

Professor, a you suggesting meaningful experience is


BORING!?

Michael K said...

"then the voters who forgot why the kicked the left out to begin with vote for them again because it seems the cool thing to do."

David Warren wrote an excellent column about Obama and Gorbachev which applies to Trudeau, as well. I preserved the column at my blog since the Ottawa Citizen doesn't have the link anymore.

Yet they do have one major thing in common, and that is the belief that, regardless of what the ruler does, the polity he rules must necessarily continue. This is perhaps the most essential, if seldom acknowledged, insight of the post-modern “liberal” mind: that if you take the pillars away, the roof will continue to hover in the air.

and

There is a corollary of this largely unspoken assumption: that no matter what you do to one part of a machine, the rest of the machine will continue to function normally.

A variant of this is the frequently expressed denial of the law of unintended consequences: the belief that, if the effect you intend is good, the actual effect must be similarly happy.

Very small children, the mad, and certain extinct primitive tribes, have shared in this belief system, but only the fully college-educated liberal has the vocabulary to make it sound plausible.


Maybe that is why the Ottawa Citizen doesn't have the column online anymore.

BN said...

"Professor, a[re] you suggesting meaningful experience is


BORING!?"


ZZZZZZZZ... wha?

BN said...

What we have learned over a couple thousand plus years of trying is that democracy (democratic republic, whatever) is not a good method of governance either.

There isn't one.

Despair ye who dream.

Despair... and hide.

(But don't ever stop dreaming. That's what life is really about.)